I am trying to set up Tropy to allow multiple people to access the project and work on it. I understand that synchronous collaboration is not currently available (hoping that might come out soon?), but I want to make sure I understand how to set up Tropy properly. I believe it should be possible to put all the images, templates, and project files (.tpy) onto an external hard drive that people can access/edit from various different computers. If it is set up this way, do I still need to make a portable project?
I was also curious if there was a way to restrict user capabilities on projects, for instance, stopping users from editing the template, deleting catalogs, etc., but still allowing them to add photos and input metadata. I know there is a way to make projects read-only, but is there any way to only partially restrict it?
Lastly, is there a way to password-protect project files or increase security?
I would love to use Tropy for this, but I just want to make sure I know how to set it up correctly before I jump into it!
Yes, if you save a project file on an external drive you can access it from any computer you later connect the drive to. If you use the new standard project type, you don’t need to do anything else. Any photo you add will automatically be copied into the project folder (on the external drive).
If you use an advanced project, be sure to move all your photos to the external drive before importing them (for advanced projects, the files are not copied on import and Tropy will use them in their original location). Furthermore, before you start, set the project to use relative paths in the project settings (this way, Tropy will find the files on the external drive regardless of the operating system or how the drive is connected to your computer).
There’s no way to restrict what you can change in a project at a more granular level other than marking the whole project file as read-only. One good way to protect the file is to make a backup copy of the .tpy file at regular intervals.
You can’t password protect the project file individually, but you can definitely encrypt the external drive / partition where the project is stored. This way, you’ll have to unlock the drive when you connect it to your computer; once unlocked Tropy can then access the project as usual.