On-demand Drag n Drop zones

I love Central Desktop’s “Drag n Drop” upload capability. It is probably the one feature I use more than any other on a consistent basis. If I need to upload a batch of files to a folder, it never fails me. But the Drag n Drop is only good for uploading files in bulk, right? Not neceissarily, if you know how to tweak a URL or two, you can upload files quickly and easily to any folder you specify and even tag them at the same time.

I have two methods, today, for getting more out of CD’s Drag n Drop upload tool. Both are designed to be used in repeatable circumstances, and thus aren’t appropriate for one-off tasks. (A little disclaimer here, I work almost exclusively in Firefox on a Windows XP box.  I have a MacBook for personal use, and most of the techniques I describe on this site work on both. Your mileage may vary from OS to OS.)

First up, the sidebar upload box. One great thing about the DND zone is that you don’t need the popup window to upload. You can embed the zone in a wiki page, open it up in a new tab in your browser, or summon it as a bookmark in Firefox’s sidebar. But to get there, we need to learn a little bit more about the DND zone and how it works.

(A little disclaimer here, I work almost exclusively in Firefox on a Windows XP box.  I have a MacBook for personal use, and most of the techniques I describe on this site work on both. Your mileage may vary from OS to OS.)

Each DND zone has its own URL. Here’s a sample: https://YOURDOMAIN.centraldesktop.com/spaces/javaupload?upload_type=std&spid=93938&spacename=AlanSandbox&cat=719544&dbid=&catname=Jones%20Account&tag=  To get this URL I just summoned a DND zone from the workspace and folder I wanted to upload to, then double clicked on the padlock icon at the bottom of the new window. Then, by navigating to the “General” tab, I can see my URL.

Where to find DND zone URL

Now let’s parse this URL.

https://YOURDOMAIN.centraldesktop.com/spaces/javaupload?upload_type=std  This starts off the URL, nothing to tweak here.

&spid=93938&spacename=AlanSandbox  Here’s your workspace id (spid) and workspace name. The workspace name parameter only affects the workspace name as displayed in the DND zone

&dbid=  Database ID. (We’ll look at this later)

&catname=Jones%20Account  Folder name (be sure to use the “%20″ in lieu of spaces.)

&tag=  Yes, you can use the DND zone to upload with tags. (I love this part.)

So now what do we do with all of this? Here’s how I use it. Every week I have several reports to upload for each account. And each report has to be tagged with a certain tag. Now I can go to the Jones Account folder, hit the “Single File Upload” link, navigate to the file I need, select it, choose my tags (double check that I have the right tag) and then upload it. Or, I can use a custom URL to create a bookmark that loads in the sidebar. I don’t even have to be in the Jones Account folder to upload the file.

So I just add in the appropriate tags and get “https://YOURDOMAIN.centraldesktop.com/spaces/javaupload?upload_type=std&spid=93938&spacename=AlanSandbox&cat=719544&dbid=&catname=Jones%20Account&tag=TPSReports” Paste that URL into a new bookmark, and set it to open in the sidebar.

The finished product

The second technique is for database records. I’m always uploading files to database records, and the easiest way to for me to upload files is via the DND zone. So to save a few minutes each time, I had a new file to upload to a database.

I employed the technique above, and combined it with a previous tip on creating Firefox Quick Search Shortcuts, and have put them together to save a ton of time.

First, I navigated to a database record in the database I want to use. Any record will do, we’re more interested in things like database id and workspace id right now.

https://YOURDOMAIN.centraldesktop.com/spaces/javaupload?upload_type=db&spid=93938&spacename=AlanSandbox&cat=-4&dbid=93938_9686884qkol8s98ap0kzg96kvs9ifbpg|2|9686884qkol8s98ap0kzg96kvs9ifbpg&catname=Attachments&tag=

Again, we’ll add any tags we want, and, if we want, populate the catname parameter with a folder name.

The number between the pipes (|) is the record ID. We want this to be our input parameter, so we use Firefox’s search shortcut %s in place of the record ID, and we end up with a URL that looks like: https://YOURDOMAIN.centraldesktop.com/spaces/javaupload?upload_type=db&spid=93938&spacename=AlanSandbox&cat=-4&dbid=93938_9686884qkol8s98ap0kzg96kvs9ifbpg|%s|9686884qkol8s98ap0kzg96kvs9ifbpg&catname=Attachments&tag=tpscoversheet

Now we just use that newly created URL to create a Quick Search with a keyword of your choice, like “tpscvr”

To use this trick, just type in tpscvr <record id> into the address bar, and a DND zone will open up for you.