Can I Save KNIME workflows to a Dropbox folder

I’ve created some workflows that I’d like my team to be able to use. The workflows currently use inputs and outputs to a Dropbox folder, but I just realized that all of the workflows I’ve created are stored on my local machine, and I can’t seem to find a way to save them to a Dropbox folder. I’ve tried to create a new workflow group, but it only gives me options to save them to the KNIME://Local/ folder. I presume that I could just export the workflows and have my team members import them, but is there an easier method to doing this without having dedicated server space?

Hi @stevelp,

I think this topic is similar to:

You can change your workspace to your Dropbox folder on your machine. So everything syncs to your cloud storage.

Or you can export your workflows and share the .knwf or .knar file.

:blush:

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Hi,
What @armingrudd wrote is correct, but be aware that only one person can use a workspace at a time. KNIME locks the folder while you work with it to avoid people overwriting their workflows with other people’s changes.
Kind regards
Alexander

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Thanks @AlexanderFillbrunn and @armingrudd. What I decided to do was to keep building the workflows on my local space, and then share them with my team members. The workflows point to certain locations in Dropbox, which is really convenient. That way everyone can use the workflows at the same time, and then I can also create updated versions that I save as a .knwf file and then push to the users.

The only disadvantage of this method is that every time I update a workflow and have to export, and help someone re-import, I have to update all of the references to the dropbox folder. Usually the file structure is the exact same, I just have to replace the username in the file structure. So it goes from something like “C:\Users\STEVE\Dropbox” to “C:\Users\USER2\Dropbox”. I also have a process that reads and combines all the files from the local downloads folder (e.g., C:\Users\STEVE\Downloads).

Right now, I just remote into the user’s computer, and update each of these file locations manually, but is there a way to make the computer username a variable that I can just update once, and then have that variable flow through to all the other nodes?

I read up on the relative path functionality, but it looks like that would create local files on everyone’s computers, which will work for some things, but not everything (especially not the local downloads folder, and some of the output files where we want to make sure everyone has access to).

Hi,
To create a variable you can use the String Configuration node. With the String Manipulation node’s join function you can create the file path from that variable and some static parts.
Kind regards
Alexander

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Thanks @AlexanderFillbrunn! I just spent some time learning a bit more about flow variables, and actually ended up creating some workflow and flow variables, as described in this video (Creation and usage of Flow Variables in a KNIME workflow). Also, I used the String Manipulation (Variable) node to configure the file paths.

I finally feel like I have a basic understanding of flow variables! I knew it would be powerful once I got there. I’m super excited to use them more on my future workflows now! Thanks for all your help with KNIME. I’m quickly becoming an advocate!

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