There are various locations in Slidebank in which users can see options to download files. Some of these are outlined below.
Occasionally, a user might find that they cannot download files as they might expect. On these occasions the option to download would not be visible, which is normally an issue to do with the Abilities that are turned on/off for that user.
This article explains which Abilities to investigate when options to download files are unexpectedly missing.
Ways of Downloading Files
Downloading files from the Content Library
There are several icons a user can click to download a file, starting with two on the file listing in the Content Library:
Click on the cloud download symbol
Click the menu (the three dots) and select 'Download file(s)'
Clicking these may provide a choice of file types as shown below, for example as a PowerPoint file or as a PDF. You may also see an option to 'Checkout and download [the file] for editing' if you are the file owner, or if you've been given the owner's permission to update that particular file.
The options seen here will depend on the user's file ownership/permissions and site-wide Abilities.
Clicking on one of the file types will prompt Slidebank to download the file into the user's browser.
For more information on Checkout and Download for Editing, see the article on Updating files.
Downloading from the Main Windows
You can also download files from two places on the main window:
1) Above the slide tiles in the slide viewer - this will download the file currently selected in the Content Library
2) The slides in your slide selection window at the bottom. These may be a mix of slides from different origins. Clicking download here will turn the slide selection into a new PowerPoint file or PDF file, which will be downloaded into the browser.
Remember, you won't receive automatic content updates for your slide selection unless you also save it as a new Virtual presentation into the content library before or after you download.
For more information on Virtual presentations, see the article on Types of Presentation File in Slidebank.
Why can't my users see the Download buttons?
If your users don't see the above Download buttons it may be that:
One or both of the Abilities to download files as PPTX or PDFs are switched off for them
Their Download without Saving Ability has been switched off, forcing users to save their slide selections into the Content Library before they can download them as new files
Their Ability to Download from Personal Folder only has been switched on, meaning they can only download files stored in their Personal Folder and not the shared Content Library
Note: It is always worth checking through the Abilities, ideally to make sure that all the users in a particular Role have the same Abilities. If the Abilities are the same for everyone throughout a Role, any newly added user will immediately be granted the same Abilities as the existing users in the same Role.
If a user belongs to more than one Role and they have conflicting Abilities between those Roles, Slidebank will err on the side of caution and restrict the Ability in question from the user. It can therefore be worth checking the Abilities for each Role a user belongs to if issues with downloads persist.
You can read here about moving a user from one Role to another, and adding users to multiple Roles.
Checking User Abilities
Abilities for the entire site can be found under Setup > User Abilities.
You can also check and amend the abilities for a specific user by bringing up their user profile under Setup > Manage Users. This will show you a list of abilities for that user, allowing you to toggle them on and off directly.
Note: If the user belongs to more than one Role you should instead investigate issues at site-wide level under User Abilities to explore any potential Role conflicts.
Interpreting Ability Settings
In the User Abilities part of the site you'll find a list of User Abilities that you can turn on/off in Slidebank. These are grouped together by theme, such as Downloading. This is where you should focus to explore potential issues with Downloads.
Mixed Abilities within a Department / Role
To understand who can perform / not perform a particular ability you'll need to look at the check box next to the Departments / Roles / Users that show up when you click on an ability in the list.
The check boxes will show up in one of the following states:
Checked - the ability is turned on for everyone in that grouping, e.g. the Marketing Department
Unchecked - the ability is turned off for everyone in that grouping, e.g. the Marketing Department
With a horizontal line - there are mixed abilities for the Roles or Users within the group
In this example, with every box checked, all the Marketing Managers can download presentations as PDFs. In fact, everyone nested under the entire Marketing and Sales Departments can download as PDF.
Whereas, in the example below there is a horizontal line next to the Marketing Department. That means there are mixed abilities within the Department - the ability is switched off either for one of the Roles in its entirety, or for some of the Users within one of those Roles.
In this case we can see that Marcus Manager cannot Download files as PDF.
Having mixed Abilities within a Role can make Slidebank slightly more complicated to manage, and can give rise to unexpected user experiences. This happens most often where a user belongs to more than one Role and there are conflicting abilities between those Roles.
The simplest way to use Slidebank is to group users into Roles where the abilities sets are identical for each user. That has the added benefit of new users automatically adopting the abilities of the Role they are added into, without the Admin having to set the Abilities from scratch when they add new users.
The same can be said for sharing content - if files are shared with a whole Department / Role rather than specific users, any new users joining the Roles will automatically be able to see the content in Slidebank.
We hope that some minor tweaks to your Ability settings will overcome the issue of users not being able to download files. If the issue persists, do get in touch with us via Intercom and we'll be happy to assist.