Generic Data Transfer To/From the University

Owned by Andy Tseng
Mar 21, 2024
2 min read


A common need is to transfer data between organisations without needing accounts for external people.  We have deployed a capability utilising the new (late 2020) Mediaflux Data Mover tool that enables

  1. An external person to be able to send data to a UoM person (primary use case)
  2. A UoM person to be able to send data to an external person.
  3. A UoM person to be able to send data another UoM person.

The process is:

  • The UoM user requests a special URL via ServiceNow that they can email to their external colleague (use case 1 above) or use themselves (use cases 2 &3 above)
  • With the Data Mover GUI and the URL, the sender uploads data (without logging in) to the UoM Mediaflux system. In doing this they must specify a recipient user email address in the GUI
  • After upload, the recipient user receives an email with two URLs
    1. When clicked on (in the email) or pasted into the the Data Mover GUI,  the data will be downloaded to your local file system (both use cases)
    2. When clicked on, this URL opens a web page that enables the person to copy the data to one of their own Mediaflux projects - this is for use case 1 above only - the person  must login to Mediaflux, select the desired Mediaflux project and click 'Copy'

Notes:

  1. Please refer to the generic Data Mover page for sample screen shots.
  2. The person uploading the data needs to use the Data Mover tool GUI.  It is advised that the best way to handle this is for that user to install the Data Mover Reference first. Then the user can start the Data Mover, click 'Add New', paste in the URL, select the data, enter the recipient email address and click 'Upload'.  It is also possible to just click on the URL in the received email. This will cause the Data Mover to install itself and start the GUI ready for data selection and upload.
  3. The data are initially uploaded to a temporary location in Mediaflux that only the RCS Data Solutions Mediaflux operations team have access to.
  4. The recipient user has 30 days to copy/download the data once it has been uploaded. Once that has expired, the uploaded temporary copy of the data will be destroyed.  
  5. The data uploaded into the temporary location in Mediaflux is not replicated to the Disaster Recovery system.