Cambridge University Press & Assessment Takes Human Error Out of Time-Critical Exam File Delivery With Files.com

Cambridge University Press & Assessment is the publishing and assessment arm of the University of Cambridge. Its press, founded in 1534, is the oldest in the world. Its assessment business runs Cambridge English, IELTS, and the IGCSE, AS and A Level qualifications, delivering more than 12 million exam results a year through thousands of authorised test centres in 130 countries.

Every one of those exams begins with files. A centre cannot run a test day without its question papers, answer sheets, and audio files, and none of that material can be exposed before candidates sit down. At its core, the business places confidential files between Cambridge and thousands of centres worldwide, on a calendar that does not move.

The Odd Mistake at the Worst Possible Moment

Placement of exam materials was manual work. Operations staff put files where each centre needed to find them. Most of the time that went fine. Occasionally it did not: a file landed in the wrong place, the error surfaced downstream, and the team lost time diagnosing a problem whose cause it could not see, while a centre waited on materials it had to have.

The structure of the business left no room for that. Exam dates are fixed. The centre network spans 130 countries and every timezone. The content is confidential until the moment the exam begins. And when a centre is missing materials on the day itself, the resupply has to happen in hours, not days. That is exactly when a manual process is weakest: the moment a mistake matters most is the moment there is least time to find and fix it.

The fix could not be another check wrapped around the people doing the placement. It had to remove the placement from people altogether: copy each file to the right centre location the same way every time, make sure the centre has access, run on demand for an emergency resupply, and clean up confidential content once it has been delivered.

Cambridge's application support team built that on Files.com, using the platform's REST API, webhooks, and Automations.

Placement by Code, Cleanup by the Platform

When materials go out, including emergency supply to a centre on test day, automation built on the Files.com REST API copies the files across, places each one in the location that centre draws from, and opens the centre's access. No person places a file by hand, removing manual placement errors from the workflow.

Webhooks notify downstream steps the moment a file lands, so the next stage of the process starts without anyone watching a folder. Files.com Automations then handle the follow-on work: once a file has been copied to its destination, an Automation deletes the source copy, so confidential exam content does not sit anywhere it no longer needs to be. Operations staff extend the same pattern with Python SDK scripts that automate their own routine uploads.

“We get the odd mistake happening, and that causes us problems down the line and a bit of panic ... because we can't quite see why it's gone wrong.”

With the Workflows in Production

Now that the automation runs the placement, Cambridge has replaced manual handling of exam materials with a workflow that behaves the same way on every run.

• Cleanup no longer depends on someone remembering. Delivered files are deleted automatically, so confidential content does not linger past its purpose.
• The automation carries real volume: daily API traffic to Files.com runs in the tens of thousands of calls at the 95th percentile, measured across a full year.

“Whenever we need somewhere to send, store, transmit, or receive material that has to be secure or is confidential or sensitive in some way, then we have the capability to do that.”

A Deadline That Cannot Move, Met by a Workflow That Cannot Slip

Today, when a test centre anywhere in the world reports missing materials on the morning of an exam, the response is an automation run on Files.com, not a person copying files under pressure. The staff who used to spend that morning working out why something had gone wrong now start a workflow and move on to the next problem.