How To Share Data Using Globus

With Globus, you can easily share research data with your collaborators. You don’t need to create accounts on the server(s) where your data is stored. You can share data with anyone using their identity or their email address.

To share data, you’ll create a guest collection and grant your collaborators access as described in the instructions below. If you like, you can designate other Globus users as "access managers" for the guest collection, allowing them to grant or revoke access privileges for other Globus users.

Note
Sharing with guest collections is available on Globus endpoints managed by an active subscription. You can create guest collections on Globus Connect Personal endpoints (your laptop, for example) if you are a Globus Plus user. Please contact your research computing center or IT manager to upgrade your Globus account to Plus. If your institution does not have a subscription, please contact us to discuss your needs.

  1. Log into Globus and navigate to the File Manager.

  2. Select the collection that has the files/folders you wish to share and, if necessary, activate the collection.

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  3. Highlight the folder that you would like to share and Click Share in the right command pane.

    Note
    Sharing is available for folders. Individual files can only be shared by sharing the folder that contains them.
    Caution
    If you are using an ad blocker plugin in your browser, the share button may be unavailable. We recommend users whitelist app.globus.org, docs.globus.org, and globus.org within the plugin to circumvent this issue.
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    If Share is not available, contact the endpoint’s administrator or refer to Globus Connect Server Installation Guide for instructions on enabling sharing. If you’re a using a Globus Connect Personal endpoint and you’re a Globus Plus user, enable sharing by opening the Preferences for Globus Connect Personal, clicking the Access tab, and checking the Sharable box.

  4. Provide a name for the guest collection (the example below uses Demo), and click Create Share. If this is the first time you are accessing the collection, you may need to authenticate and consent to allow Globus services to manage your collections on your behalf.

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  5. When your collection is created, you’ll be taken to the Sharing tab, where you can set permissions. As shown below, the starting permissions give read and write access (and the Administrator role) to the person who created the collection.

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    Click the Add Permissions button or icon to share access with others. You can add permissions for an individual user, for a group, or for all logged-in users. In the Identity/E-mail field, type a person’s name or username (if user is selected) or a group name (if group is selected) and press Enter. Globus will display matching identities. Pick from the list. If the user hasn’t used Globus before or you only have an email address, enter the email address and click Add.

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    The example above grants read access to Globus user grohder1@globusid.org. The users you share with will receive an email notification containing a link to the shared endpoint. You may add a customized message to this email. If you don’t want to send a notification, uncheck the Send E-mail checkbox.

    Note
    Granting write access to a folder allows users to modify and delete files and folders within the folder.

    You can add permissions to subfolders by entering a path in the Path field.

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  6. After receiving the email notification, your colleague can click on the link to log into Globus and access the guest collection. In the example below, user grohder1@globusid.org accesses the guest collection. Note that the collection name is Demo and the path is /, because this is what the user was given access to.

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  7. You can allow others to manage the permissions for a collection you create. Use the Roles tab to manage roles for other users. You can assign roles to individual users or to groups. As shown below, the default is for the person who created the collection to have the Administrator role.

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    The Access Manager role grants the ability to manage permissions for a collection. (Users with this role automatically have read/write access for the collection.) In the example below, the user grohder1@globusid.org is being granted the Access Manager role.

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    When a role is assigned to a group, all members of the group have the assigned role.