Getting started · Chapter 2

Inviting people and sharing vaults

At nexpaper you get an account out of the box by invitation only. That keeps strangers out and costs you a minute per person. With the account comes a personal vault that, at first, only its owner can see. For everything that belongs to several people you create shared vaults and say who may do what in them. This chapter is for the operator. The people you invite only have to tap the link.

Inviting somebody

1. Open “Invite somebody”

   Go to “Settings”. The tab “Accounts” comes first, and it holds the button “Invite somebody”. You open Settings with the round account button. They exist for operators only.

2. Choose how long

   “Valid for” offers 1, 7 or 30 days. After that the link is dead and you make a new one.

3. With or without a mail address

   You only need the “Mail address (optional)” if nexpaper is to send the link by mail (“Send the link by mail”). That works as soon as a mail server is entered under “Settings”, tab “Mail”. Without a mail server nexpaper sends nothing. Then you tap “Create invitation link”, copy the “Invitation link” and pass it on yourself, by messenger, by hand or however you usually do.

4. Look at the link only once

   The link works once and is shown only now. Invitations that are still open stay in the list afterwards with “valid until” and can be taken back with “Withdraw”. The mails nexpaper sends are in English.

What the invited person sees

They open the link and land on the page “Invitation”, which says that their personal vault stays closed to everybody else. They choose a “Name” and a “Password” of at least 12 characters and tap “Create account”. After that they set up their second factor, just as you did, and keep their recovery codes (chapter Setting up). If you have set up a sign-in provider such as authentik, there is also “Accept with …”. Somebody who is already signed in is told that they do not need the link.

In the example of this guide, Lena invites her partner Tom and her mother Greta. Both get an account of their own with a vault of their own. For the time being they can see only themselves.

Creating a shared vault

Under “Vaults” everybody sees their own vault and the shared ones they are a member of. Only the operator creates shared vaults, for the household, for instance, for the car or for a holiday flat.

Vaults

1. Create it

   Tap “Create a shared vault” at the top, give the vault a “Name”, “Home” for instance, and tap “Create”. You are then a manager of that vault yourself.

2. Open the access

   On the card of the vault there is a small symbol at the top right called “Change access”. It shows only on vaults you may manage. It opens a dialog “Home: who may do what”.

3. Add people

   Under the list of members are buttons with the names of everybody who is not in yet, “Tom”, for example. One tap adds the person, at first with the right “Read”. Choose the right next to the name and tap “Save” at the bottom.

Who may do what

There are three rights, and each includes the one before. A right applies per vault, not per document.

A vault always keeps at least one manager. Somebody who may only read a vault does not see its inbox either, because the inbox is where things get filed. In the inbox of a shared vault, everybody with Edit or Manage sees the same thing.

In the example, Lena gives Tom “Edit” in “Home”, because he files bills there himself, and Greta “Read”. Greta's doctor's bills stay in Greta's personal vault.

Operator and member

Every account is either an “Operator” or a “Member”. The operator changes the settings of the server, invites people and creates shared vaults. The operator does not look into the personal vaults of the others either. The first account is an operator, and you can appoint more: in the list under “Accounts” open the menu “More for Tom” and choose “Make operator”. “Make member” takes it back. More about managing accounts is in the chapter Running it.