As an instructor, and even sometimes as a student, you'll need to upload multiple files or even whole folders into Resources in Sakai. Sakai has a built-in tool that will allow us to do that fairly easily, called WebDAV. The WebDAV protocol, standing for Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning, is a tool that allows us to remote to a server and, with the right credentials, create, remove, and edit files and folders. WebDAV may also work to upload files when the Sakai website won't. 

To use WebDAV, go to Resources in your course or your "Home" area. The instructions are at the top; "Transfer Files."  Using the tool is fairly straightforward, but they don't do a very good job of explaining exactly what you're doing. You are going to open two file folder windows that you can use to drag and drop files and folders between. You can upload files and folders into your course or Home, and you can download files and folders onto your hard drive or into your OneDrive, if you have that linked. 

In a nutshell:

  1. Go to your course or Home Resources
  2. Go to "Transfer Files" in the top menu bar
  3. Copy the URL under "Step 1." It will look something like "https://cle.nps.edu/dav/ef882cc9-887f-4e4b-81dc-2f03905ed740"
  4. In Step 2, click on your operating system. The default is Windows. <Tsk>
  5. You're going to "Map a network drive." If you've only ever heard of this trick, you're going to get to do it now! 
  6. Create a link to the server...

For Windows - 

  1. Open File Explorer
  2. Go to "This PC"
  3. Click on Computer, then Map Network DrivePicture of Windows 8 Mapping Netword Drive Interface
  4. Pick a drive letter that's not being used and paste the URL that you copied in Step 1 in Sakai, and step 3, above. 
  5. Click finish to connect. It will ask you for your username and password, and this is your Sakai and/or NPS username and password.
  6. Open another folder on your desktop to drag and drop freely. 

For Mac - 

  1. Click on the desktop and select Go then Connect to Server...
  2. In the Server Address dialog box, paste the URL you copied
  3. Press the + button to save this path for future use.
  4. Click Connect.
  5. Type in your Sakai and/or NPS username and password and click Connect.
  6. You will now see a window on your screen that represents the resources in your site. You can now drag and drop files into or out of this window and delete files by dragging them to the Trash.

Please note:

1You may find that the files and folders in your course are named differently in WebDAV. What WebDAV sees are the original names. If you ever changed the name of files or folders in Resources, those changes aren't reflected, though the files are correct. The name changes that were processed through Sakai are almost like a veneer that the server doesn't acknowledge.

2. WebDAV doesn't work for everyone in all situations. If you find that it's not working for you, you can also use Cyberduck to transfer files. 

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