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Amazon SNS

Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service)External LinkThis link leads to an external website and will open in a new tab is a fully managed "publisher-subscriber" (pub-sub) messaging service provided by AWS. It behaves like a broadcast station: a sender (the publisher) sends a message to a Topic, and that message is instantly pushed out to many different listeners (the subscribers) at the same time.

At the heart of this integration is the SNS Topic, a communication channel for your notifications. When our platform sends an event to your Topic, it "fans out" that information to all authorized subscribers. This means a single activity alert can concurrently trigger AWS Lambda functions, send messages to SQS queues, or post to webhooks, allowing your various services to react to events in real-time.

Beyond system integrations, Amazon SNS also supports direct alerts for humans. It can route notifications to mobile push alerts, SMS text messages, or email, ensuring the right information reaches the right person at the right time.

By configuring an Amazon SNS Topic within our platform, you enable us to send messages about specific folder activities directly to your AWS infrastructure. You maintain full control within the AWS Console over who receives that data.

How Amazon SNS Notifications Work

Sending messages to Amazon SNS from Files.com requires an SNS Topic and IAM user to be configured within AWS. The IAM user's credentials are used to publish messages to the SNS Topic.

After the SNS Topic and IAM user are configured in AWS, add an Amazon SNS Topic notification within your Files.com site.

When you create the Amazon SNS Topic notification in your Files.com site, you provide the ARN of the SNS Topic where messages will be sent, along with the credentials for the IAM user.

When matching file activity happens in your folder, a message is sent to Amazon SNS with the details. All of the message handling happens within Amazon SNS, including delivering to all of the message subscribers.

What is Included in Amazon SNS Notifications From Files.com

SNS Notifications use a JSON message structure containing the fields listed in this table.

FieldPossible/Example valuesDescription
source"Files.com"Where the SNS message came from. This is always Files.com.
actioncreate, copy, move, archived_delete, update, read, destroyThe type of operation performed.
interfaceweb, ftp, robot, sftp, dav, desktop, restapi, office, mobile, as2, inbound_email, remoteThe interface used for the action.
pathpath/to/fileFor create, update, read, destroy actions: the file or folder path.
For copy, move, archived_delete actions: the original path for the file or folder.
destinationpath/to/destFor copy, move, archived_delete actions: the target path for the file or folder.
atISO-8601 timestamp string (example: 2026-02-25T14:03:11+00:00)Event timestamp
usernameUsername string or absentUsername who performed the action
ipIP string, empty stringThe IP address of the session that started the action.
type file or directoryItem type, when available.
sizeInteger bytes oFile size, when available.

Configuration in AWS

Adding an Amazon SNS Topic notification in your Files.com site requires you to first create an SNS Topic in your AWS account. The AWS documentation has instructions on Creating an Amazon SNS TopicExternal LinkThis link leads to an external website and will open in a new tab. Take note of the SNS Topic ARN and the region used.

The Amazon SNS Topic notification requires credentials that AWS can use to authenticate your requests. Create a new IAM user and grant them permission to publish to your topic. AWS publishes a help document with an example access control policyExternal LinkThis link leads to an external website and will open in a new tab. You will need the credentials for this user when you configure the notification in your Files.com site.

Configuration in Files.com

Site administrators and users with admin rights to at least one folder can manage Amazon SNS notifications within Folder Settings.

You will first need to create an Amazon SNS topic and then obtain its unique ARN (Amazon Resource Names) to add an Amazon SNS notification.

When you create a new Amazon SNS Notification in your Files.com site, you must provide all of the settings that would allow your site to communicate with the Amazon SNS topic. In the SNS Topic ARN field, enter the ARN for your topic. Choose the correct region for your topic in the AWS Region setting. Add your AWS Access Key ID and AWS Secret Key to provide the Amazon IAM credentials for sending messages to the topic.

Multiple SNS Topic ARNs can be added to the same Amazon SNS Notification, but the same AWS credentials are used to publish to each topic. If you need different credentials per topic ARN, add a separate Amazon SNS Notification for each set of credentials.

Select the folder to monitor for activity. By default, activity in subfolders will also generate messages; you can change the settings to only include activity directly in the chosen folder. Activity in a mounted folder within your folder will not generate messages if it occurs outside of the Files.com platform.

By default, Amazon SNS notifications will trigger for any file or folder action (create, read, update, delete, move, or copy) within the configured folder. You can limit which actions generate Amazon SNS notifications.