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Use Cases

Snapshots fit a range of preservation, backup, and sharing scenarios. The examples below show how customers use snapshots in practice.

A legal hold is when certain files are kept safe and cannot be changed, deleted, or destroyed because they might be needed for a legal case, investigation, or audit. This ensure the files stay true and reliable for any legal or official needs.

If there is a potential legal dispute with a counterparty, for example, a site administrator might create a snapshot of all the files that can be accessed by the counterparty. Once it is finalized, the snapshot preserves the files as they were the date the snapshot was created without requiring any changes to the folders or user accounts that organization may have access to.

Backup of External Storage

With snapshots, you can create a read-only archive of any set of files associated with your site, even files located in other systems that you access via Remote Server Mounts. This can reduce the risk of losing access to files stored in external systems.

Site administrators can create snapshots of the desired files on a scheduled basis and set expiration dates on each snapshot.

AI Assistant File Sharing

When you ask the AI AssistantExternal LinkThis link leads to an external website and will open in a new tab to generate a file (a dashboard, chart, CSV export, or similar), it creates a snapshot and gives you a link to access the file directly in the conversation. The snapshot expires after 24 hours and is private to you.

This lets the AI Assistant deliver files to you without requiring write access to any specific folder on your site, and without leaving files behind after the session is over.

When you create a new Share Link, you can choose to create it as either a snapshot or live link. Snapshot share links will automatically store the shared files within a snapshot. When the share link and the snapshot expire, the snapshot files are removed. This allows share links to send point-in-time versions of files rather than a live view into a set of files that might change.