I’m working at a fortune 500 company and my team is working off a huge shared word file that has a complex indexing structure that right now is only supported by the find in page function. It seems like a perfect project to use Obsidian on, however to support collaborative work I’d like to install it or use it from a shared file structure and wanted to know if Obsidian supports this functionality. Normally I might just grab the install files and try myself but my company has a long process to authorize non-approved software for install on company assets so I need to answer these technical questions first.
I don’t have a definite answer for you but since no one with more experience has answered yet I’ll give ya what I got.
I am using a similar Obsidian setup in my home, I have one Windows pc sharing a drive that has my vaults (and other stuff). I then have 2 Windows pcs and a Mac mini using that drive/folder/vaults with the drive mounted on each device. So far I have only been using Obsidian on my Windows machines but I am not having problems accessing the vaults.
There are some things to keep in mind though:
I do not access them at the same time on separate systems since it is just me using it and the PCs are in different parts of the house. So I am not sure if two or more people can edit the same file at once or not.
I do have some issues on one of the PCs where sometimes Obsidian closes on its own. It doesn’t crash fully, it just closes the vault(s) and goes to the open vault screen. I am not 100% sure why, the only real difference is that one is on WiFi and the one that closes randomly is wired and goes through a switch. I was thinking that since Obsidian is based off a browser maybe something happens to the packets as they go through the switch. But no other programs get messed up, and that is my main PC so I would have noticed, so I don’t think that could be the case but I haven’t had the time to try another switch or any deeper troubleshooting. It seems mostly to crash if I don’t use it for a few minutes like if I switch to another app for a while then want to go back.
This is the big one…Obsidian doesn’t support network drives so you are on your own if it works or not:
You could maybe use the Obsidian sync option but that costs money ($10 month/ $96 Year). While it isn’t expensive most manager types I have known over the years would see that they have a currently “working” option so why spend money just to make it easier on the employees. Also I don’t know if Sync would play well with more than one person editing the same doc.
Even though I love obsidian, did you ever consider a Wiki. If Obsidian Sync and network drives don’t work out it might be your bets route. Check with you IT guys if that is possible since even though it is free it needs to run on the company’s servers. The one that we use at the company I work for is Wikimedia. While it isn’t as nice as Obsidian it gets the job done and Tech/Management people are more familiar with the concept of a wiki than Obsidian, at least most of the ones I have met.
It depends on what you mean by shared drive. Specifically, it depends how the network drive implements the filesystem calls. We have reports that google drive don’t work very well and doesn’t work at all if you use the option to keep part of the files in the clould.
Windows shared driver are reported to work.
Could you provide exact technical requirements for the file system to support Obsidian? I work at a fortune 500 company with strict security protocols as such I need to work with my IT department to approve it’s use before we could purchase a corporate licence or licenses.