Tour of Your New Permanent Account and Archive
Congratulations on taking the first steps towards preserving the materials and memories that mean the most to you! We are excited to have you joining the Permanent community.
When you log into your Permanent.org account, you will land in your first archive. A Permanent Archive is the collection of digital records to be preserved forever that are the legal property of an individual, family or organizational identity represented in the associated profile or have been legally released by that individual or others into the public commons. With a Permanent account, you can have as many archives as you want. Learn more about creating a new archive here.
Below is an introduction to your new Permanent Account and Archive, which highlights important sections of each such as your Account Menu, Archive Menu, Archive Workspaces, File Action Toolbar, and File Information. If you have any questions as you get started with Permanent, please reach out to us at support@permanent.org and we would be happy to assist you.
Account Menu
Your Account Menu is accessible regardless of which archive you are currently working in, and contains settings and actions for your Permanent account. You can find your Account Menu by clicking your email in the top right corner of the screen.
The Account Menu includes the following information and menu options:
- Storage Status Bar: view the amount of storage you have for your account (which you can use across any archive you are a member of and have the appropriate upload permissions for) and the amount of storage you have used
- Storage: see how much storage your account has, add additional storage, redeem a gift, view transaction history, and view file history
- Account: change notification preferences, change your login information and verify your email and phone number, manage your billing information, and delete your account
- Archives: view the archives you are a member of, manage pending archive invitations, and create new archives
- Invitations: send and view invitations to friends, family members, and colleagues to join Permanent
- Log Out: log out of your Permanent.org account
Archive Menu
You can tell what archive you are in by looking at the profile photo and archive name on the left side of the screen. This menu is where you can access settings and actions about the archive you are in, as well as the four workspaces in your archive.
Click the arrow below the archive name to open the Archive Menu.
Here, you can manage settings and actions for your archive if you have the appropriate access role (learn more about access roles here):
- Archive Profile: add descriptions and metadata about this archive, as well as change or add a profile photo or banner
- Archive Connections: manage relationships between this archive and archives (Knowledge Base article forthcoming)
- Archive Members: manage, add, or delete members of this archive
- Archive Settings: settings relating to this archive, such as manage tags
Archive Workspaces
Below the Archive Menu are four Archive Workspaces. These workspaces are separate spaces, similar to drives or folders on your computer, that separate the private and public spaces of your archive. The workspace you are currently working in is highlighted orange on the left side of the screen and is labeled at the top of the workspace.
My Files (Private) Workspace
The My Files, or private, workspace is the workspace where you can store the files in this archive that you wish to keep private and not publish to the Public Archive. You can upload files directly to the archive's My Files workspace, then organize them and add metadata.
Shares Workspace
The Shares Workspace is where you can view any files or folders that have been shared from another archive to this archive. Sharing files and folders with another archive can be helpful if a part of another archive is relevant to this archive.
Sharing happens between two archives, and not between two accounts. Learn more about the difference between an account and an archive here.
For instance, if I have created an archive for my great grandmother, Eliza Federspill Pennington, and an archive for the Pennington Family, I may want to share some photographs in Eliza's archive with the Pennington Family Archive so that people who are members of the Pennington Family Archive can view those photographs as well.
Public Workspace
The Public Workspace is the workspace where you can store files that you wish to publish to the archive's Public Archive. You can upload files directly to the Public Workspace, or you can move or publish files from your My Files workspace to the Public Workspace. Learn more about publishing to your archive's Public Archive here.
Any files and information, including metadata you have added to your files, will be publicly available in the archive's Public Archive if it resides in the Public Workspace. Learn more about Public Archives here.
Apps Workspace
The Apps Workspace is where you can log in and use Permanent's integrations with other applications, such as the FamilySearch integration. Learn more about the FamilySearch integration here.
File or Folder Actions Toolbar
Regardless of which workspace you are working in, you can find additional information and actions you can take on a file by clicking on the file or folder. When clicked on, the file or folder will highlight yellow to indicate that you have selected it.
A new toolbar will appear at the top of your workspace, as well as additional information on the right side of the screen.
The File Action Toolbar includes the following buttons for actions you can take on the file or folder:
- Delete: permanently delete the selected file or folder
- Copy: create another copy of the selected file or folder in another folder or workspace
- Move: move the selected file or folder into another folder or workspace
- Share: share the selected file or folder with another archive (Knowledge Base article forthcoming)
- Publish: publish the selected file or folder to the archive's Public Archive. This creates a second copy of the file in the Public Workspace
- Download: download the originally updated file or folder selected (Knowledge Base article forthcoming)
Depending on what your access level of the archive is, you may see some action buttons on the file toolbar grayed out. This indicates that you do not have permission to perform that action on the file or folder. Learn more about roles and permissions here.
File or Folder Information
You can also view additional information about the file or folder on the right side of your workspace when the file or folder is selected.
There are three tabs in the file or folder information section:
Info Tab
In the Info tab, you can view and edit metadata for the file or folder. Learn more about adding and editing metadata here.
Sharing Tab
The Sharing Tab for the selected file or folder is where you can view all of the archives that have access to the selected file or folder, manage the permissions for those archives, and share with additional archives.
Views Tab
The Views tab is only available for folders in the Public Workspace. Views is where you can select whether you want the contents of a folder to be displayed as a grid or as a timeline in the archive's Public Archive. Learn more about creating a timeline here.
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