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Options for Email Notifications

Every email notification has 3 required settings: the user or group who will receive the emails, the path that is being monitored for activity, and the frequency those mails will be sent. Other options let you fine-tune the notifications so you're notified only about the activity of interest.

Choosing Which Users' Activity Triggers A Notification

By default, activity from any user in any group (except the recipient) triggers an email notification.

Site Administrators can narrow this by choosing a list of groups and a list of users whose file activity generates the notification. Only Site Administrators can set these options, because viewing the full list of users or groups requires administrative permissions.

Users are not notified about their own file activities by default, since that generates numerous redundant emails. You can include this type of activity in the notification's settings.

Recursion Option for Notifications

Each notification includes a setting for whether matching activity in the folder's subfolders triggers the notification.

By default, notifications are fully recursive: activity in any subfolder triggers the notification. Non-recursive notifications are the exception rather than the rule, and defaulting to recursion prevents a common pitfall where users miss important activity in subdirectories because they forgot to enable recursion.

When you configure a notification to exclude subfolders, only activity on files directly in the notification's folder generates mail messages.

Limit Types of Activity That Trigger a Notification

A notification only generates an email in response to the file actions listed in the notification's settings. The file activities that generate an email notification are uploading, downloading, deleting, and copying or moving files into the target folder.

Unless you change the default actions in your notification, only uploads will cause an email notification. Uploading is the default because it is the activity that most often requires a response.

Any activity that matches the selected types is included, regardless of the interface used. Previewing a text file is logged as a download and triggers download notifications, even when the file isn't obviously saved to the previewer's device. Similarly, editing a file using an integrated online editor both downloads and uploads the file as it moves between your storage and the editor system, and triggers the corresponding notifications.

Limit File Names That Generate a Notification

You can limit the file names that generate a notification. By default, any file name can trigger the email notification.

Custom Notification Subject and Message

You can set a Custom Subject line for each notification email in that notification's settings. When left blank, the default subject line ("[Site Name] Activity Notification") is used instead.

Each email notification can include a Custom Message, which is included in the contents of each email message.

Use these options when you create multiple notifications across different folders for the same people. A targeted subject and message helps recipients immediately understand the context and know what action to take.

Activity from web visitors to Share Links is not included by default. You can include this activity in the notification's settings. Enabling this setting only alerts you that file activity happened; it does not include any registration information.

Share Link Notifications are a separate feature designed to support the workflow around Share Links. If your intent is to monitor that a Share Link was received, or that your recipient uploaded to a Share Link, enable those notifications on your Share Link rather than creating an email notification.

User Option for Daily Email Notification Send Time

If a user has any notifications that are sent once per day, the Daily email notification send time user setting selects the hour when those daily notifications are sent. Site Administrators can modify this value for a user in the user's settings. All users can change their own Daily email notification send time. The setting is only visible in the web interface for a user who has at least one notification configured to be sent once per day.

When a user has email notifications set to Daily delivery, those emails are only generated during the specified hour. If a daily notification isn't being received, check the send time for the user.

Site Administrators can control whether notification emails include a link to the login page with the Show "Log In" link in email setting.

By default, email notifications include a link for the user to access your site. This simplifies the workflow for users who need to immediately follow up when they receive a notification.

Administrators can also create a notification that alerts a user to a folder they do not have permission to access. This is useful when staff are responsible for confirming that a file exchange is happening but do not need to access the contents of the transferred files. In that case, the link includes a path the user can't reach, and clicking it generates an error. Disabling the Show "Log In" link in email setting prevents these errors.