In a previous blog, we introduced the new beta release of Nuxeo Drive, our desktop sync app, version 2.0 and discussed its new features and major enhancements. This version is all set to dramatically improve the usability and performance of Nuxeo Drive. Today let’s briefly discuss its functional aspects and take a sneak peek at the Drive UI and Settings. You will see for yourself how easy and tremendously useful these features are!
New HTML 5 based UI
The UI has been completely rewritten in favor of an HTML5 interface using Bootstrap and Angular and now it can be easily customized. Here’s a preview of the new UI!
Nuxeo Drive 2.0 UI
Nuxeo Drive 2.0 UI
Let’s take a deeper look at the interface and see what amazing things you can do with it now!
Nuxeo Drive Main UI
Nuxeo Drive always had the ability to connect to multiple servers, but it is now possible to manage the connections through the UI, which makes it way easier. You can now switch from one Nuxeo Server to another from the UI. For example, you can refer to documents on your intranet and on your local server and switch between the two whenever you want.
For each server you can perform many actions, such as open its Nuxeo Drive folder, or get the list of the last five synchronized documents. On this list of five documents, you can even edit the metadata with a click on the icon.
Now I will walk you through the Nuxeo Drive Settings interface:
- ‘General’ Tab:
- Nuxeo Drive is now localized and supports English and French currently. We can’t wait for your pull requests to add other languages!
- You also have options to let Nuxeo Drive auto-update and to report usage statistics. The latter will help us evaluate the product and add enhancements. It’s anonymous so feel free to check this box.
- One other option is to use Nuxeo Drive update beta channel to test the latest beta version.
Nuxeo Drive 2.0 Settings - General
- ‘Accounts’ Tab:
Here, you can define your connections by setting:
- The name you want to give to this connection
- The folder used (which must be different for each connection to avoid conflicts)
- The URL of the Nuxeo Server
- The credentials
Nuxeo Drive 2.0 Settings - Accounts
Once connected, you will have access to the synchronized folders. You can select or unselect documents, which makes it pretty easy to setup the elements you want to synchronize.
Nuxeo Drive Settings - Filter documents
- ‘Advanced’ Tab:
- Here you can set the log verbosity which will be useful for debugging a problem by referring to the logs.
- The proxy management section lets you set up the proxy, if any.
Conflict Management
Another new feature of Nuxeo Drive 2.0 is management of conflicts. Sometimes, you might have a conflict between your documents. For instance, if you worked offline on a file that has, at the same time, been modified in Nuxeo Platform. The interface displays the number of conflicts and for each of them you now have the ability to resolve it directly from the Nuxeo Drive UI. You can choose to use the local file, or the remote file, or to duplicate the files (the latter was the default behaviour in previous version.)
Nuxeo Drive 2.0 - Conflicts Management
Nuxeo Drive Settings - Conflicts Management
Edit Metadata
You can edit metadata directly in your Nuxeo Drive folder located in your File System by right clicking on the document. You have access to the edit layout of metadata as well. No more having to go back to your Nuxeo Platform if you don’t want to!
And don’t forget that now you can edit online all your documents thanks to the Drive Edit feature! (In the previous version, only those documents whose container was explicitly synchronized could be edited from the browser). If the user has write permission, he will see the drive edit icon: 
and will be able to edit any type of document online (if the application/program he wants to edit is available of course!)
Now that you know a lot about Nuxeo Drive 2.0, sit back, relax, and wait for the official release! It’s right around the corner! Until then, try out the beta version deployed on https://community.nuxeo.com/static/drive-tests/.