Useful as it may be, the traditional directory, folder, subfolder, and file disk organization is far from being the most intuitive. Elyse provides you with a tag-based file management system that obviates the need to remember the file name, the folder, and even the drive where you stored the file you’re looking for. Tags can be created, edited, grouped, and rearranged in whatever way that fits your preferences.
Elyse creates a database with all your tags, the files assigned to each of them, as well as the relationships between tags and groups of tags that you create. Curiously enough, the way tags are organized faithfully resembles the tree structure in which folders and subfolders are laid out in standard file managers, though you will only need to use this browsing tree when trying to determine or modify the different relationships among tags. To locate a specific file, however, you just need to remember one of the tags you assigned it to, part of its description, its ID code, or any character in its file name. Tag names can be as descriptive as you wish – summer holidays, pets, kids, school pics, you name it – and you can then group them into bigger categories or tags, such as animals, holidays, or family. In this parent-child structure, each level is referred to as a “browsing node”. Adding new files to each of these nodes (or tags) can be done in two ways – by dragging the node to the file and vice versa. All new files you place in a node will be automatically assigned the tags associated to the nodes (or levels) existing between the parent tag and their present location, thanks to the program’s wise use of “tag relationships”.
The combinations and the possibilities are endless – you can exclude files with a specific tag from a group, you can customize your browsing tree to fit your preferences, you can move tags around and change their relationship with the group they belong to, and you can tell the program to identify and reject any duplicate files. You can also associate a browsing node to a folder on your hard drive, so that every time a new file comes into that folder it gets automatically into Elyse and is linked to all the tags associated to the corresponding browsing node. Now, add the program’s network support to the equation and you will start envisaging Elyse’s true possibilities. Each user in a network can have their own node structure and browsing tree while sharing common structures and browsing nodes with the other users.
This high level of flexibility, together with the intuitive way in which the program allows you to organize your file structure, is what makes Elyse an innovative and useful alternative file manager for your Windows drives and networks. Besides, if you think that 30 tags or less are enough to keep your file structure clearly organized, you can enjoy all of Elyse’s benefits for free.
Comments