Micro Focus Filr allows you to easily access all your files and folders from your desktop, browser, or a mobile device. In addition, you can promote collaboration around your files by sharing files and folders with others. For a detailed overview of Filr, see the Filr 3: Understanding How Filr Works.
Filr lets you easily access all your files and folders from your desktop, browser, or a mobile device. In addition, you can promote collaboration around your files by sharing files and folders with others. For a detailed overview of Filr, see the Filr 3: Understanding How Filr Works.
From a web browser on your workstation, as described in the Filr User Access Guide.
From a mobile device, as described in the Filr Mobile App Quick Start.
From your desktop, as described in the Filr Desktop Application for Windows Guide and the Filr Desktop Application for Mac .
NOTE:Filr 3.0 accommodates two types of licenses:
Standard-Edition License: Allows all of the services available in previous versions of Filr plus several new features and improvements.
Advanced-Edition License: Also allows administrators the ability to enable the sharing of folders within Net Folders, and to customize (brand) the Desktop and Mobile App user interfaces.
For more information on the standard and advanced editions of Filr, see the Micro Focus Filr Product Page.
Filr 3.0 provides the following enhancements:
Filr 3.0 Advanced Edition enhances the Net Folder sharing to include the sharing of folders in addition to the sharing of files. Administrators can now allow users to share folders within their assigned Net Folders using a Filr client (web, mobile, desktop) of their choice.
For more information, see Folder Sharing (Advanced-Edition License Only) in the Filr 3: Understanding How Filr Works and Sharing in the Filr 3: Administrative UI Reference.
In addition to customizing the branding of the Filr site, Filr 3.0 Advanced Edition allows the administrators to customize the appearance of the desktop application and mobile application to match the look and feel of their corporate identity.
For more information about customizing the branding for desktop application, see Branding the Desktop Apps (Advanced-Edition License Only) in the Filr 3: Administrative UI Reference.
For more information about customizing the branding for mobile application, see Branding the Mobile Apps (Advanced-Edition License Only) in the Filr 3: Administrative UI Reference.
Filr 3.0 introduces the Online Update feature that enables you to easily and quickly update the Filr Appliance by applying new Filr patches without much manual intervention. See Managing Online Updates in the Filr 3: Administrative UI Reference.
Filr Administrator can now view details about the Desktop devices that has accessed your Filr system and wipe all Filr data from a device in the event that it is lost or stolen. For more information, see Viewing, Wiping, and Disconnecting Registered Clients section in the Filr 3: Administrative UI Reference
Filr 3.0 includes support for Windows Server 2016 as a backend storage File Server. See File Servers (Backend Storage) in the Filr 3.0 Installation, Deployment, and Upgrade Guide.
Filr 3.0 includes support for Server Message Block (SMB) Protocol Version 2 for OES 2015 NSS AD. See Configuring Filr to Work with OES 2015 NSS AD in the Filr 3.0 Installation, Deployment, and Upgrade Guide
Filr 3.0 is rebranded from Novell branding to Micro Focus branding.
With Filr 3.0, any external (guest) users who access Filr can be required to accept terms and conditions before being granted access. See Display Terms and Conditions in the Filr 3: Administrative UI Reference.
Filr Administrator can now enable or disable all Filr users (desktop, mobile, and web) from commenting on files. For more information, see Allow Commenting on Files in the Filr 3: Administrative UI Reference.
Filr Administrator can now enable or disable data encryption between the Filr server and the database. For more information, see Encrypting Filr Database Communication in the Using the Database Connection dialog table in the SQL Database Connection section of the Filr 3: Administrative UI Reference.
Filr Administrator can now specify the number of days that locally cached files remain on the desktops after they are no longer being accessed or modified. For more information, see Desktop Access—Default Settings section in the Filr 3: Administrative UI Reference
Filr Administrator can also allow the Desktop users to modify the lifetime of the cached files. See Removing Cache Files in the Filr Desktop Application For Windows Guide and Filr Desktop Application For Mac Guide.
Before upgrading the Filr Appliance, review the following sections. To upgrade your Filr 2.0 Appliance with all latest patched installed to Filr 3.0, see Upgrading a Large Filr Deployment
in the Filr 3.0 Installation, Deployment, and Upgrade Guide.
To enable the Filr 3.0 server to communicate with OES 2015 and OES 2015 SP1 servers, you must ensure that the OES servers are updated with the latest patches.
After upgrading from Filr 2.0 to Filr 3.0, the initial configuration page (port 9443) might display an RPC failure and log out.
Clearing the browser cache and then connecting again should resolve the issue.
The /etc/hosts file and the /etc/sysconfig/network/routes information are not preserved when upgrading.
If you have customized an appliance’s routing tables, consider backing up these areas before upgrading and restoring the files after the upgrade is complete.
To enable the Filr 3.0 server to communicate with OES 2015 and OES 2015 SP1 servers, you must ensure that the OES servers are updated with the latest patches.
For information about the system requirements to install Filr, see System Requirements
in the Filr 3.0 Installation, Deployment, and Upgrade Guide.
For information about installing Filr, see the Filr 3.0 Installation, Deployment, and Upgrade Guide
IMPORTANT:Failure to update your OES 11 SP1 servers can cause the configured eDirectory (LDAP) servers to fail.
Scalability and performance improvements provided in Filr require that Filr-targeted servers be able to handle increased file service and other requests.
The NCP server that shipped with OES 11 SP1 cannot handle the increased requests.
If you have any OES 11 SP1 servers that match the following criteria, you must update the OES 11 SP1 server before installing Filr:
Host Net Folders or Personal Storage Home folders
and
Do not have the December 2012 Scheduled Maintenance Update applied
To prepare the OES 11 SP1 servers to handle Filr:
Ensure that all Filr-targeted OES 11 SP1 servers have at least the December 2012 Scheduled Maintenance Update applied.
This updates the NCP server to a newer version that is capable of keeping up with the increased service requests of Filr.
Proceed with the upgrade to Filr.
NOTE:OES 11 SP2 contains the updated NCP server by default and is able to meet all Filr service demands.
Large installations require shared NFS or CIFS storage for the /vastorage mount point on the Filr server.
If you are using NFS, you must not target the /var mount point or a child directory within it. Doing so will cause /vastorage to fail to mount when the Filr appliance reboots. (See TID 7017379.)
Rolling upgrades (upgrading one Filr or search index server while another continues to serve clients) are not supported when upgrading from Filr 2.0 to Filr 3.0 in a clustered environment.
You must shut down all Filr and search index appliances before you begin the upgrade process. Then restart the appliances after the upgrade is complete.
This issue does not affect small or non-clustered large installations.
For information about how to upgrade Filr, see Upgrading a Large Filr Deployment
in the Filr 3.0 Installation, Deployment, and Upgrade Guide.
Do not use VMware snapshots as a backup method for Filr. Doing so inhibits your ability to upgrade Filr in the future.
If you do use snapshots, you must remove them before upgrading to a new version of Filr.
For more detailed information about how to back up various Filr components, see Backing Up Filr Data
in the Filr 3: Maintenance Best Practices Guide.
When running Filr in Xen environment, storage for the /var partition cannot be expanded after Filr installation.
The process for expanding storage for the /var and /vastorage partitions after installation is described in Expanding Storage
in the Filr 3: Administrative UI Reference.
LDAP user names must contain only valid alphanumeric characters 0 - 9 and upper-case and lower-case letters (A-Z). User names that contain ASCII characters and special characters (for example, / \ * ? " < > : | ) cannot be used as Filr user names. If your LDAP directory includes user names with these characters, they synchronize to Filr, but the associated users cannot log in.
These characters cannot be used in a Filr user name because a Filr user name becomes the user’s workspace title, and the workspace title becomes an element of the hierarchical path that leads to the workspace. These characters are not legal characters in Linux and Windows pathnames.
User names that are synchronized from an LDAP directory are not case sensitive when users log in to the Filr system.
Local user accounts (user accounts that are created in Filr and not synchronized from an LDAP directory) are case sensitive. Login credentials for local user accounts are stored in the MySQL database.
If both Allow Guest Access and Disable Web Access are selected on the Web Application page of the Administration Console, then Enter as Guest is displayed on the initial Web Access Login dialog and Guest users can see publicly available files and folders. If you choose to disable the web access, you should ensure that the guest access is not enabled.
If a user with administrator privileges chooses to upload image that has to be used in the site branding to Filr, the image fails to upload.To upload site branding image to Filr, you must login as the built-in Filr administrator (admin).
Filr doesn’t support Microsoft’s Access Based Enumeration (ABE) when the backend Windows server uses the Distributed File System (DFS) namespace.
If you have a remote DFS junction on an OES 2015 server that is running NSS for AD, you must ensure that the Refresh Cached Rights interval under Net Folder Settings in the Filr administration console is not set to 0 minutes (meaning that it’s disabled). Otherwise, Filr users will not be able to access files and folders under the DFS target through Filr and the owner of all the files and folders under the target will be displayed as File Sync Agent in Filr.
When Filr is fronted by NetIQ Access Manager, only the Filr administrator is able to access Filr directly. When Filr is accessed directly in this configuration, simultaneous logout for the Filr system is not successful.
After the Filr administrator logs in directly to Filr (and Filr is configured with Access Manager), all browser sessions should be immediately closed to ensure logout.
When NetIQ Access Manager is configured to front Filr, you cannot use multiple identity injection policies simultaneously.
If you attempt to connect to Filr Desktop and Mobile Devices when Filr is fronted by Access Manager 4.3, the connection fails because the minimum version of the TLS that Access Manager supports is higher than the TLS version that the Filr clients (Desktop and Mobile) support.
To workaround this issue, do the following:
Log in to the Access Manager server.
Navigate to Devices > Access Gateways > [Name of the Access Gateway Server] > Edit > Advanced Options.
Change SSLProtocol TLSv1.1 +TLSv1.2 to SSLProtocol TLSv1.1 +TLSv1.2 +TLSv1.
To apply your changes, click Devices > Access Gateways, then click Update All.
Cross Forest Trust relationships in Active Directory are not supported in Filr.
If a user moves or renames a file directly from the file server (instead of using a Filr client to do the move or rename), any shares that are associated with that file in Filr are removed. This means that users who gained access to a file via a share in Filr no longer have access to the file if the file was moved or renamed from the file server. Additionally, the file is not displayed in users’ Shared by Me and Shared with Me views.
If this situation occurs, files must be re-shared in Filr.
When folders on the file system are synchronized to a Net Folder, the folder path in Filr cannot exceed 48 levels deep (nested sub-folders). The file synchronization code will reject any sub-folder whose depth will cause the corresponding Filr folder path to exceed the sub-folder limit of 48.
When the Filr system encounters the limit of 48 folder levels, the sync code returns the following message and the folder is not created:
The folder xxx has reached the allowed path maximum depth. Its sub-folders will not be added in the system.
Create a junction on the OES Server and then create a net folder in Filr pointing to this junction. On changing the target location in this junction, the net folder still continues to point to the older target location in the junction. Consequently, the contents of the net folder continues to be the files and folders in the older target location.
To view the contents of the new target location in the net folder, run the following command to restart famtd.
rcnovell-famtd restart
When running an email report (as described in Email Report
in the Filr 3: Administrative UI Reference), emails are not displayed for the last day of your report date range.
For example, if you are running an email report between February 3 and April 26, the email report does not show emails from April 26.
The License Report currently counts Administrator, Guest, and three internal users (_emailPostingAgent, _jobProcessingAgent, and _synchronizationAgent) as local users. The Administrator counts as an active user, but the other four local users do not count against your Filr license usage.
For information about how to generate a license report, see License Report
in the Filr 3: Administrative UI Reference.
When Personal Storage is disabled and Home folders have not been configured, users can find a directory called My Files Storage when clicking in the global Search field and pressing the Spacebar. This is normally a hidden directory, but can it be displayed under these special circumstances.
When you click My Files Storage, it can take you to either your My Files area or to the profile of another user (depending on where you are when you do the search).
External users who have Contributor rights in a folder that has been shared with them are not able to browse to a destination folder when moving or copying a file. Instead, external users must specify the name of the folder where they want to move or copy the file in the Destination Folder field, as described in Moving Files
and Copying Files
in the Filr 3: User Access Guide.
When users share files on Share Point servers, the files do not appear in the Shared by Me or Shared with Me folders. However, the users with whom the files were shared can see the shared files if they are in Net Folders and if the users have access to the Net Folders.
After editing an .rtf file from Filr in a text editor (such as Microsoft Word), saving the file results in a message indicating that the file has been changed by another author. In this case, select the option to combine your changes with the other author’s changes, then click OK.
Changes that you make to the file are saved to Filr as expected.
For more information about editing files in Filr using Edit-in-Place functionality, see Editing Files with Edit-in-Place (Applicable for Filr 3.0)
in the Filr 3: User Access Guide.
Micro Focus recommends that you never select the option to delete users that are not in LDAP when configuring your LDAP synchronization. This feature will either be enhanced or removed in future Filr releases. User accounts that are deleted cannot be recovered. As a best practice, select the option to disable the account rather than deleting it.
The LDAP value of the attribute you specify for the LDAP configuration setting LDAP attribute for the Filr account name must be unique throughout your LDAP directory. For example, if you specify cn, all users in the LDAP directory might not have a unique value.
To resolve this issue, use an attribute whose value is always unique across all containers, such as emailAddress.
When synchronizing groups that contain sub-groups to Filr from an LDAP directory, the sub-groups are not included in their parent group’s membership during the initial synchronization.
Perform an additional LDAP synchronization to ensure that group membership contains all expected sub-groups.
In order to rename or move users in your LDAP directory, ensure that you have specified a value for the setting LDAP attribute that uniquely identifies a user or group, as described in LDAP Servers and Synchronization
in the Filr 3: Administrative UI Reference. If a value is not specified for this setting, renaming or moving users in your LDAP directory might result in new users being created in Filr or in the existing user account being deleted.
After a user is renamed in the LDAP directory or after a user’s password is changed in the LDAP directory, the user must use the old user name or password when logging in to the Filr mobile app or the Filr desktop application until one of the following occurs:
An LDAP synchronization is run
The user logs in to the web client using the new user name or password
A user can use the old or new user name or password when logging in to Filr from the web client.
If you attempt to import an LDAP user that has the same User ID as a previously imported user, the import fails and is logged, but the failure is not reported in the administrative GUI. The import error is logged in /opt/novell/filr/apache-tomcat/logs/appserver.log.
Subsequently, only the first user imported is able to log in. Other users with the same User ID are not able to log in, but they are given no indication as to why the login request failed. Failed login attempts are logged in /opt/novell/filr/apache-tomcat/logs/appserver.log.
When configuring Filr to use an external outbound mail system (such as Novell GroupWise), the Test Connection button fails when no user name and password is specified, even when the Authentication required option is not selected.
For information about how to configure Filr to use an external outbound mail system, see Configuring an Email Service for Filr to Use
in the Filr 3: Administrative UI Reference.
When uploading a document that was created with one of the following types of files, you get an error indicating that the file or folder cannot be uploaded when attempting to upload to the Filr web client:
iWork document (such as a Pages, Keynote, or Numbers document)
Mac application file (a document with the .app extension)
The Filr web client is not able to upload these types of documents because the document architecture for these documents more closely resembles a folder, and you cannot upload folders using the Filr web client.
You can upload these types of documents to Filr by using the Filr desktop application or the Filr mobile app.
For information about how to upload documents using the desktop application or mobile app, see the Filr Desktop Application for Windows Guide, the Filr Desktop Application for Mac Guide, and the Filr Mobile App Quick Start.
After downloading a single file or multiple files as a .zip file (as described in Downloading Files
in the Filr 3: User Access Guide), the file can be extracted only when using third-party tools such as iZip Unarchiver.
This issue is due to the fact that OS X does not currently handle ZIP64, the technology that is used to create the .zip file.
If you are experiencing issues when downloading multiple files (as described in Downloading Multiple Files and Folders
in the Filr 3: User Access Guide) when using Safari on Mac, ensure that the option Open “safe” files after downloading is not selected.
Click Safari > Preferences.
On the General tab, ensure that Open “safe” files after downloading is not selected.
The exact maximum file name length depends on the configuration of the Filr server, but generally it is about 200 characters. If file names are too long, files cannot be added to Filr.
If you try to edit a file through WebDAV (as described in Editing Files with Edit-in-Place (Applicable for Filr 3.0)
in the Filr 3: User Access Guide) when your user password contains a space, the authentication fails.
To edit files through WebDAV, ensure that your user password does not contain a space.
When using Edit-in-Place functionality to edit a file (as described in Editing Files with Edit-in-Place (Applicable for Filr 3.0)
in the Filr 3: User Access Guide), you cannot click Save As and rename the file. Doing so results in an upload error, and changes to the file are not synchronized to Filr.
When you use WebDAV functionality in a Mac environment, you encounter the following limitations:
Limitations When Editing Files on Mac through WebDAV Edit-in-Place functionality is not supported on a Mac when you use Microsoft Office as your document editor. To use Edit-in-Place functionality on a Mac, you must use OpenOffice or LibreOffice as your document editor.
Cannot Edit a File through WebDAV (Edit-in-Place) When Using LibreOffice on a Mac
If you are accessing Filr from a Mac and using LibreOffice as your document editor, you cannot edit files through WebDAV using Edit-in-Place functionality (as described in Editing Files with Edit-in-Place (Applicable for Filr 3.0)
in the Filr 3: User Access Guide).
If you are using Apache to front the Filr system, users are able to edit files through WebDAV when accessing Filr from a Mac and using LibreOffice as the document editor.
Using WebDAV to Access the Filr folder (via Mac Finder) Is Read Only When using WebDAV to access the Filr desktop application Filr folder via Mac Finder, access is Read Only.
Cannot Edit a File through WebDAV (Edit-in-Place) When Using Safari 7.x with OS X 10.9.x
When accessing Filr with Safari 7.x and OS X 10.9.x, using Edit-in-Place functionality to edit a file (as described in Editing Files with Edit-in-Place (Applicable for Filr 3.0)
in the Filr 3: User Access Guide) results in an error and you are not able to edit the file.
To configure Safari 7.x and OS X 10.9.x to support the Filr Edit-in-Place feature and to support adding files to folders when using a browser that does not support HTML 5:
With Filr open, in Safari, click Menu > Preferences.
Click the Security tab, then click Manage Website Settings.
Select Java, then click the drop-down arrow next to the Filr URL and select Run in Unsafe Mode.
Click Done.
Users cannot log in to the Filr web client if the user ID exceeds 128 characters or the password exceeds 64 characters.
When the Ask toolbar is installed on a Chrome browser, it inhibits users from being able to view all of the Filr masthead. The Ask toolbar is not a Chrome-sanctioned toolbar and should not be installed on a Chrome browser.
ODP and ODG files that contain charts, graphs, or tables are not displayed when viewing files by using the HTML view, as described in the following situations:
When viewing the file in a browser
For more information, see Viewing the File in Your Web Browser
in the Filr 3: User Access Guide.
When viewing a file from the Filr mobile app and clicking Generate Online Preview
When you add a user to your LDAP directory, the user’s Home directory in Filr is not displayed immediately after running the LDAP synchronization.
You must wait for the trustee cache information to be refreshed on the file system before Home directory information is displayed in Filr. (The default rights cache refresh interval is every 5 minutes. You can modify this interval as described in Just-in-Time Synchronization
in the Filr 3: Administrative UI Reference.)
If your users have aliases associated with their user account in the LDAP directory, the alias is not synchronized to Filr during the LDAP synchronization. This means that users are not able to log in to Filr with their alias.
Filr allows you to change the default application that is used for editing files (as described in Changing the Default Editor Settings for a Single File Type
in the Filr 3: User Access Guide). However, you cannot use text editors such as Notepad or Wordpad as the default document editor for editing files because these applications do not support WebDAV.
If your Filr deployment includes a Microsoft SQL database, and if your network fails, you must restart all of the appliances in your Filr deployment to restore Filr services.
XML is not included as a default supported format for HTML viewing, but it can be added (see HTML Rendering of Non-HTML Files
in the Filr 3: Administrative UI Reference).
If you choose to add XML as a supported HTML-viewing format, be aware that some XML files do not open and will not be displayed in the web client.
In the configuration wizard when configuring a large deployment, the database name that you specify in the Database Name field cannot begin with a number when using a Microsoft SQL database. If the name does begin with a number, the configuration wizard does not allow the database to be created. For example, 1Filr is not accepted, but Filr1 is.
For a list of issues related to the Filr desktop application (for Windows and Mac clients), see the Filr Desktop Application ReleaseNotes.
For information about how to install and run the Filr mobile app, see the Filr Mobile App Quick Start.
Following are known issues in the Filr mobile app:
Accessing a file from the Downloads area from the mobile app does not trigger Just-in-Time synchronization.
If you have configured only Just-in-Time synchronization (scheduled synchronization is not enabled), files that are located in a Net Folder that have been added to the Downloads area on the mobile app are not automatically updated with changes made from the file system. The file is updated in the Downloads area only after a user uses one of the Filr clients to browse to the Net Folder that contains the file.
If users have added files from their Home folder to the Downloads area on the mobile app, and then the Filr administrator enables personal storage (as described in Enabling Personal Storage for Users and Groups
in the in the Filr 3: Administrative UI Reference), files from the Home folder are removed from the Downloads area on the mobile app.
If users have added files from a Net Folder to the Downloads area on the mobile app, and then the file is renamed or moved on the OES or Windows file system, the file is removed from the Downloads area on the mobile app.
If Filr is configured with a self-signed certificate, Windows Phone users see an authentication error when attempting to access Filr by using the Windows Filr mobile app.
You can resolve this issue in either of the following ways:
(Recommended) Configure Filr to use an official certificate in the Filr 3: Maintenance Best Practices Guide.
Send a copy of the self-signed certificate via email to each Windows Phone in your system. Users must then open the email and click the certificate attachment. After users click the attachment, the self-signed certificate is installed on the phone. When the certificate is installed, users are able to log in to the Filr app without seeing the authentication error.
When specifying an email address in the Share dialog, if the email address contains extended characters (such as an apostrophe), an error message is displayed indicating that the item cannot be shared with the specified user.
Files that have been password-protected in the application where they were created cannot be viewed in Filr.
For a list of customer- and partner-reported bugs that were logged against Filr 2.0 and fixed in Filr 3.0, see the Filr 3.0 Bug List. For more information about each bug, log in to your account and look up the bug numbers in Bugzilla.
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