UPCOMING WEBINAR: Run Research Your Way With AI Skills Displayr's Cloud Drive can be used for saving a variety of files. These files include images, company logos, client data sets, custom fonts, and page and visualization templates. In addition, you can access a range of features like Data Stacking, Merging (Combine By Case/Variable), and data exporting/publishing. You can even share raw data files or R tables and charts between your company documents.
This article will cover how to save, share, and import files to and from the Displayr Cloud Drive.
- Method - Accessing the Displayr Cloud Drive
- Method - Organizing the Displayr Cloud Drive and setting permissions
- Method - Saving to the Displayr Cloud Drive
- Method - Importing data from the Displayr Cloud Drive
- Referencing a file from the Displayr Cloud Drive in Properties
- Method - Downloading a file from the Displayr Cloud Drive
- Method - Sharing and unsharing a file from the Displayr Cloud Drive
- Method - Sharing R objects across documents
- Method - Sharing templates across documents
Requirements
- A professional or Enterprise Displayr license.
- Familiarity with User Group permissions. See How to Manage User Groups and Permissions in Displayr for more details.
Method
Accessing the Displayr Cloud Drive
1. From your account, you can access the cloud drive at the top right of the page via the Initials icon > Displayr Cloud Drive.
2. You will be presented with a list of all the files that are stored within your company's cloud drive.
This includes auditable information such as when it was last modified and which company document read it in. You can also work with files from the Displayr Cloud within custom R code: How to Access the Displayr Cloud Drive Using R.
Organizing the Displayr Cloud Drive and setting permissions
By default, folders are mirrored in your Documents view and the Displayr Cloud Drive. This means if you create a folder in either location, it will appear in both, and deleting the folder on your Documents page will also delete it from the Cloud Drive. Additionally, folder-based permissions apply to both locations.
1. You can add a folder by clicking the + New Folder button at the top.
2. To set folder-level permissions, Administrators can hover over the appropriate folder and click the 3 dots symbol on the far right, then Settings:
- By default, Inherit access from the parent folder will be selected which will automatically apply the permission settings from that folder.
- Use account settings is used when you want the folder to follow your default Account Settings page.
- Configure access to this folder is used when you wish to set which user groups can access this folder for editing and viewing or viewing only.
See How to Manage User Groups and Permissions in Displayr for more details. Remember, any changes to these settings will impact any documents stored within the corresponding folder on your Documents page.
When using folder-based permissions on Displayr Cloud Drive files, the following needs to be considered:
- By default, files stored directly within the Home folder will follow your Account Settings permissions.
- If you have folders in your Displayr Cloud Drive, you will only see those you have access to and any parent folders that contain them.
- Permissions can only be set on folders in the Cloud Drive and not individual files. This means, in order to have configured access, you will need to move any files into an appropriate folder with the necessary permissions.
- Automated built-in processes and those that use the Schedules feature to load, read, or write files to and from the Cloud Drive require the necessary permissions for the document in order to access any Cloud Drive files. This means any file added to a folder that has configured permissions can only be imported into or updated in a document where every user group that can edit this document also has Edit access to the folder containing the Cloud Drive files. These files include:
- Data sets loaded from the Cloud Drive.
- flipAPI R calculations (e.g., QLoadData, QSaveData) which reference Cloud Drive files.
- Combining and stacking data sets.
- Custom fonts and crtx template files.
- All other loaded files stored within a folder with configured access require the user to be a member of a user group that has access to the folder in which they are stored. These files include:
- QScripts/RScripts
- Templates, e.g., a visualization or variable set template
- Images
- QCodes file
Saving to the Displayr Cloud Drive
1. In your document, click on the Initials icon > Displayr Cloud Drive.
2. If you wish to save your file to a folder, navigate to the appropriate folder.
3. Click the + Upload button and select the files you wish to upload. In this example, we have uploaded a logo and a data set that we want to use in our document.
4. Alternatively, if you already have your data sets loaded in your document, you can also add these individually via Share > Export Data > To Displayr Cloud Drive as SPSS File (.SAV) or To Displayr Cloud Drive as CSV File (.CSV), see How to Publish Data to the Displayr Cloud Drive.
Importing data from the Displayr Cloud Drive
1. Click Data Source > Plus (+) > Displayr Cloud Drive and choose the desired file. If your file is stored within a folder, you will need to additionally click through the appropriate folder menus to find your file.
2. [OPTIONAL] Set the desired update frequency using a schedule.
If you wish to manually update the data ahead of the scheduled refresh, simply click the data set in the Data Sources tree, and from Properties , click Refresh.
Note: If you move a file from the Displayr Cloud Drive into a different folder, this method will fail to update the next time new data is fetched, as it is no longer in the same location. You will instead need to point it to the new location to restart the automated process.
Referencing a file from the Displayr Cloud Drive in Properties
With some built-in outputs, you may need to reference a file in your cloud drive in Properties . This includes when merging data, i.e., Combine by Case/Combine by Variable, and stacking data. You will need to specify the full path to the file in Properties with folders separated by one backslash \ , and the path is case-sensitive. So if our .sav file from above was in a folder, the path would be: Example folder\Demo.sav
Downloading a file from the Displayr Cloud Drive
Click the name of the file you wish to download, and it will download directly via your browser.
Sharing and unsharing a file from the Displayr Cloud Drive
1. Select the file you want to share.
2. On the extreme right, click the 3 dots symbol to view the share/unshare buttons.
3. Click Share to share the file.
Once the file has been shared, the URL is displayed where the file can be accessed.
4. OPTIONAL: This can be copied and then pasted if needed elsewhere.
5. Click OK.
If you no longer want the file to be publicly available, you can click Unshare. The following message will then be displayed:
Note, if you decide to share the file again, the link will be different from what it was before.
Sharing R objects across documents
It is possible to share tables or visualizations created via Visualization with other documents using the Cloud Drive.
1. Select your table or visualization.
2. Go to Share > Export Objects > Export Object to Displayr Cloud Drive.
3. Name your file and then press Export.
Note that tables are saved as R files (*.rds) and visualizations are saved as R-rendered HTML widgets without the underlying data included. This means they can't be modified once imported via the usual built-in methods.
The way to import these objects into another document is to use some R code:
1. In the toolbar, click Calculation > Custom Code.
2. Click on the page where you wish to place the calculation.
3. Enter the code below, but substituting file_name with the actual name of the file:
library(flipAPI)
QLoadData('file_name.rds')4. Press Calculate.
5. [OPTIONAL] While the tables and visualizations will import 'as is', as they import as an R calculation, you are still able to edit the code further and make modifications there.
See How to Access the Displayr Cloud Drive Using R for further details.
Sharing templates across documents
Users can save and load templates to and from the Cloud Drive for pages, multiple items within a page, visualizations, and custom analysis tools. See below for details:
How to Create and Apply a Visualization Template
How to Create and Apply a Page Template
How to Share a Custom Analysis Tool Between Documents
Next
How to Access the Displayr Cloud Drive Using R
Create a Separate Data Preparation Document
How to Publish Data to the Displayr Cloud Drive
How to Use a PowerPoint Chart Style Template in a Displayr Export