Email notifications deliver information to Users or Groups about specific file operations in your site, pushing relevant activity history to the people who need to take action. They are intended to alert humans rather than systems about file actions. Site Administrators and folder admins can manage other users' notifications. Other users must have History permissions to configure their own notification for a folder, except for Partner Users, who only need Read permission.

A user must meet a few requirements to receive email notifications: the user account must not be disabled, it must have an email address, and the user must not have unsubscribed from the notification or from all emails.

Copies of the emails sent to a Partner User go automatically to the Responsible Party assigned to that user. If the user has none, copies go to the Partner's Responsible Party instead, but only while Send Email Copies is enabled for the Partner.

Email notifications are not real-time alerts. They are generated in batches, depending on the interval configured in the notification options. They may be sent as often as every 5 minutes or as infrequently as once per day. Activity is not guaranteed to be reported at the exact interval because the emails must be generated and sent. An email generated every 5 minutes might arrive more than 5 minutes after the activity took place. Users can update their preferences to choose the hour they prefer to receive daily notifications.

Choose the folder, activity, and delivery interval around the recipient's next action. A daily summary can support routine review, while a shorter interval helps someone notice a delivery they need to process. For an external system that needs to react to each file event, use Webhooks instead.

Setting Up Email Notifications

Folder Admins can view and manage other users' notifications for the folders they administer, including subfolders. Site Administrators can view and manage any user's notifications for any folder in the site.

The notification list shows Folder Admins notifications configured on ancestor folders in the same Workspace, including that Workspace's root, only when they are recursive and their scope includes a folder the Folder Admin administers. Ancestor folders are the folders above the one they administer. These notifications are visible because they cover activity in the Folder Admin's folders. Non-recursive ancestor notifications and notifications whose scope does not reach their folders are not included through ancestor visibility.

Seeing an ancestor notification in the list does not grant management rights on that folder. Folder Admin permission on a child folder does not allow editing or deleting another user's notification on an ancestor folder.

Users who are not Site Administrators and do not have admin permissions for a folder must have the History permission to configure email notifications for their own user accounts. Notifications created by this type of user can only include folders for which they have History permission.

Partner Users only need Read permission on a folder to configure their own notification for it, not History permission. This self-service exception lets external recipients manage their own arrival alerts without access to the History interface.

Parent Site Recipients on Child Sites

On a Child Site, Child Site Administrators, Parent Site users with delegated Child Site Administrator access, and Folder Admins can configure notifications for the folders they administer. When the Parent Site shares its directory, its Default Workspace users and groups appear in the recipient selector alongside the Child Site's own identities. A Parent Site recipient does not need an existing Child Site folder permission. Receiving a notification does not grant access to the folder, so an administrator can alert a central operations team without giving it access to the files.

With sharing off, Child Site administrators without their own Parent Site administrative authority cannot create notifications for another Parent Site user or a Parent Site group. A rejection stating that the Parent Site does not share its directory must be addressed through the Parent Site's directory-sharing setting. Existing notifications remain in place, and administrators of the folder can still manage or delete them. Users who administer the Parent Site retain their existing authority independently of sharing.

A Parent Site user can still subscribe to their own notifications on a Child Site folder where their permissions allow it, even when directory sharing is off. The normal self-service permission requirements above apply. Sharing does not add Parent Site Custom Workspace identities to the selectors or expand Workspace Administrators' scope.

User Pre-Requisites to Receive Notifications

A recipient must meet all four conditions:

The user's account is enabled.
The account has an email address.
The user is subscribed to the notification. Unsubscribing disables it for that user.
The user has not permanently opted out of all notification emails.

The permanent opt-out cannot be undone, including by Files.com Support. Check these conditions when an existing notification stops reaching someone.

Email Notification Contents

Mail messages generated for email notifications are designed to provide enough information for a human to take the next appropriate action in response to file activity, without overloading the reader.

By default, email subject lines for email notifications contain the phrase "Activity Notification"; this can be customized in your notification's settings. The reply-to address is no-reply@files.com by default, but Site Administrators can change the address used for all email notifications to match your branding. Your customized colors and logo are used for notification emails. Site Administrators can also configure a custom email footer that is included in all system-generated emails, including email notifications.

When a custom message is configured for the notification, it is included in the notification email.

Notification emails include a list of the matching actions within the configured notification period, limited to the first 100. Each action includes the full path, the file action taken, the file size (if the file was not deleted), the date and time of the action, and the associated user's name. When a notification includes Share Link visitor activity, the email includes the visitor's registration data (email address, name, company, and IP address) when the Share Link requires registration. When the Share Link does not require registration, the email includes no identifying information.

If a Site Administrator has not disabled the Show "Log In" link in email setting, the email message also includes a link for users to click and immediately access the folder for the notification.

Each notification email includes an Update your mail preferences or unsubscribe from these e-mails link. Recipients can manage subscriptions and opt-outs there.

Notification Options

Every email notification has three required settings: the user or group who will receive the emails, the path being monitored for activity, and the frequency at which the emails will be sent.

Notifications also support a custom message, which helps users triage and respond to incoming emails.

Other optional settings for each notification make sure you're notified only about the activity of interest. These options let you target your notification by limiting which users' activity triggers a notification, whether a notification includes activity in a child folder, which file actions are included, and which file names can cause an email notification.

Activity from Share Link visitors is not included by default in a folder notification. You can update the notification settings to track this type of activity.

Tracking Whether Notifications Were Sent

Check the folder's History for activity matching the notification's folder scope, selected actions, and other filters. For files created or removed directly on remote storage, the mount's Remote Metadata Index records Remote-attributed actions when scans detect those changes after the initial baseline. Those actions can generate notification emails.

For Partner Channel routes, match the Channel path recorded in History. For _/Sites/ views and Files.com Remote Server mounts, both Sites record activity and each Site's email notifications match its own paths. Access Across Sites and Storage explains these records.

Use the Outbound Emails log to trace a message by recipient and time. If no matching message was generated, check the originating activity, notification settings, recipient eligibility, and sending interval.

A Success result confirms submission through the configured delivery path, not arrival in the recipient's inbox. For Custom SMTP, continue with your provider's message trace. For Failure or Suppressed, inspect the logged message and any SMTP response before resending. A generated message alone does not establish that the recipient address or delivery configuration is correct.

Email troubleshooting explains how to trace submission, investigate recipient-side filtering, and handle temporary or permanent bounces. If the message remains unexplained, provide Files.com Support with the delivery details so the failed stage can be investigated.

Deleting Notifications

Site Administrators can remove other users' email notifications across the site; Folder Admins can remove them for folders they administer. Users can stop their own emails by deleting a notification that targets only their account, or by unsubscribing from it.

Notifications for Deleted Users

When a user account is deleted, any email notifications associated with that user are automatically removed.

Notifications for Disabled Users

When a user account is disabled, email notifications are not automatically deleted for the user, but emails will not be delivered until the user's account meets the requirements for receiving email notifications.

Notifications After Folder Permission Is Removed

Removing a user's permission on the notification's folder ends the user's access to the folder. It does not delete or disable an email notification the user created or that an administrator created for them. The notification continues sending activity emails as long as the user meets the requirements for receiving email notifications. This applies whether the permission was assigned directly or through a group.

After access is removed, the user cannot open the folder or manage the notification. To stop the notification, a Site Administrator or Folder Admin for the folder must delete it. The user can stop future emails by using the unsubscribe link in a notification email.

Unsubscribing from Some or All Email Notifications

Each notification email includes a link at the bottom to Update your mail preferences or unsubscribe from these e-mails. Following this link opens your email preferences, where you can disable individual folder notifications or use the Permanent Removal Option to opt out of all future emails for all notifications. Choosing Don't email me anything, ever again is permanent and cannot be undone, even by Files.com support staff.

The unsubscribe link cannot be removed from emails sent from your Files.com site. This link is required to maintain compliance with national and international privacy laws governing email distribution. The link also helps keep emails sent by Files.com from being treated as spam by other mail servers.