Site Administrators and Workspace Administrators can create, configure, and remove Partners from your site. Partners can be created one at a time or in bulk by uploading a CSV file.

Setting Up a New Partner

Setting up a Partner takes just five steps for a fully working integration. Create the Partner, grant its access, add its channels, add its users, and verify the result.

Every Partner starts as a named container with a root folder. Everything the Partner's users do will be confined to that root folder, and they will see it as the top level of your site no matter how they connect. Creating Partners below walks through the create-time settings, which cover delegation, ownership, and lifecycle options you can set now or return to later.

Grant Access

Folder permissions are assigned to the Partner itself, and every Partner User inherits them. Permissions can only grant paths inside the Partner root folder.

Add Partner Channels

If the relationship involves exchanging files in both directions, add one or more Partner Channels. A channel creates the exchange folders and applies their permissions in one step, so for many partner relationships no manually assigned permissions are needed at all.

Like folder permissions, channels are shared by all of the Partner's users. Every user in the Partner sees the same channel folders and works with the same access to them.

Add Partner Users

Add Partner Users for the partner's people and automated systems. If you are delegating user management to the partner, designate at least one Partner Admin.

Verify the Setup

Sign in as one of the Partner's users (a test account works well). Confirm that the root folder appears as the top level of the site, that the channel folders are visible, and that files can be downloaded from the To Partner Folder and uploaded into the From Partner Folder.

After that, the day-to-day lifecycle largely runs itself. Partner Admins handle their own joiners and leavers within the limits you set, and User Lifecycle Rules clean up inactive accounts automatically.

Creating Partners

To create a Partner, provide a Name and a Root Folder. Every Partner Name must be unique across your site, and the Name is also the lookup key when you perform a bulk CSV import of Partner Users.

The Allow User Creation, Allow Credential Changes, Allow 2FA Bypass, and Allow Providing GPG Keys settings control what operations Partner Admins can perform.

A Responsible Party assigns an internal owner to the Partner relationship. A separate setting controls whether copies of notifications sent to the Partner's users are also routed to the Responsible Party.

Tags allow targeted User Lifecycle Rules that impact only users in matching Partners.

The Notes field records information about the Partner, such as deadlines, compliance requirements, contact information for key people in the Partner's organization, or reminders about workflows.

Bulk Creating Partners

You can create many Partners at once using a CSV file that contains the information for your new Partners. This is commonly used when migrating from a legacy system, but it is available at any time.

Removing Partners

Deleting a Partner removes the entire relationship in one step. All associated Partner Users are deleted with it, and all of the Partner's settings and configurations, including its IP Whitelist entries, are removed automatically. The files and folders in the Partner's root folder are not deleted. They remain on your site, so removing a Partner cannot cause accidental data loss.

Managing Partners