Tellabs Moved TAC Intake From File Browser and Email to Form-Routed Uploads on Files.com

Tellabs builds fiber-based Optical LAN hardware and software for buildings and campuses. Sold predominantly through partners, its equipment serves government, education, healthcare, and hospitality customers.

When one of those network elements misbehaves, the fastest route to a fix runs through Tellabs' technical assistance center (TAC). The first thing a TAC engineer needs is the diagnostic files sitting on the customer's equipment. Getting those files from the customer's site to a Tellabs engineer is a file transfer problem, and Tellabs faced it every time a support case opened.

Big Files, and No Good Way for a Customer to Send Them

The sanctioned intake tool was File Browser, an open-source web transfer utility, and it could not handle big files. So the real intake ran around it. Customers defaulted to sending troubleshooting files over email, or Tellabs asked them to install and drive an FTP or SFTP desktop client such as FileZilla or Cyberduck.

Both fallbacks put the cost in the wrong place. The burden landed on the customer at exactly the moment their equipment was down: step one of getting help was squeezing files through a mail server or installing transfer software. And on Tellabs' side, intake had no structure. Files arrived wherever and however the sender put them, and correct filing depended entirely on the discipline of someone outside the company.

That was the constraint that made the problem hard to fix. The senders are external customers. Tellabs cannot provision them, train them, or force a software install — and the customers themselves said they wanted a web interface. The replacement had to work for anyone with a browser, take files up to 5 TB, and still land every upload in the right internal folder without the sender knowing anything about the folder structure.

Tellabs selected Files.com to replace that fragmented TAC intake. In early 2025, it moved support intake from File Browser, email, and customer-operated FTP and SFTP clients to a Files.com Inbox: a no-login upload page whose form routed each diagnostic file into the correct internal folder.

One Upload Page, Routed by the Form

The mechanism is a Files.com Inbox: a standing upload page that accepts files from people who are not users on the site. A customer opens the page and uploads. There is no account to create and nothing to install.

In front of the inbox sits a custom form with dropdown fields the customer fills in before uploading, and the answers decide where the files go. Files.com routes each upload into the folder the form dictates. Because the destinations are dropdown choices rather than typed text, a sender cannot misspell a folder into existence or drop a file somewhere nobody is watching. The routing rules live on the receiving side, enforced by the platform.

The size ceiling went with the old tool. Files.com moves files up to 5 TB, so a large diagnostic capture travels the same sanctioned path as a small one.

Files.com became the standing front door for troubleshooting files: one permanent page, with every rule about where a file belongs built into the form instead of left to the sender.

What Changed for a Support Case

With the inbox in production, TAC replaced an intake built on email, an undersized web utility, and desktop FTP clients with a single web page that sorts what arrives.

• Customers send troubleshooting files through a browser, with nothing to install and no account to create, at the moment their equipment is down.
• Large diagnostic files move through the sanctioned path instead of being pushed onto email or ad-hoc client software.
• Every upload lands in the right folder, placed by the form's answers rather than by sender discipline, and misnamed folders can no longer be created.

The compounding result is that intake is now a pattern rather than a per-case effort. The inbox is permanent, so the next support case requires no new setup, and extending the routing means adding a dropdown option — not adopting a new tool or sending customers new instructions.

The First Step of a Support Case Is Now a Web Page

Opening a case used to begin with the customer installing FileZilla or fighting a mail server's attachment limit; now it begins with the diagnosis. Tellabs put the routing rules where they could actually be enforced — inside the Files.com form on the receiving side — instead of relying on external customers to install software or file things correctly.