The point of a portfolio is really to show off the work you’ve done. In an e-portfolio that work is inevitably going to be represented by a file. Of course, “files” can includes documents, presentations, videos, images, sound files or computer programs.

Portfolios.lincoln allows you to store your files and then link to them in views, so you can give users of your portfolio an impression of the sort of work you do. To access the file store click “My Portfolio” in the main menu bar and click “My Files” in the second bar.

When you first access the file store, it will say that there are “No files found” but there are two buttons, “Upload file” and “Create folder”. You can add folders at any time, but it is a good idea to think about how you might want to categorise your files in advance. You could for example, have a folder containing presentations you’ve given, another for reports you have written, or perhaps for training sessions you’ve given. The advantage of a folder is that it can be used in a view of your portfolio, so potential employers can see all of your work on a given topic.

Creating a folder

Click the create folder button. This will open an online form

You need to give your folder a name, and a brief description of what is in it. You can also give it tags, keywords, that will help you find it later, when you have built up lots of folders.

Click on the “create” folder button. It will then appear on your page with two buttons next to it. “Edit” and “Delete”. The “Edit” button allows you to change the name and the description of the folder. The “delete button” as you might expect, will delete the folder. However, you can not delete a folder if it contains anything. So let’s upload a file to it, and see how that works.

Uploading a file.

You can of course upload a file without putting it in a folder, and if you don’t select a folder that’s exactly what will happen. The image below shows a section of a portfolio in which a few folders have already been created.

If you want to put your file into a folder, you can click the folder before clicking the file upload button. (You can also click the folder immediately after you’ve clicked the file upload button, but that’s your last chance). You can check which folder the file will go into by looking at the destination path. In the illustration below the documents folder has been selected

You can also see that you need to tick a box that asserts that you are the owner of the material you are uploading, or at least that you have the right to do so.

The “Choose File” button will, as you might expect, allows you to navigate to the file you want to upload. You can also give it a title (If you don’t it’ll just assign the file name), a description and some tags.

Click the “Upload file” button. Notice, that if you uploaded it to a previously empty folder, the option to delete the folder has disappeared. If you do decide you want to delete a folder, you must delete all the files first.

N.B. The current version of Portfolios.lincoln does not support drag and drop. If you want to move a file into a different folder, you will have to save it to a local drive, and re-upload into the correct folder.