ExaVault

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All ExaVault customers will be migrated to Files.com's global, cloud-native MFT platform.

Our team has devoted hundreds of hours to making the transition as seamless as possible so you don't need to worry about "starting over" in a new system. Whenever possible, your files, users, and settings are automatically migrated from ExaVault to the platform without requiring your attention. Even passwords and keys have been securely transferred so you won't need to make changes to your client configurations.

That's the good news. The great news is that Files.com provides more functionality and flexibility than the ExaVault system does. As the saying goes, with a great platform comes a little bit of learning curve. Some of the Files.com features are named differently from their ExaVault equivalents, and they may allow more complex setup. This document will guide you through the growing pains and help you make use of the capabilities that are now available to you.

Our support and engineering teams have worked diligently to make this upgrade as effortless as possible, and to minimize the heavy lifting on your side. Whether you used the web interface or FTP to access your ExaVault account (or both), you probably won't have to make any configuration changes to get up and running on the Files.com platform.

Just as with ExaVault, there's three things you need to connect to Files.com via the web: the site address of your account, your username, and your password.

Site Address: You can still use your old account address from ExaVault to connect on the web, or you can connect to Files.com directly. For example, if your old domain was example.exavault.com, connecting to either example.exavault.com or example.files.com will take you to your account. There are no plans to discontinue your old account address; the Files.com platform will support the exavault.com domains for the foreseeable future.

Username: You will use the same username for your Files.com site that you used with your ExaVault account. Nothing changes.

Password: Your password is not changed during the migration to Files.com. No changes are needed.

Once you are logged into the Files.com web interface, downloading is very similar to ExaVault's web file manager:

You can click on a file name to preview and download the files.

To download multiple items at once, tick the checkboxes to the left of each item and then click the Download button in the toolbar that appears at the top of the page.

If you can upload within your current folder, you can click the Upload files button a the top of the page to upload any file from your computer. If your web browser supports it, you'll also see a button for Upload folder that allows you to select an entire folder (or folder tree) to upload at once.

To connect to your account using an FTP (or FTPS or SFTP) program, you'll use three things: the site address, your username, and either your password or SSH key.

Site Address: You can still use your old account address from ExaVault to connect on the web, or you can connect to files.com directly. For example, if your old domain was example.exavault.com, use either example.exavault.com or example.files.com to access your account. There are no plans to discontinue your old account address; the Files.com platform will support the exavault.com domains for the foreseeable future.

Username: You will use the same username for your Files.com site that you used with your ExaVault account. Nothing changes.

Password: Your password was imported automatically and is not changed by migrating to Files.com.

SSH Key: SSH public keys are automatically imported during the migration, so if you connect using an SSH key, that same key should continue to work in the same way as before.

Action Needed - If you are connected using an IP Address instead of a hostname.

If you were connecting to your account via the static IP address (67.208.93.232 or 67.208.93.242), you must update your setting to point at a Files.com address instead. We strongly recommend using your account's hostname (such as example.files.com). If your client requires an IP address to connect rather than a hostname, follow up with your site administrator to learn the new address. If you are the site administrator, we recommend enabling a custom domain for your site.

Files.com supports the same standard FTP and SFTP commands that were available on ExaVault. Once you have connected to your account with your FTP program, uploading and downloading will follow the same steps you've been using.

The legacy ExaVault platform supported automatically creating a folder that does not exist when uploading via FTP. This is not standard FTP behavior, and it is not supported on the Files.com platform. As a best practice, you should review any FTP-based automation scripts to verify that they are not relying upon this behavior.

There are some key differences between the legacy ExaVault platform and Files.com. These have wide-ranging impacts.

Files.com is designed for case-insensitive storage of file and folder paths for compatibility with many enterprise software storage integrations. This means that filenames that differ only by uppercase versus lowercase are treated as identical by the platform.

Check Your SFTP and FTP Scripts

The FTP standard is ambiguous on whether the FTP LIST command should include place holders representing the current directory (represented as ".") or the parent directory (represented as "..") in the contents of a folder. As a result, there isn't an accepted practice from every FTP service, and many clients will automatically suppress or add the entries themselves.

On ExaVault, the FTP command LIST result does include the placeholders for the current and parent folders, but the Files.com FTP service does not return them. If your FTP or SFTP batch scripts rely on the "." or ".." entries being present in the list, you may need to update those scripts to avoid unexpected failures.

Whether an FTP server LIST command returns the placeholders or not, commands such as "cd .." will continue to work the same on both platforms, as the meaning of the command is still "Change my working directory to the parent folder"

ExaVault's user permissions mostly correspond with the permissions that can be assigned to users in the Files.com platform, with some notable changes.

There is an Admin permission on the Files.com platform which provides admin-level access (such as changing folder settings) without providing site-wide administrator access.

Lower-level permissions, such as the ability to list the contents of a folder, are automatically granted if a user has higher-level permission, such as the ability to download from a file or folder.

The table below summarizes the equivalent permissions from each platform.

ExaVault user management supported one set of permissions for all the files and folders a user could access. The Files.com platform is more robust, allowing for varied permissions applied across separate, unrelated folders for a single user.

Many ExaVault customers had to employ a variety of unsatisfying workarounds to the user security system, such as:

Assigning multiple user logins to the same person so they could access one folder with one set of rights and a different folder with a different set of rights.

Duplicating files and folders within the folder system so that items could be shared amongst departments.

Using Shared Folders to make items available outside of a user's permissions.

If your account needed to make use of any of these workarounds, it might be time to update your user permissions to take advantage of the flexibility provided by Files.com

On ExaVault, a home folder for a user was always represented to that user as the entire contents of the account. Within Files.com, there is a setting to mimic this behavior for FTP connections, but not for the web interface. This means that users will be able to see the full path to any items they can access, even though they will not be able to interact with any files or folders that they do not have permissions to.

On the ExaVault platform, most settings take effect at the account level, except for sharing, notifications and direct links. The Files.com platform makes many more settings available on each folder. Site admins and users with admin access to a folder can:

Automatically rename files uploaded to a specific folder.

Limit which types of files can be uploaded to a folder.

Automatically delete files in a folder after a certain number of days.

Change the logo that is displayed when a user accesses a folder.

Automatically encrypt or decrypt files uploaded to a folder.

Manage other users' email notifications for activity in a folder.

You may need to update rules for spam filters to ensure you can receive important messages, such as Password Resets, Notifications of Failed Automations, Share Link Invitation Emails and Site Administration Emails

On ExaVault, system messages came from email@exavault.com. Once your site is migrated to the new platform, those system emails will be sent from no-reply@files.com, and the Reply-To address will be the email address that was originally used to sign up for ExaVault.

ExaVault operated under different pricing than Files.com. On ExaVault, accounts were not billed for individual users, nor for exceeding storage space. This also meant that it wasn't always economical to add all of your users to the system, depending on the plan. The Files.com platform does include billable users and storage overage charges. Along with all of its other features, Files.com provides the tools to help you monitor and manage your costs, such as the Account Usage dashboard.

Upgrading to the Files.com platform does not automatically change your billing. Files.com sales staff will reach out a few months after your migration to review your contract.

To manage your ExaVault account - such as changing your account billing or plan, it was necessary to maintain a separate set of credentials for the Client Portal. Files.com provides a single web interface for interacting with your site, including designating specific users as Billing administrators, who can view and update information regarding your account, payments, and invoices.

ExaVault had data centers only within the US, and only provided an English-language interface. Files.com maintains service and storage instances in AWS across the globe with a fully internationalized interface available in 6 languages.

There are several other key improvements the Files.com global platform offers:

Administrators can restrict some or all of the account storage to a specific region (USA, Australia, Canada, UK, EU, Japan, or Singapore).

By default, Files.com will automatically route users to the fastest transfers based on their physical location.

Individual users can choose a different preferred language setting from your site's preferred language.

ExaVault's API documentation and SDK often lagged behind the development of new features. Files.com takes an API-first approach to all development. This has several key benefits:

API documentation and SDKs are auto-generated at the same time that new features are released.

SDKs are always up-to-date with the current functionality available in the Files.com platform.

The Files.com web interface, Desktop app, and FTP backend use the exact same API that we publish to our customers, so everything you can do in the UI can also be accomplished using the API or with one of our SDKs.

One of the unique benefits of Files.com's SDKs is our Command Line Interface, or CLI, application. The CLI is a turnkey, cross-platform API client for interacting with the Files.com API without needing to develop a full application. The CLI provides unlimited potential for extending the Files.com platform to support your business flows with as little investment as possible.

This section tells you how to find the equivalent of ExaVault features.

When you first log into your account, the web application will automatically take you to the files section. Just like with ExaVault, this is where you will do anything relating to the files and folders within your account. The Files option in the left-hand navigation will take you back to the file manager.

The Files.com File Manager does not display the sizes of folders' contents in the file listing. This is a change from ExaVault, where an entry representing a folder also included the total size of all its contents. If a folder's contents are stored within the Files.com platform, the entry in the Size column will include a button to calculate the current size of the folder. If a folder is a remote server mount, no button to calculate the size is displayed because no Files.com storage is being used for the folder.

Learn more about the using the Files.com File Manager

In ExaVault, the Users page was its own section of the left-hand navigation. Now, you'll find it in the settings of the web application. To get there, type Manage Users in the search box at the top of every page and then click on the matching result.

Read more about creating and managing your users

Just like with ExaVault, you have the ability to create special links so that external users can access some of your files without needing their own credentials. ExaVault's Shared Folder feature is replaced on Files.com with the Share Links feature.

You can create new share links from within the files area by checking the items to be shared and then clicking the New Share button at the top of the files listing.

You can view your existing share links by clicking on the Sharing option in the left-hand navigation.

Share Links offer powerful functionality compared to Shared Folders:

Share multiple folders at once.

Share the same folder in multiple share links with different levels of access.

Customize the URL for a share link.

Limit the number of times a share link visitor can use their link.

Add a custom registration form to collect information from share link visitors.

Create Clickwraps - terms that users must agree to before they access your share link.

In the legacy ExaVault platform, deleting a folder that was Shared or set up to Receive would also invalidate those links to the folder. Your Shared Folder or Receive entry would be set to inactive.

In the Files.com platform, deleting an item that is part of a Share Link does not disable the link. When a file or folder that was shared with a recipient is removed, the recipient will see a placeholder in their link indicating that the item was deleted.

ExaVault's Receive Folders allowed users to create a method for external contacts to submit files to your account without needing their own user credentials. The Receive Folder feature is replaced on Files.com with the Share Links feature - when you create your new share link, you'll set the "Allowed Actions" to permit uploads.

You can create new share links from within the files area by checking the folder to be shared and then clicking the New Share button at the top of the files listing.

You can view your existing share links by clicking on the Sharing option in the left-hand navigation.

Share Links offer powerful functionality compared to Receive Folders:

Share multiple folders at once and allow share link recipients to choose which folder(s) they will upload to.

Use the same folder in multiple share links.

Customize the URL for a share link.

Limit the number of times a share link visitor can use their link.

Add a custom registration form to collect information from share link visitors, and re-use that same form for multiple share links.

Create Clickwraps - terms that users must agree to before they access your share link.

Another feature which is very similar to Receive Folders is Files.com's Inboxes. Just like receive folders, inboxes allow you to collect registration information and provides a way for external parties to upload files to you without requiring a user login.

There are some key differences between Inboxes and Share Links that will determine which makes sense for you:

Inboxes can only be created by site administrators, while Share Links can be created by any user who has both "SHARE" and "WRITE" permissions to the folder they're using.

Inboxes are permanent and account-wide, while Share Links have an expiration.

Inbox links can be displayed on the login page of your account.

Inboxes can receive files attached to an email.

ExaVault's Send Files functionality allowed you to send specific files and folders to your external contacts without requiring you to set up user credentials. On Files.com, you will use the Share Links feature to send files to those contacts.

You can create new share links from within the files area by checking the items to be shared and then clicking the New Share button at the top of the files listing.

You can view your existing share links by clicking on the Sharing option in the left-hand navigation.

Share Links offer powerful functionality compared to Shared Folders:

Customize the URL for a share link.

Limit the number of times a share link visitor can use their link.

Add a custom registration form to collect information from share link visitors.

Create Clickwraps - terms that users must agree to before they access your share link.

On the ExaVault legacy platform, sending files actually created a copy ("snapshot") of the items you sent, and that snapshot existed independent of the files in your account. This meant you could send a file and then delete it from your account, and your recipient would still be able to access their file. In addition, it is possible on the legacy platform to directly upload a file during the send process, and that file would not appear in the site.

On the Files.com platform, share links now support two different modes - Live Share Links generate a link to the live version of the files and folders you're sharing, while Snapshot Share Links provide access to a read-only copy created at the time of sending.

If you create a Live Share Link for a file and then delete the file from the site, your share link recipient will not be able to access the file. Similarly, if you create a Live Share Link for a folder and then change the contents of that folder, the share link contents will reflect the changes you made.

If you create a Snapshot Share Link for a file and then delete the file from the site, your share link recipient will be able to access the file because their link is to a copy of the file. These copies are stored in a hidden, read-only folder, which you will see listed in your History Logs as _/Snapshots.

Special Behavior for the Snapshots Folder

The folder _/Snapshots cannot be removed from your site. It is not displayed in the listing of folders in your site.

Only site administrators can access the _/Snapshots folder. You cannot grant any permissions to the _/Snapshots folder.

The _/Snapshots folder is controlled by the system, and site administrators cannot make changes to the folder.

When a Snapshot Share Link is disabled, the files associated with that Share Link will be automatically deleted by the system.

The _/Snapshots folder does count as disk usage for your site.

Files.com's email Notifications are very similar to the notifications in ExaVault.

To create a new notification in the Files area, click the Folder Settings button. If you're a site administrator, you'll see a wide array of powerful features that you can set up for your folder, including Email Notifications. If you're not a site administrator, you'll only see a form to create your own notification for the folder.

To view a listing of all your notifications, click on your username at the top of the screen and choose My Account. You can update, remove or add new notifications from that page for any folder you have access to.

Files.com Notifications include some exciting improvements:

Site admins can manage notifications for other users and even for user groups.

Specify a pattern to match against filenames and limit a notification to a specific file type.

Choose how often notifications are delivered.

ExaVault account administrators have access to Session Logs, or Activity Logs. These are also made available in Files.com as History to site administrators or to users who have the "History" permission for a folder (for some plans).

To access the logs for a specific folder, click on the File History button that appears at the top of the file listing for your folder. If you are a site admin, type History in the search box at the top of every page and then click on the matching result to see the site-wide audit log.

Just like ExaVault, the FIles.com History listing allows you to filter the history by a date range, the type of action, the user, the file and folder paths and IP address. You can also export the listing to a CSV file for importing into a different system.

Files.com retains file history for 7 years, a huge improvement from the 90 days of retention offered on ExaVault.

ExaVault Session Activity Logs Are Not Migrated

The session activity history from your ExaVault account is not migrated to your new Files.com site. If you need to maintain an archive of the data, you should log in before your scheduled migration window and export the logs through the ExaVault Web File Manager. If your site is very recently migrated, you can submit a ticket for our Customer Support team to export the logs from your ExaVault account on your behalf.

In your ExaVault account, administrators can assign a direct link to a folder, making it available for web downloads without tracking any share invitations. Now that your site is migrated to Files.com, you have access to Public Hosting.

With Public Hosting, also known as Publicly Serve or Web Hosting, site admins (or user with Admin rights to a folder) can assign a public URL to that folder and all of its contents.

Public Hosting offers several improvements over the ExaVault feature:

You can customize the link to the folder, and prevent revealing the entire path within your account.

You can create multiple distinct URLs to the same folder.

You can enable HTTP basic authentication, assigning a username and password to the link.

Make changes to your site's branding, such as the logo or custom domain. To get there, type Branding in the search box at the top of every page and then click on the matching result.

In addition to the customizations you're used to, Files.com offers even more options as part of the Site Identity settings:

Choose custom interface colors.

Add your own custom icons as well as the site logo.

Display a different logo in the web interface for various folders.

Add a custom header or footer to the web interface.

Add a message to your login page.

Webhook settings are migrated along with your account settings, so any webhook you have configured on your ExaVault account will be created for your Files.com site. As much as possible, the Files.com webhook request will be identical to what was sent from the ExaVault platform. The X-ExaVault-Signature header will be calculated in the same way after the migration.

Changes to Migrated Webhooks

Webhook requests sent by the Files.com platform will include a User-Agent header of Files.com Webhook.

For v1-formatted webhooks, creating a folder will trigger a request with the action of "Upload" rather than "Create Folder".

For v1-formatted webhooks, renaming an item will trigger a request with the action of "Move" rather than "Rename".

For v2-formatted webhooks, creating a folder will trigger a request with the action of resources.upload instead of resources.createFolder.

For v2-formatted webhooks, renaming an item will trigger a request with the action of resources.move rather than resources.rename.

For v2-formatted webhooks, some of the date fields, such as accessedAt or createdBy are not supported for every operation, and will be null.

For v2-formatted webhooks, the eventData.resources.hash will contain a placeholder value.

Managing Webhooks

Site administrators and users with admin rights to a folder can configure Webhooks. To get there, type Webhooks in the search box at the top of every page and then click on the matching result. Users with admin rights to a folder can manage webhooks for a folder from the Folder Settings button within that folder.

The Webhooks feature of the Files.com platform offers some improvements over the previous platform:

Assign a backup URL for the webhook listener, in case the primary listener is offline.

Add custom headers to the webhook request sent by Files.com.

Use custom patterns so that only certain types of files can trigger the webhook.

If you wish to use the Files.com body format rather than the legacy v1 or v2 formats offered from the ExaVault platform, other features are also available:

Change the HTTP method of the webhook request sent by Files.com.

Use XML encoding for the webhook request

Attach the file which triggered the webhook to the request sent by Files.com

To view the results of webhook calls made from your Files.com site to other systems, type Webhook logs in the search box at the top of every page and then click on the matching result. Webhook logs are retained by the system for 30 days.

The ExaVault Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) feature is known as Two-factor Authentication (2FA) in the Files.com platform.

If your plan allows it, you can require all the users of your site, or just the site administrators, to use a two-factor login when they connect. The Files.com 2FA feature provides several key improvements over the other platform - site administrators can make up to 5 different 2FA methods available to users, and can exempt individual users from 2FA requirements.

Site administrators can set the 2FA requirements for their site. Type Two-factor authentication in the search box at the top of every page and then click on the matching result.

Each user can locate their own 2FA settings by clicking on their username in the upper-right corner and locating the Two-factor authentication section.

Your IP Address Restrictions from ExaVault are automatically migrated to the IP Whitelist settings within your Files.com site. Site administrators can manage a sitewide IP Whitelist. To get there, type "IP Whitelist/Blacklist" in the search box at the top of every page and then click on the matching result.

IP Whitelists have some important changes from the previous platform which include:

Individual users can be restricted to specific IP addresses.

Individual users can be allowed to connect from any IP address, not just those listed as allowed for the site.

Files.com also supports allowing or disallowing connections from specific countries (which is enforced by IP address).

Notes for IP Address Restrictions are not Migrated

Within ExaVault, it was possible to add a note to an IP range, which could be used to indicate which user was expected to connect from that range. Files.com allows you to assign IP addresses to individual users instead. If your site was migrated and you need access to the original notes, contact Customer Support for help.

Files.com provides an Account Usage dashboard to track the amount of storage space, transfer, users and API calls that have been used by your site. This can be accessed by site administrators. To get there, type Usage in the search box at the top of every page and then click on the matching result.

Exceeding your account's storage

One key difference between ExaVault and Files.com is what happens when you exceed your account's storage space. On ExaVault, uploads would be disabled for accounts that had filled their storage space, which could cause disruption for automated processes. To prevent possible disruption of your critical transfers, Files.com sites will allow transfers to continue at an incremental cost.

ExaVault's self-service customer support model operated mostly via receiving email requests, which customer support staff would attempt to match up with an account owner. This could result in delays in receiving support. At Files.com, we take pride in providing you with quality support from the first point of contact, which is possible because only site administrators can submit a support ticket through the web interface. This allows us to look in detail at your site configuration, user history, and billing information.

You'll be able to specify the impact an issue has on your business (from Low to Critical) and provide customer service with the appropriate level of access to your account.

If a site administrator isn't able to submit a support ticket, you can also email the our Customer Support team at support@files.com or call (800) 286-8372 Monday through Friday from 9am to 8pm Eastern.

Some ExaVault customers had access to the Trash Can feature, and could restore recently-deleted items to their ExaVault account, but most ExaVault customers could not reliably restore deleted files. Files.com provides a configurable retention period for deleted files, and our support team has procedures that will allow them to restore deleted files which you may request via support ticket.

No patience? No problem! Use the table below to locate the help documentation for the feature you need.