Transfer Files to Another User When They Leave the Instance (or company)

[MTRichards]

Transfer Files after departure – As an admin, I want to be able to log in to ownCloud and transfer a user’s files from one account to another so that files (shared and not shared) are not lost when a user is deleted
Acceptance Criteria:

• Admin can log in and select a user in the user management panel
• Admin can select a new option “transfer files” This brings up a popover menu (or page) that described the user’s files:
  • Total number and size of files owned by the user
  • Total number and size of files shared by the user
  • Total number and size of files received by the user
• Admin can select a checkox and choose “transfer files to” and/or “transfer shares to” – admin can perform a type ahead filter search of a user on the system
• Admin selects the user and a button says initiate transfer “Depending on the number of files, this may take some time”
• A visual feedback shows that this operation is taking place
• The files are moved into a new root files directory for the recipient of the transfer labeled with a folder showing the username of the files. File cache entries are updated, and all existing share recipients are retained with no change, except the ownership now says “shared by the new user”
• At no time can the admin actually see the files, just the summary and initiating the tranfer
• Complete logging of the file inspection and transfer is recorded
• If the operation fails to complete, the admin gets a warning.

[PVince81]

and also make sure this runs in a background job, not as a single PHP request which might time out...

[oparoz]

What about files shared with the user? What happens to that?

[godspeed20]

I have a similar need so will add in here. @oparoz I don't think files shared with that person matter, it's more about making sure files owned or shared from that person are not lost and can be taken over by the new owner.

I also think this issue is pretty similar to #13355 so they might end up being linked

[oparoz]

@godspeed20 - Well that user will have to write down the list of all shares and contact all people so that he can add the shares again. Not a great experience.

[godspeed20]

@oparoz do you mean the person who is being deleted? Maybe my use case is different to the OP but my concern is solely around losing owned files, not files shared to the departing owner. If someone else takes over a project I'd like them to take over ownership too, so if the leaving person just leaves the new person has to get access to their files, download them all, get the old user removed, then create a new folder, re-share all the data, re-add all the people who had access to it before (minus the person who left) and then continue. That seems like a pretty bad process, worse than what you've mentioned.

Ideally on a shared item basis (file or folder) the user or admin can simply migrate it to another user, keeping all shares of that particular shared item as is. This would only apply to items they own - anything shared to the departing owner are the responsibility of whoever shared that item to start with so that's a different person's issue to resolve (and you'd hope the group share would ideally take care of that anyway most of the time). does that make sense?

Hmm actually now I think of it I see where you were coming from, think I'm thinking of a different use case, you're point stands for this particular case, sorry...

[MTRichards]

Files shared from definitely matter, shared to... Can go either way, which is why I would add it and let the situation decide.

Matt Richards
VP Products & Markets
ownCloud, inc.

On Sep 19, 2015, at 8:21 AM, godspeed20 notifications@github.com wrote:

I have a similar need so will add in here. @oparoz I don't think files shared with that person matter, it's more about making sure files owned or shared from that person are not lost and can be taken over by the new owner.

I also think this issue is pretty similar to #13355 so they might end up being linked

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[DeepDiver1975]

@schiesbn what do we need to take care of in case of encryption being enabled?

Is is possible at all?

@MTRichards can we exclude encryption from this operation?

Worst case the admin has to decrypt the users files first, move them to the new user and encrypt them as the final step

[MTRichards]

If we do this in two steps, first without encryption and then later with (if the recover key is enabled) I think that would be ok. Also it could take a very long time to make such a migration with encryption enabled, which is natural based on the situation.

[DeepDiver1975]

as discussed with @MTRichards For the scope of 9.0 we will implement this as an occ command

./occ files:transfer-ownership user1 user2

[PVince81]

• should the target user name be the user id (ugly LDAP is sometimes) or display name ?
• corner case: what if the target folder already exists ? make sure to append "(2)" maybe

[DeepDiver1975]

We should go for the user id - even if the LDAP guid is ugly - better be save then sorry.

[DeepDiver1975]

corner case: what if the target folder already exists ? make sure to append "(2)" maybe

@MTRichards I'd create a target folder where all files will be moved in