I’m trying out Obsidian as a business KB system. I am the sole owner of all of the files but that will eventually expand to a small team. I would like to allow other employees to view and explore the formatted KB, but I do not want to publish to the web for security and privacy reasons.
What is the best way to do this?
Is there a “view only” version of the Obsidian app employees can use that renders the formatted vault files and links, but doesn’t allow write access?
Is there a way in Obsidian to produce a folder of local .html and .css files that can display in a web browser so I can run it as an offline website?
Write access can be restricted in cloud/windows/linux file share permissions, but otherwise if you just install Obsidian on everyones Computers and tell them how to access the shared Vault, you could just have everyone on your team reference the shared Vault right in obsidian.
You could share the vault files on a private Dropbox sync, or other cloud providers which also provide the same features for restricting write access and will still allow read access.
What type of OS are you and your team working with?
I’ve got the vault in a SharePoint directory I control. I can access on my machine with onedrive. I worry though that everyone would need a commercial license if they’re all using the full app.
For those who don’t have SharePoint, would syncthing.net be a workable solution?
– for sharing private/internal/LAN copy of a vault?
(Technically, the other users don’t necessarily need another Obsidian copy, as they could just read/access the vault using whatever .md app they’d like to use)
I am not familiar with the commercial license details of Obsidian, but if there is any concern you could also use VS code with the FOAM extension on a wide scale enterprise level with no licensing concerns.
Foam Provides much of the same functionality of Obsidian within a VScode environment.
First, you must have some version control system, like git. Just to be able to rollback if you deleted something important, or to find edition history.
Next, you automatically have production-ready tools and infrastructure to share your knowledge between teammates. In local install, you can use things like GitLab.
Maybe your git-enabled infrastructure should be tuned to notify you when your colleague changes something, and you should git pull from the shared repo to admit changes locally. I’m not sure it can be done automatically – at least you should be able to check first the diff between local and remote repo before merging.
My 2 cents on Syncthing: I spent 20 minutes messing with Syncthing and for me its more trouble than its worth. Its a great idea, and I’m sure I could use it, but its not convenient. It does not “just work”. You have to be making it work every time you use it. Even the desktop login is a 127 address and the server-type login popup blocks my browser password system from filling the username and password fields. If you want to holding its hand every day, then this is your app. If you want something to work in the background, this is not the app you are looking for.
@Obsidandnancy I’m not sure why you found syncing to be less than ideal, but I absolutely love using both iCloud (2 separate vaults) and Google Drive (yet another vault) for keeping the vaults accessible on multiple desktops and, for the iCloud vaults, on my iPhone. I’ve had virtually no issues, and have been using this configuration now for a few months, since shortly after I discovered Obsidian. I absolutely love this app, and such a huge chunk of the value comes from the fact that I can access vaults from different devices.
