Questions regarding user accounts and profiles in multi-user environment

[Scotch]

Operating system

Windows

Joplin version

2.13.15

Desktop version info

Joplin 2.13.15 (prod, win32)

Client ID: ecf0db30ae4d487e9ee876bdb22c912d
Sync Version: 3
Profile Version: 44
Keychain Supported: Yes

Revision: 7d2c1c0

Sync target

Joplin Server

What issue do you have?

Hi,
let me start with some gushing and say that I love Joplin and I've been using it privately in combination with a self-hosted server extensively.

After doing some testing before deploying another Joplin server to use in a multi-user environment, I've ran into some questions that I couldn't easily find answers for in the documentation.

Here's what I want to do:
I want to phase out Microsoft OneNote and switch to Joplin instead. I have about ten users who I want to have access to all the content on the Joplin server, so that we have one big platform to collaborate one. Everyone should be able to create and edit notebooks that are shared with everyone automatically. Everyone should also be able to create their own personal notebooks that are only shared if they actively share it with other people.

The problems I've ran into:
If I let all people log in with a global user account (let's call it syncuser@joplin), then everyone can see everything - this is good. However, this way no one will be able to create personal notes.
If every person gets their own personal user account, they can create personal notes and share them with others, but that way every notebook would need to be shared individually with everyone since not everyone has access to all the content on the server. This is problematic because most likely a lot of content will be created.

At the moment I think the best way to handle my situation is to make every person work with two distinct profiles: one profile where they login with syncuser@joplin and another profile where they log in with their personal user account. Both are synced to the same Joplin server, so theoretically every person should see the collaborated content with one profile, while still being able to create personal notes that can be shared with other users OR globally by sharing them with syncuser@joplin with the other profile.
However, switching between profiles feels a little cumbersome since the application has to be restarted.

I have also noticed that shared notebooks can be deleted by anyone, which completely removes the notebook for them, and deletes all content but leaves the empty notebook for the person who originally created it. Can notebooks be locked somehow?

Essentially my question is:
Is this multiple profile approach the most elegant solution to achieve what I have in mind or can you think of a better way? I'm sure many people here deploy Joplin with a similar goal in mind. I'm wondering if I fundamentally misunderstood the Joplin architecture or if I'm just being obtuse.

Thanks for your time!

[cleterrier]

Hi,

We are using Joplin server with about 12 people working every day with it. I'm talking thousands of notes overall and a ~15 GB database.

The setup is quite simple: every user has an account. Share one notebook as "Group notes" with all users, and keep everything that should be shared inside this notebook. If a notebook is shared, all sub-notebooks inside (including those created after sharing) are shared to (it's actually impossible to have them not shared), so it is easy to keep everything shared neatly organized within that shared master notebook and you only have to share the top-level notebook with every user.

Next to this shared notes Notebook (and outside of it), every user is free to create other notebooks - for example I have another "Personal" master notebook, unshared, where everything that is not in the "Group notes" is stored.

[Scotch]

Hi cleterrier,

this approach is so simple, it's bordering on genius.
That's exactly what I'm going to do as well. It solves all my problems.

Thank you for your help!