The Problem

 Although content management systems simplify the task of creating and editing content using web forms,  a web interface is not ideal for managing multiple files or pages simultaneously. Often the drag-and-drop or cut-and-paste method of moving files can be easier and more time-efficient  than relying on  browser-based upload forms.

What It Does & What It Doesn't

 Enfold Desktop for Windows makes it possible for Plone users to use drag-and-drop to move files (images, HTML files, PDFs, etc) into Plone using drag-and-drop or the Windows clipboard. Enfold Desktop provides a view of a Plone site as though it existed on the user's local file system.  It uses webdav technology to synchronize local content with server content. Here are some uses:

• Copy a large number of images into a Plone folder and create a gallery instantly
• Keep items "locked" from editing by other users while you edit it on your local machine
• Make it easy for a reviewer to review and approve lots of items quickly
• Cut-and-paste files directly into a Plone folder
• Edit a Plone page within Enfold Desktop using the editor of your choice
• Select Multiple Files and/or Directories and Publish Simultaneously
• Edit Metadata using the Properties tab in Windows
• Lets you view workflow state of multiple objects simultaneously.

Background

Many notable members from  the Python and Plone community have written code for  the Enfold Desktop tool over the years.  That includes Andy McKay (author of the Definitive Guide to Plone), Alan Runyan (Plone co-founder), Sidnei Da Silva (technical lead at Enfold and frequent presenter at Plone conferences), and Mark Hammond (primary maintainer of the pywin32 package, author of the Oreilly book Python programming on Win32 and keynote speaker at Pycon 2008).  In other words, these are people intimately acquainted with Plone and Python in a Windows environment.

Thousands of hours of engineering and testing have gone into developing Enfold Desktop, and Enfold Systems plans to continue this development effort for the foreseeable future.  Version 4.5 (which was released in October 2008) contains full support for 32 bit and 64 bit Vista.

Although   other webdav clients can be used with Plone , Enfold Desktop is the only one which recognizes Plone extensions and supports the built-in Plone content types.  

It's free; what's the catch?

In the past  Enfold Desktop was sold to individuals as a commercial product.  In early 2008, Enfold Systems revised the terms so that individuals could download Enfold Desktop on their Windows machine for free.  Enfold Desktop was not and is not an open source product; in fact at the moment, companies and organizations can still purchase site licenses (which include paid support plans).

The free version is identical to the commercial version (with the exception of the paid support).  The free version includes a discreet ad at  the bottom of the screen when running desktop.  The ad is embedded inside  a small black stripe at the bottom of the screen when you load Enfold Desktop in Windows Explorer (see illustration below).  The text of the ad is for  Enfold Systems or a Plone-related event; no blinking or animation or anything distracting. In fact, although I work for Enfold Systems and could easily  obtain a license, in fact, the ad  has never bothered me enough to request one.

Users of the free version can still obtain help from  the Enfold Desktop community mailing list  or  the extensive online documentation ... and of course this tutorial.

Requirements &  OS Support

• Works with any Plone installation if the free Server Component bundle of Plone products has been installed (see how to download and install the Server Component product bundle onto your Plone site).  If you have the Enfold Server (a commercial version of Plone for Windows), Server Component has already been installed. Note: Enfold recommends that Plone sites running older versions of Server Component  upgrade to the latest version.
  
•  Plone site needs to be based on Plone 2x or above. 
  
•  Windows version supported: Windows 2000, Windows XP (all server packs), Windows 2003. It will work on Windows NT Service Pack 6, Windows 98 and ME, but these platforms have not been tested.
•  Vista Support:  The 4.5 Release (made in October 2008)  officially supports Vista 32 bit and 64 bit.  The Vista versions have slight interface differences from previous versions. For example, in 64 bit Vista, Enfold Desktop can only be launched from the Start menu (unlike the version for XP, where Enfold Desktop appeared as a virtual drive under My Computer). See the topic Enfold Desktop  and Windows Vista on the Enfoldsystems website.
•  Browser Support: Generally, all are supported, but initially you may need to tell the browser to associate the plone_desktop_config.cmd with the PLONECMD file type in Windows. (Most of the time, this will work automatically).
  

Now we will take a quick runthrough of  Enfold Desktop in action.  The two sections which follow will cover the tasks mentioned here in more detail. If you are unclear about any of the terminology, check the Enfold Desktop glossary.

Demo

If you want, you can visit a  2 minute animated screencast about editing documents with Enfold Desktop. (It uses a previous version, but is still relevant).

When you install Enfold Desktop, you can install an online demo to try it out. URL is http://us.demo.enfoldsystems.com/Members/demo . User name is is "demo", and password is "12345".

5 Minute Tutorial

Requirements: Read the technical requirements and make sure you have login information (Site URL, username, password). This only works if your Site Administrator has installed the free Server Component on the Plone Server. (Read directions on installing the Server Component on your Plone site).

Install Enfold Desktop from the Enfold website.

Start the program. Start --> Programs --> Enfold Desktop --> Enfold Desktop

After you click on Enfold Desktop, Windows Explorer will open.

Above you can see that Enfold Desktop appears as if it were another drive under your computer. Inside is just a single directory Local and perhaps a demo server.

Add a Session. You won't be able to do anything until you add a session. Click on the Enfold Desktop icon and right-click.

Enter your site URL and a session name. Give the session a meaningful name (Ex: Dick Solomon at PendletonPlonesite). Read more about how to create sessions.

Authentication. Click on the bottom button for Credentials by HTTP Basic Authentication. (Generally, leave Use Integrated Windows Security checked; it doesn't hurt. Do not choose the option for Specify Credentials unless your server is using Windows Single sign-on with Enfold Server. (Your administrator would know this).

Now you have configured your session. You will see a new icon for your session on the right side, along with your session name.

But wait! It says disconnected. Connect to your session by double-clicking the session icon. If all goes well, you will see something like this.

Note: depending on permissions for your account, you might not be able to see all the directories or files. That's not unusual. (Read more about troubleshooting session/connection problems).

Make sure you are using Details view in Windows Explorer. When you do this, you will see not only icons inside folders, but also columns listing the Local State, Workflow State and Lock Status.

To go to Details view in Windows Vista, you need to right-click anywhere inside a folder and select View --> Details. (Read more about Vista and Enfold Desktop).

Now we will create and edit a Plone document. (This is equivalent to adding a page content type on the Plone site). Click twice into a directory you have write access to. Right-click anywhere inside the folder and select New Document.

A file icon will appear inside the folder. Right click on it, choose Properties and fill in the metadata. (Read more about editing item name and properties). Press OK.

For this Plone documents we need to enable comments. That will allow logged in users to make add comments after the document has been published.

Now right-click the item and choose the Edit action. It will open up the Plone item in your editor of choice. (Read more about specifying or changing your preferred editor).

Edit it inside your preferred editor or application. (Read some things to know when editing HTML with Enfold Desktop). Save your document in your editor.

To check in the document, switch to the Enfold Desktop folder in Windows Explorer for your directory. Right click on the item and choose Check in.

If this is a new document, the workflow state will say Private (and Local State will no longer say "Local modifications"). Now, move the document to the next state by right-clicking and selecting State-private --> Publish or Submit for Publication. (This varies according to your user permissions). Read more about workflows and changing a  document's state. After it is published, the Locked message will disappear in Explorer for this document and the Local state will be empty.

To check whether something has been published, right-click on the item and choose View in browser. This will open up the item in your default web browser. Hint: It is useful to keep two different kinds of browsers open: one for viewing the doc as a logged in user, and one for viewing it as an anonymous user. (If the document is in Private state, you can still view it in browser even though the document itself will not be public--again, this varies according to the workflow set up by your administrator).

This covers the basic steps for editing a simple document for Enfold Desktop. The steps for uploading files are similar but not identical to that of uploading or moving files with Enfold Desktop. Generally, "files" will not have workflow states, so they will be published only if the parent folder is public; no further action is needed. Read more about uploading files.

What's Next: The next two sections in this tutorial will go over configuration and page editing. Basically we'll go into more detail what we covered superficially in this quick tour.

Requirements

This section covers basic configuration of Enfold Desktop for end users.  We assume two things:

1. The Plone Administrator has already installed the Server Component on the Plone server.
2. The end user (i.e., you) has already installed the Enfold Desktop .exe file on the PC.

Launching Enfold Desktop

First, let's explain something. Enfold Desktop doesn't really launch in the way other PC applications might. Instead, it's a extension of the functionality of Windows Explorer and appears simply as though you had another Explorer window  open. You don't really "start" the program. Instead, you go to a custom view inside Windows Explorer which lets you Enfold Desktop's features specific to Plone.

You start Enfold Desktop in much the same way you would any application. Start --> Enfold Desktop --> Enfold Desktop. That will open up Windows Explorer, with the right panel showing the root of Enfold Desktop (and the sessions you have configured).

In Windows XP and 32 bit Vista, , the Enfold Desktop icon appeared underneath My Computer like another hard drive.  But in 64 bit versions, the only way to start Enfold Desktop is through the Start menu.

When browsing through directories on your local PC, it's best not to switch too often between your local directories and Enfold Desktop too often in the same explorer window; that could impede performance.   Occasionally, if the Plone server is down or has spotty performance, that might cause the  Enfold Desktop window  to hang.  For this reason, you should  keep a separate Explorer window open to use for normal browsing and the other for Enfold Desktop. 

Using your favorite editor

When in File Explorer, Windows opens a file for editing or reading by examining its file extension. For example, if you double-click on a pdf file, the file association menu will determine which application will open (in most cases it will be Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat).

But what happens if you wish to edit a file ending in .html or .htm? What happens if you try to upload a file which doesn't have a file extension at all? Sometimes further steps will be involved (such as configuring the edit action associated with a file type). This is further complicated by the fact that Office 2007 sometimes sets itself as the default editing application for HTML documents.

With some items (such as Plone documents), double-clicking it will cause it to be viewed in the web browser. That is equivalent to the Open action and is not useful for editing.

Here are steps to make sure that HTML files (and by implication the Plone document type) open up inside the correct editing application. You may have to perform one or more of these steps in order to get your file associations to work correctly.

Testing your Settings

1. Find a file on your machine which ends in html.
2. Right click and choose the Edit menu option. (Do not choose the Open option).

The application which opens will be the default application for editing HTML. (It will also be the default application which opens up Plone documents in Enfold Desktop). If this application is what you want for editing, no further action is necessary. To change the default application, follow the steps below.

Note: in Enfold Desktop, clicking on a file twice is essentially calling up the application associated with the Edit action.

Step One: Always Use the Selected Program (XP + Vista)

1. Find a file on your machine which ends in html.
2. Right click and choose Open with, Choose Program. Browse for the editor you want and make sure you have checked the checkbox for Always Use the Selected Action to open this kind of file.
3. After you save, test your settings by right-clicking on the file and selecting Edit

If this method does not produce the desired result, try the next step.

Step Two: Modifying the Edit action for HTML Files  (XP only)

1. Open the Control Panel, Folder Options. Select the file Types tab.

2. Scroll down until you find the HTML file type. Select it.

3. In this tab, choose the Advanced button (under the Change button)

4. Select the Action called Edit by highlighting it. Now press the Edit button on the right side of the dialog. (In other words, you want to edit the Edit action for the HTML file type).

5. Select the Browse button and browse for the application you wish to associate with HTML files.

6. After you save, test your settings by right-clicking on an html and selecting Edit.

Setting up your connection 

The first thing to do after installing Enfold Desktop is to add a session.

A session is a connection to a Plone site. Once you successfully create a session, you will be able to view the website just as if it were a folder in Windows Explorer. More:

• It is not necessary to "connect" to a session; once a successful session has been established, it will persist until you delete it. If the connect status says "Disconnected," that may merely mean that you haven't actually tried to browse through the Plone site by double clicking on the session name.
• Deleting a session does not remove anything on the server. It merely cuts the continuous connection of Enfold Desktop with the Plone site.
• You can set up several sessions, but each session must use a different URL. For example, one session could go to www.mydomain.com and another could go to www.mydomain.com/accounting.
• Sometimes, if the network is down, the session will be unavailable, but the session will be available after this is fixed. (You may need to double-click on the session again to reestablish the connection).
• If you need to reinstall or upgrade Enfold Desktop, session information will be preserved.
• Creating multiple sessions are a convenient way to store logins and even serve as shortcuts for complicated paths

Requirements: To create a session, you must already have your username, password and URL of the Plone site you wish to connect to with Enfold Desktop.

Create a Session using the right-click menu (Method #1)

This is the preferred method for creating an Enfold Desktop session.

Go to: Start > Programs > Enfold Desktop. When you do this, Windows Explorer will open, and in the left panel, you will see the Enfold Desktop icon highlighted in gray. (You will also see a directory called Local and perhaps a directory called Demo underneath that).

Right-click this Enfold Desktop icon. Select the right-click option to Add Session.

At this point you will be prompted for additional information.

• Use Windows Security Integration. This is needed if your Plone site uses Single Sign On with Enfold Server ( Enfold Server implements this feature for  Windows enterprise environments).   Even if your Plone site doesn't have these features, you can still keep this checked. Enfold Desktop will try HTTP Basic Authentication if it fails. However if you know one or the other is being used exclusively on your site, then you can uncheck the appropriate option.

• For example when connecting to us.demo.enfoldsystems.com, you can uncheck "Use Integrated Windows security" because you will be using HTTP Basic Authentication. That is common for many websites.

• If you'd like to change your user name and password,  click on Credentials and enter a new user name and password.

• HTTP Basic Authentication. When you click the Credentials button, you will be prompted for your username and password. If your Plone site has turned on Windows Security Integration you will be logged on automatically through NTLM.

A few things to remember about the username and passwords:

• Username and passwords are both case sensitive.
• The username is your Plone (i.e., Enfold Server) username, not the Windows one unless you are using Windows Security.
• This password is stored on your Enfold Desktop computer's file system.

After you fill out the fields, the icon corresponding to your session will read "Disconnected". To activate the session, click twice on this icon. After you do this, you will be able to browse the Plone site as though it were simply a series of files and directories on the Plone site.

Clicking the View in Desktop Option (Method #2)

Another method to create a session is simply by clicking the View in Enfold Desktop link at the bottom of a web page. (This will appear on the bottom of each page, but in some cases, the System Administrators will hide it or remove it).

Clicking the View in Desktop option can create a new session if you haven't created one before, but it is more useful for reestablishing a session you previously used.

For most people who work with only a single Plone account, this will not be a problem, but if you are switching between different accounts on the same website, it's better to use the first method in order to avoid mix-ups.

What's Next:  How using Enfold Desktop to edit pages compares with using the Kupu visual editor.

Content Types Supported by Enfold Desktop

 Built in file types supported by Enfold Desktop include:

• Plone document (HTML, txt). This is equivalent to the "Page" content type from the Add dropdown list.
• Images (jpg, png)
• Event (.ics files)
• File (.pdf, .doc., .mp3, etc)
• News Item (HTML, txt)

Also: File Templates (a special type supported by Enfold Server) is supported.

Note: Enfold Desktop supports only the built-in content types listed above. If your site has a third party product installed with another content type, this will not be supported. It will not work. Content types other than the built-in ones which come with Plone (i.e., from third party products) will not be editable or even visible in Enfold Desktop.

Editing HTML Files in Enfold Desktop: Caveats

When you edit a Plone document or html file within Enfold Desktop, it's important to understand what is going on.

Enfold Desktop is using Web Dav protocols to sync local content with remote content.

With Plone, there is one more "complicating factor." If you added a typical html file to a Plone folder using Desktop's drag-and-drop feature, the html page will not render exactly as is; on the Plone site, this html will be presented with a Plone skin (i.e. template). This Plone skin will include cascading style sheets (.css files) which will determine the final presentation of the html code.

Plone's default behavior is to strip out certain HTML elements from the Plone document and render it using Plone's template and style sheets. Here are some things you may notice:

• Most of the tags lying above the <body> tag (i.e., <html>, <head>, <body>) will be stripped out. The Plone Administrator can tweak which HTML elements the user can insert into documents by going to Plone Site Setup --> HTML Filtering. Among the Kupu configuration options (Plone Site Setup --> Visual Editor), there is an option to Filter HTML in source view.
• When Enfold Desktop opens up a Plone document/page for editing, the editor will show a fragment of the entire HTML page. Desktop will ignore the general site template and just expose you to the HTML fragment which is editable. Similarly, if you create a new HTML document with Desktop, Plone will strip HTML elements according to its HTML Filtering rules. (Read more about how Plone filters HTML tags).
• If you are using Enfold Desktop to create an html file (i.e., Plone Document) from scratch, it's not necessary to have a valid HTML document which can stand alone on its own (although it won't hurt). Instead, the file can just be a HTML fragment containing content which would normally be contained within an html BODY tag.
• Scripts. Even if they are included in the HEAD section, scripts will be deactivated.
• CSS: inline styles will be rendered normally. However, references in the link section of the HEAD to a separate css page will be rendered inoperative.

Kupu or Enfold Desktop: Which to use?

Kupu is a powerful visual editor and contains lots of configurable options by the site administrator. Among Kupu's most powerful features is the ability to add div elements with specific css classes using the dropdown box.  You can also customize the toolbar buttons and have a variety of image options. (See Olha Pelishok's excellent tutorial on   Content Creation with Kupu and Other WYSIWYG Editors for more information).

Enfold Desktop is an ideal tool to use when you are handling a variety of content items (including binary files).  On the other hand, Kupu is ideal if you are just handling one page at a time and if you need versioning.

 Editing HTML Files with Enfold Desktop

The  Quick Tour with Screenshots covers the typical way you would edit a simple text or HTML file with Enfold Desktop.  Here are other things to know:

• HTML files don't need to end in the .html extension (This is a Plone thing and not really an Enfold Desktop thing).  Here is how Enfold Desktop handles file names, titles and description.
• By default, a Plone File type (such as a .jpg or .mp3 file)  does not have a workflow state (This may depend on your server's particular configuration).  So Enfold Desktop will not normally give you an option  to  Submit for Publication or Publish.  That will be covered in the next section  Uploading & moving multiple files.

Starting an Edit session from your browser

After your System Administrator installs the Server Component on your Plone site, you may notice a link on the bottom of almost every page. (Note: you will not see it unless you are logged on to the website).

The link will say "Edit Using Enfold Desktop."

Changing a Document's State with Enfold Desktop

Resolving Locks

Plone 3.x has built-in support for file locking. That means that more than one user cannot attempt to edit or save the file at the same time.

In fact, Enfold Desktop faces another kind of locking challenge. If you are trying to edit a Plone document locally, how can Plone be informed so another user won't try to edit it at the same time?

First, when you open something in Enfold Desktop for editing, this state will be communicated to the Plone site itself. Another user trying to edit this same file will see this message:

The Plone system administration can configure the default time locks to expire (default is 12 minutes), so if someone forgets to save or check in, a Plone document will still be available.  Some kinds of users have the ability to break Plone locks. This means that locks do not protect you totally from accidents.

Consider this "dangerous" scenario.

Suppose you use Enfold Desktop to edit a file. By the time you get around to checking in the changes, perhaps the lock expired or another user has overridden it. Enfold Desktop is intelligent enough to detect this conflict, but not intelligent enough to figure out a solution. The best it can do is to give you the option to Save (thus overwriting the recent changes) or Cancel without Checking in.

There are two ways to minimize the possibility of losing your edits.

First, after you have saved, you can cancel the check in action (described below). This lets you safeguard your local copy. Perhaps you can use a free third party application like Winmerge to compare the two different versions to see what you could be overwriting. You would need to update (i.e., merge) your local version with the recent remote changes manually.

Second, if the other user was using Kupu to edit the document, the history tab (i.e.,  Plone  versioning)  would let  you do rollbacks of any edits you have made. This still doesn't solve the problem of merging changes between two versions. But at least it gives you a safety net.

Resolving Locks

Some kinds of user accounts have the ability to "break" locks with the Plone Lock Manager. You can access this by clicking on the web page corresponding to the Plone document and clicking the Lock Manager option at the bottom of the page.

Note for Administrators: In Plone go to the folder containing the problem file and click on the lock icon, this will take you to the control panel and show you locks for that folder so you can clean them out. When you do this, the user with the lock has now lost the lock. When they check in a file it will try to lock and determine if the file has changed, if it has the user will be prompted for which action to take.

More about Locking

Locking is the process of locking or unlocking a file. When a file is locked, only you can edit it. When it is unlocked anyone can edit it. Files are automatically locked for you when you check them out. They are also automatically unlocked when you check the file back in to the server.

You need to have permissions on a file to be able to check it out and edit it. If you can't edit a file, you won't be to lock it either. So what can be edited depends upon workflow; for example a file in a visible workflow state can be edited and locked.

If you have locked a file this means that no one else can edit the file. This also means if someone else has locked a file you want to edit, you will have to contact them before you can check it out. For this when you have finished with the file, check it in so the lock can be cleared and others can use it.  The troubleshooting guide contains a list of lock errors and how to resolve them. 

Troubleshooting Problems

For the  most up-to-date troubleshooting information, see the Enfold Desktop troubleshooting guide , the list of known issues  and Enfold Desktop FAQ. 

Sometimes people attribute problems to Enfold Desktop when in fact the problem  may reside with Plone server itself.  

Uploading Multiple Files

(this applies to Plone documents as well as Files)

Perhaps the most useful task which Enfold Desktop can perform is uploading several files all at once. This can be useful even if you do most of your edits with Kupu. If your HTML page is linking to a lot of files, then you could locally create a simple HTML file locally with images in the directory (or a separate directory) and upload everything all at once.   

You can manage content items in the same way you would manage your local files - for example, you may:

• Double-click on a file to edit it.
• Right-click on the item, to view or change properties on the file or folder.
• Drag and drop the object (either between Plone folders, or between Plone and your file-system.)
• Use Cut/Copy/Paste commands (either between Plone folders, or between Plone and your file-system.)
• You can create new content by selecting File > New (or right-clicking in a folder) and selecting the type of file you wish to create from the menu.
• Click Control A and Control C to copy multiple files/pages into a Plone folder.

This works for a simple move action in addition to copy actions. 

Using drag-and-drop to reorganize your site

Although the Plone web interface lets you copy/move content items with the clipboard function on the Actions dropdown list, Enfold Desktop lets you take full  advantage of this capability.  This is especially useful when trying to import legacy content into your Plone site. It also helps if you want to reorganize the hierarchical structure of the site itself.

Other  Questions

Where did the files go? On the file system?

Publishing static HTML content is straightforward enough. You use  FTP to upload  content into remote directories on a web server.  Enfold Desktop simulates this experience somewhat by providing the view of the Plone site as a series of folders. In fact,  the machine hosting a Plone site doesn't have directories and files corresponding to specific web pages (all that is saved in the ZODB). This may be an efficient solution from a database point of view, but  it involves a different mental model than the folder/file metaphor which people are familar with. Enfold Desktop partially restores this mental model for the end user.  It is true that some Plone tools and products let you upload directly to the file system (and this certainly makes sense if you are uploading large multimedia files).

What does the Local Folder do?

At the root of Enfold Desktop is a Local folder. This is simply a single place where you can see all the files or pages which you have locked for editing (regardless of which Plone directory they are found in).

Do  Files  have workflows?

When you add or edit items into Plone folders using Enfold Desktop, they are either Plone Documents or files (usually). (Read more about content types).

If you edit Plone document with Enfold Desktop, you need to perform two steps after editing:

1. Check it in (see Checking in a Plone Document).
2. Change the Plone document's state (either from Private-->Publish or Private-->Submit for Publication).

This is completely differently from the default behavior for Files. By default the File content type does not have publication states (i.e., workflows). Editing (i.e., uploading) files involves a different process.

1. Check it in.

Important: Publication of a File is automatic. In other words, after you upload a file, it automatically is public -- even if the containing folder is private.

Here are some other unique characteristics about Files and how they are handled in Enfold Desktop.

• The right-click menu for the file still gives you the option to view in browser. That will actually send you to a web page containing a link to the file. (It will have no other content to speak of on that page).
• By default, the Plone site will not keep different versions of this file (this contrasts with Plone documents, which allow this; read more about versioning web pages). Your system admin can change the default so that Files are versioned too. (see Enabling Versioning & Workflow for Files).
• you can still view/access the properties of a File by right-clicking it and choosing properties. However, enable comments won't apply to it.

This tutorial has provided  a basic guide for getting started on Enfold Desktop 4.   In fact, the official Enfold Desktop documentation on the Enfold Systems web site covers these same topics in greater detail. Here are  links to additional topics of interest to  Enfold Desktop users.

• Troubleshooting Guide to Enfold Desktop. Contains problem-solving tips and a guide to error messages. Also see Enfold Desktop FAQ.
• Vista and Enfold Desktop. Version 4.1 (to be released in early September) will officially support 32 bit Vista. 64 bit is currently being tested and will work (albeit with a few idiosyncracies).
• Glossary of Enfold Desktop terms is a useful reference guide for terminology.
• How to Report a bug . Enfold Desktop has a built-in error reporting mechanism within Windows Explorer itself.
•  Public issue tracker for Desktop provides a list of the latest bugs. Free registration is required for read access.  (People who purchase a subscription will have the ability to create issues and receive support for it)
• The Community-desktop mailing list is a public mailing list for posting questions and problems about Enfold Desktop (see also the list archive).  
•  Searching the Plone forums with the phrase "Enfold Desktop" will let you hear what other people are saying about the tool.  
• Configuring global settings for Enfold Desktop on the server.  Guide to the configuration menu in Plone Site Setup which the Administrator will see after installing the Server Component bundle of Plone products. Note that the File Templates feature described on this configuration page applies only to installations of Enfold Server (the Enfold-branded version of Plone which is optimized for Windows enterprise environments).
• The Enfold Desktop Release Notes  lists recent changes and includes a list of Enfold Desktop Known Issues. More information will be added to the Known Issues section over time.
• Desktop actions are a way to extend the functionality of Enfold Desktop using portal actions.