Sites, Workspaces & Child Sites

A Files.com site contains the configuration and resources your organization uses to work with files. Workspaces organize related resources within that site. Child Sites create additional sites with their own configuration. These boundaries let you arrange work around a business function, team, environment, or external relationship without treating all of those needs as the same kind of separation.

The Site Boundary

A site has its own users, folders, connections, workflows, and settings. Site-wide choices include authentication providers, security policy, domains, and branding. Site Administrators manage those choices and have authority across the site's Workspaces.

Every site starts with a Default Workspace. A deployment can operate entirely there using users, groups, and folder permissions. Additional boundaries become useful when particular resources need to be kept together or separately administered.

Workspaces Group Resources And Flows

A Workspace has a root folder and its own operational resources, including users, groups, Partners, Remote Servers, Syncs, and Automations. A supplier-invoice Workspace can collect the supplier relationships, intake folders, accounting connection, and related delivery flows. A payroll Workspace can organize a different set of files and processes even when the same IT team maintains both.

The grouping can therefore follow the work itself. Related flows can share a Workspace, and a functional area can deserve a Workspace without having a separate administrator. Where delegation is useful, Workspace Administrators manage resources within their assigned scope.

Workspaces share the site's authentication configuration, security policy, domains, branding, and billing. Some settings are defined centrally but used by Workspace resources: for example, a Site Administrator creates a Schedule that a Workspace's Automation can use. What a Workspace Contains distinguishes scoped resources from shared configuration.

Folder permissions still determine ordinary access inside a Workspace. Creating a Workspace does not give all of its users access to every folder. Custom Workspace users are scoped to their Workspace; Site Administrators can grant cross-workspace access to Default Workspace users or groups when their work spans several areas.

Child Sites Separate Site Configuration

A Child Site is another Files.com site under a Parent Site. It has its own users, files, authentication providers, security and protocol settings, domains, branding, and workflows. A subsidiary requiring its own domain and identity configuration can use a Child Site, then organize its functional areas into Workspaces within it.

The Parent Site retains an administrative relationship with its Child Sites. Parent Site Administrators can administer them, and management policies can constrain settings that Child Site Administrators may change. Usage rolls up for billing. Separate site configuration therefore does not mean there is no parent administration or shared commercial relationship.

Storage location is a related but distinct choice. Regional Storage can place different folders in different regions within one site. A requirement to store a folder in a particular region does not alone determine whether another site is necessary.

Partners Within This Structure

A Partner represents an external organization and belongs to a Workspace, including the Default Workspace. Its users inherit the Partner's folder permissions and are confined to its root folder. The supplier relationship can therefore live beside the internal files, connections, and workflows that support it, while the supplier's access remains limited.

Sites and Workspaces establish where resources belong and who administers them. Partners establish an external relationship within that arrangement. Account Structure & Environments applies these concepts to choosing a deployment, including test environments and work managed by a common IT team.