QuickStartGuide

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Gladinet Cloud Desktop Quick Start Guide

Installing Gladinet Cloud Desktop

Gladinet Systray menu

Mounting cloud storage

Accessing the mounted Virtual Directory

Scheduling upload/download tasks

Monitoring tasks with Task Manager

Configuring Backups

Enabling Web Applications

Safe Cards and Safe Card Manager

1. Installing Gladinet Cloud Desktop

   Follow the installation notes to install GCD

2. Gladinet Systray menu

   
   After Gladinet is started, the Gladinet icon will appear in the systray. Clicking the icon pops up the Gladinet systray menu which provides access to all the functions in Gladinet. The menu items with the 'PRO' icon are only enabled for Professional Edition.

3. Mounting cloud storage

   

   • To access your cloud storage, you need to mount it as a local folder. Mounted local folders are called Virtual Directories. They are aggregated on a central mapped drive, 'My Gladinet Drive'.

   • To mount cloud storage, right click on the systray icon to open the systray menu, go to the 'My Virtual Directories'->'Mount Storage as Virtual Directory' menu and select the type of storage you want to mount. The mounting window will appear. Enter your login credentials as necessary.

   • For Google related services, if you have a gmail account, you can type in your account name, without the '@gmail.com'. Otherwise, please use the full email address (eg.tom@abc.com). Note that Gladinet does not support 'Google Apps' accounts yet.

   • For other services, please authenticate with the same credentials that you use when logging in to your cloud service.
   • While mounting, you may notice the option to open the newly mounted virtual directory immediately after it has been successful mounted. If you prefer otherwise, please uncheck 'Open newly added virtual directory'.

4. Accessing the mounted Virtual Directory

   

   • The Gladinet systray menu provides a shortcut to 'My Gladinet Drive'. Selecting it from the top of the menu will open a Windows Explorer window and display the mapped Gladinet Drive. All mounted virtual directories are aggregated there and can be accessed as if they were local folders. The Gladinet Side Panel will also be displayed in the explorer bar.

5. Scheduling upload/download tasks

   

   • Once you have mounted virtual directories, uploads and downloads may be initiated by simply dragging files and folders to or from a virtual directory. Doing this launches a window which allows you to select how the task will be executed. In the Starter Edition, you will only be allowed to start the task immediately in the background. In the Professional edition, the choices are added which allow the task to be run at a later time, run as a recurring task, or run as a backup tasks where incremental changes are uploaded once the initial upload has been completed.

6. Monitoring tasks with Task Manager

   

   • Task Manager can be launched from Gladinet Systray menu. The task manager can be used to pause/resume, delete, and reschedule tasks. It also allows you to track the progress of individual tasks.

7. Configuring Backups

   

   • Gladinet supports Many-to-Many Backup. You can backup multiple local folders to multiple cloud storages Simultaneously. For example, you can select one folder on C drive and another on D. Setup a backup set to upload them to your Amazon S3 and WebDav virtual directories. Or to 3 different Skydrive accounts, to be safe. Once the task is setup, Gladinet will upload the two folders to your targets. It will keep monitoring the source folders. If there is any new file added or existing file updated, it will upload the file to the cloud accordingly.

8. Enabling Web Applications

   

   • Gladinet supports directly working on local files with applicable web applications. For example, for your local .doc file, you can use the ThinkFree online suite to view it, or modify it directly using Google Docs. There is no need to upload the file to online storage, modify it and download it back. All are taken care of by Gladinet.

   • To use the web application to work on a local file, you need to enable the application. From the systray menu, select 'My Applications'->'Enable/Configure Applications' and then select the application you want to use.

   • If the web application can work on a local file, when you right click the file on your local folder, you should see the cloud application available under 'Open with My Web Applications' after the application has been enabled.
   • If the web application can be launched stand-alone, the application will appear at the top of the 'My Applications' menu. Selecting the application should automatically launch it. There is no need to login, since the login credentials are already stored in the safe card.

     

9. Safe Cards and the Safe Card Manager

   

   • When mounting a virtual directory or enabling a web application, the required login credentials will be stored as Safe Cards, which can be viewed from the Safe Card Manager. For security reasons, when a password field is encrypted, it will never be displayed when accessing Safe Card.