Item: Egnyte
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Egnyte is used across the whole company, we use it for all of our filings and try not to store any documents locally. It is used for collaborative work across departments and across offices in different locations. We also make use of the file sharing for external freelancers and sharing documents/folders with clients. Using Egnyte solved issues we were having with using an external hard drive for all of our shared documents, which was often unreliable and difficult to access.

Pros and Cons

Easy to use: we had minimal problems implementing this across the company.
Great for collaborative work: stops issues with version control and has easy sharing.
Easy sharing outside our organization: avoids issues with large file transfers.

We often have issues with WebEdit, changes not saving/overwriting
No functionality to drag and drop files/folders within the UI, can only move things by going through Move > Select location
When previewing Word files in the browser, tracked changes are not shown so there can be misunderstandings when quickly reviewing documents

Return on Investment

Much less time lost to searching for files, swapping files around and issues with our previous external drive.
Some time lost to occasional issues with WebEdit feature not performing reliably. This tends to be with Apple apps Keynote and Numbers.
Better organization across client accounts.

Other Software Used

Slack

Performance

Haven't had any issues with online page loading time. However, when downloading Keynote or Numbers files to WebEdit, there is often a delay in the file downloading or opening. Sometimes there are also issues with it opening multiple versions of the same file in WebEdit. One of these will be the WebEdit version and one will be a local version, if you don't notice this or accidentally close the wrong one, then you can lose your work. Sometimes this is retrievable through locally stored files but it does cause difficulties.

Usability

Really easy to use the interface. The web browser is very intuitive and I have not had any notable issues with this. It's easy to work on documents as a team, and the only issues we have to tend to come with Apple apps and downloading large files to WebEdit. It's very similar to the filing systems that come on Apple and Windows devices so not a steep learning curve.

Likelihood to Recommend

Egnyte is great for working collaboratively on documents that are passed around from person to person. We use the WebEdit feature so only one person can edit the document at a time, which avoids confusion with multiple rounds of edits and is a huge help with version control. We have implemented our own detailed filing system and as long as this adheres to it, it means that there are never any missing files, or issues with finding/accessing documents when members of staff are on holiday or off sick. However, there are some documents that we still use Google Docs and Google Sheets for, as Egnyte doesn't allow multiple people to edit a document simultaneously. For collaborative work with clients, it's still very useful to be able to work on a document or spreadsheet at the same time and have instant updates, which Google services are good for.

Easy to use and great stress-saver

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Egnyte