Complete freedom in work with Bitrix24.Disk for extraneous users

You need to work with files on a virtual disk everywhere and always. There are thousands of examples of business processes or tasks that require new files to be created, renamed, edited, copied or deleted. Some services today, such as Google Drive, offer great opportunities, but only to authorized users. Is it possible to program Bitrix24 to do the same or even more? The answer is yes, and that's what the developers of Avivi did.

Customer needs and staffing restrictions

One of our customers needed the special capabilities of their Bitrix24 Portal to give full access to file management to any user, even those who do not have Bitrix24 and never will. We are not interested in the reasons for this wish at the moment, because every business is unique. But the implementation of the task was another challenge for the team of our professionals.

Bitrix24 already has significant achievements in the work of Bitrix24.Disk. For employees of one Portal there are really wide opportunities: collaboration with content, built-in browsers and office programs, as well as the ability to configure access rights, even for each individual user. There is something for external users, namely public access, providing special links. They can be limited in time or password protected, but the point is simple: anyone can follow a public link and see a single file on disk or the contents of an entire folder.

However, the maximum feature is downloading files, which is not enough for our customers. That's why the Avivi team appreciated and implemented additional functionality.

Extensive opportunities to work with Bitrix24.Disk

To fulfill this task, our specialists needed to customize the disk.external.link component of the on-premise Bitrix24 edition. Here is everything you need to create the necessary solution with the help of new code. About 20 hours of specialists' work were spent on analysis and implementation. It is worth noting that the component is not part of the Bitrix24 kernel, so even after the next system update, the new functionality from Avivi will not be lost.

On the user side, in fact, little has changed. Compared to the usual public links, only one additional chatbox “can external edit” has been added to the window of their creation. However, its value is invaluable, as the tick in this place will allow anyone with a link to do anything with the content: view, copy, rename, download and even delete.

We`ld like to note that editing files or establishing collaboration with them was not part of the technical task. So third-party users can view images of all types, see previews of documents, but to edit, say, text using Bitrix24.Documents are not available to them. But if the next customer of customization services needs this — our specialists are happy to implement such a task.