ODSA Tech Committee / Drive Pilot

Feedback closes October 31, 2026

Tester guide

Trying out CryptPad

About 20 minutes. Six short tasks.

If you cannot work out how to do one of these tasks, give it a couple of minutes and then move on. "I could not find it" is a useful answer.

Do your other guide first. If you are also testing Nextcloud or OpenCloud, work through that guide before this one. Task 6 below asks you to compare the two, and it only makes sense once you have used both.

Read this before you sign up

You choose your own password, and nobody else can ever see it

There is no password to send you, and no public sign-up page. The personal invitation link you were sent is the only way in, and it creates one account, for you.

Write your password down before you finish signing up. CryptPad encrypts everything in your browser, which means the server genuinely cannot read your documents. It also means nobody can reset your password or recover your documents if you lose it. Not the person who sent you this, not an administrator, not anyone. That is the property we are testing.

Your browser may block it without telling you

CryptPad loads its editor from a second address, and privacy tools often block it. You get a blank pane, or a sign up stuck on "Hashing password". It does not happen in every browser, so try signing up at cryptpad.odsapilot.com before changing anything.

Still blank, or something else looks wrong? Tell Esteban, and say which browser you were using.

One more ground rule

Nothing personal or sensitive goes in here, for the whole run of the pilot. No member names, phone numbers, addresses or rosters, and nothing confidential. Anything else can be real.

Keep your own copy of anything you make here, too. We may have to delete all three platforms at short notice. And on this one in particular, nobody but you can read your documents, which is the entire point of it, so nobody but you can move them anywhere else either.

Getting in

  1. Open your invitation link.
  2. Choose a username and password, and write the password down.
  3. Open the Teams page. The way in is the toolbar at the top right, beside your avatar — not the left-hand menu, which lists whichever drive you are already in.
  4. Open the team called ODSA Pilot. Its drive holds the documents, in the same four folders the other platforms use: 01 Committee, 02 Budget, 03 Outreach, 04 Archive.
  5. You may also see your own chapter's team. That one belongs to your chapter, and none of the six tasks use it.

Every task below happens inside the ODSA Pilot team drive. Check the team name before you start each one. If you are your chapter's point-person you may also own or administer a team, which gives you extra menus that the other testers do not see — ignore those for these six tasks.

The six tasks

1. Upload a file

Open 03 Outreach in the ODSA Pilot drive and add any harmless file. A photo or a PDF is fine.

2. Share a link

  1. Create a link to the file you just uploaded.
  2. Send it to whoever asked you to do this.

Tell us: could you tell, from what was on screen, who would be able to open that link? CryptPad's links work differently from the other two platforms', so look closely at what the link gives away.

3. Co-edit a document

  1. In the ODSA Pilot drive, open 01 Committee, then Committee meeting notes.
  2. Ask one other person to open it at the same time.
  3. Both type into it.

Tell us: did you see the other person's cursor and their words as they typed?

4. Comment on a document

Open 01 Committee, then Agenda 2026-08-20, and leave a remark about the document rather than a change to it. If you conclude there is no way to do that, say so. Do not spend more than two minutes hunting.

5. Find a file

Search two ways.

  1. By name: search for Meeting notes. Two documents have that in their name — one in 01 Committee and one from 16 July 2026 in 04 Archive.
  2. By contents: search for the word Kestrel. It is inside two of these documents and in none of their names.

Tell us: did the first search find both documents, and did the second find anything? CryptPad encrypts everything before it reaches the server, so search may work differently here than on the other two.

6. The two-system question

Do your Nextcloud or OpenCloud guide before answering this one. You have an account on one of them too, and that is where the chapter's ordinary files live. This system is the one holding the sensitive document. If you have not used the other platform yet, go and do that guide now and come back — the question is a comparison and there is no useful answer without both halves.

Tell us, having used both: did having the sensitive document somewhere else feel sensible, or did it feel like being made to do the same job twice?

This mirrors something the chapter already does. Ordinary business happens in the open, and anything sensitive happens on Signal instead. We want to know whether that works for documents, or whether people would quietly stop bothering.

On your phone

CryptPad works in a phone browser, and there is no app for Android, iPhone or the desktop. The other two platforms in this pilot have all three.

That is because the encryption happens in your browser, which is also what stops the server reading your documents. It is a real trade-off and we want your view on it.

Tell us whether using it in a phone browser was fine or annoying.

If you get stuck

Try the tasks without help first. A task you could not finish tells us more than one you finished by reading the manual.

Once you have had a go, the people who make CryptPad publish their own instructions:

If you needed it, say which task sent you there.

What to send back

Fill in the feedback form once for this platform, ideally straight after your session while it is fresh. Cover:

One extra question, only on this platform: did knowing that nobody can recover your password change how you felt about using it? Some people find that reassuring and some find it alarming.

Questions go to Esteban on Discord, or on Signal if you have it.