Using the Private Room to work on your documents securely

Introduction

The Private Room is designed to provide a secure environment for document editing and co-authoring.

The Private Room is a special section in the Documents module. Work in the Private Room is only available via ONLYOFFICE Desktop Editors.

Documents stored in the Private Room and data transferred during collaboration are encrypted with the AES-256 encryption algorithm to protect your data from unauthorized access.

Step 1. Enable the Private Room settings in the Control Panel

The Private Room functionality is enabled by default in the Control Panel for the server version (the paid version 5.6 of Desktop Editors is also required for working with Private Rooms).

The full access administrator or portal owner can disable/enable the Private Room in the Control Panel.

To access the Control Panel, sign in to your portal and click the 'Control Panel' icon on the Start Page. Alternatively, you can go to the Portal Settings and select the Control Panel link on the left-side panel.

Switch to the Private Room page in the PORTAL SETTINGS section of the Control Panel.

To disable/enable the Private Room, turn off/on the switcher and click the SAVE button. Private Rooms will be available for the current portal only.

Step 2. Connect to the ONLYOFFICE cloud via Desktop Editors

To start working in Private Rooms, users should install the latest version of the Desktop Editors with the Private Room support (version 5.6 and later).

To connect to the ONLYOFFICE cloud:

1. Launch Desktop Editors.
2. In the main program window, switch to the Connect to cloud tab at the left sidebar.
3. Click the ONLYOFFICE button.
4. Specify your web office address in the new window.
5. Click the Connect now button.

6. On the authorization page, specify the login and password used to access your cloud office account.

Technical details

Step 3. Store and manage documents in the Private Room

When users connected to the ONLYOFFICE cloud via Desktop Editors, they can use the Private Room section of the Documents module to store documents and collaborate on them securely.

The Private Room of each user contains:

• folders and files created by the current user,
• files shared with the current user by other users from the Private Room.

Within the Private Room, you can:

• create folders,
• create and upload files (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx),
• share documents with other portal users,
• co-edit documents.

All documents are encrypted once uploaded or created. All the documents stored in the Private Room are encrypted and marked with the icon in the file list.

Technical details

Step 4. Share and co-edit documents in the Private Room

To share your files stored in the Private Room with other users:

1. Click the Share button to the right of the necessary document.
2. In the Sharing Settings window, click the Add Users button to open the user list, then check the users you want to share the document with and click Save.
   You can share the file with users who have already obtained private and public keys.
3. By default, Full Access is provided. If you want to block access previously granted to a user, select the Deny Access option from the drop-down list next to the user name.
4. Click Save at the bottom of the Sharing Settings window.

Now you can co-edit the file securely together with other users within the Private Room. When you work on the encrypted file, it is marked with the icon in the editor header.

Technical details