I'm migrating myself and my organization from Mendeley to Zotero. As a disillusioned Mendeley Advisor, I'm impressed with Zotero's mission and features (particularly Zotero Groups) and look forward to it becoming so widely used that I never manually name or email another PDF. But Zotero presents some difficult decisions for how to approach file management when getting on board. For example, only the File Copies strategy is compatible with Zotero Storage, and Group File Sharing, but it requires all your PDFs to be stored by Zotero in their own individual subdirectories with random 8-character subdirectory names. The alternative strategy (File Links) is incompatible with those two features, but lets you store all of your PDFs in one directory of your choosing (with whatever subdirectory structure and names you choose).

@dstillman makes a good case in this discussion with @martijnende for how to use Zotero when finding and downloading articles online ...

That's just not really how you use Zotero. Zotero integrates tightly into the browser, so if you want to save something, you just click the Save to Zotero button while on the article page ...

... but I think many of us download articles online from platforms like ResearchGate rather than an article page on a publisher website. This makes the PDF, not the publisher's metadata, our starting point for managing an article with reference management (rm) software. Consequently, we've developed systems for naming and organizing PDFs on our computers and cloud storage. Even though we may subsequently interact with our articles through rm software, these systems remain useful for sharing articles (and their PDFs) with colleagues - particularly those who don't use rm software or don't use the same software we do.

It seems like getting new Zotero users on board would benefit from increased compatibility with their existing systems for PDF organization and sharing. Despite Mendeley's now fatal flaws, its "watched folder" feature seems ideal for this. Is there anything fundamental that prevents Zotero from offering an equivalent feature that's still compatible with the File Copies strategy, Zotero Storage, and Group File Sharing?

In this discussion with @ZenonMarko, @adamsmith makes a good case for why power users rely on Zotero's file organization ...

It's easier to setup, maintain, and provides more functionality.

...but how would a power user handle the following two scenarios:

I commonly need to share a small batch of PDFs with a colleague or client for a one-off request or project and she doesn't use any rm software. I need to 'export' copies of my Zotero-stored PDFs to a new folder on my computer so I can remove my PDF annotations from the copies and then email or cloud-share the batch to my colleague/client. I need the PDFs to all have consistent and informative filenames (e.g., Author_Year_Title) that I can refer to when I communicate with her, ideally the same filenames they already have within Zotero.

My organization understandably wants our collective library of PDFs to reside (or at least be duplicated) within its cloud storage, not just in Zotero Storage and individual's computers. But automating or streamlining the process of duplicating individual-acquired PDFs to the organization's cloud storage seems difficult when PDFs start out in random 8-character-named subdirectories on every individual's computer (i.e., the File Copies strategy). The process seems easier if individual computers each have one directory containing all their PDFs (i.e., the File Links strategy), but this prevents Zotero Group File Sharing.

Thanks in advance for your input - the Zotero Forums are proving very helpful!