A Partner in Files.com is a container for external organizations (such as vendors, clients, agencies, and suppliers) that need access to your site.

Each Partner has a list of associated Partner Users, a root folder that scopes their access, permissions that apply to all of their users, and settings that control what Partner Admins can do. Internal Notes help Site Administrators track information about each Partner, and Tags let User Lifecycle Rules target Partner Users for automatic removal when inactive.

Identifying Information

Each Partner has a Name and Internal Notes. Only Site Administrators and Workspace Administrators can view Internal Notes.

Root Folder and Permissions

The Root folder restricts all of a Partner's users to one section of your site and prevents them from accessing anything outside of the Root folder path. Partner Users see that folder as the top of the site through the Partner Root File System Layout, which always applies, regardless of how the user connects (web interface, API, SFTP, or any other supported protocol).

Site Administrators and Workspace Administrators grant permissions to the Partner rather than to individual Partner Users. Partner Users inherit only the permissions granted to their Partner. Permissions for a Partner can only grant access to paths contained within the Partner's root folder. Partners cannot be granted admin, sharing, or history permissions.

Partner Channels

Partner Channels set up a structured, two-way exchange path within a Partner's root folder, pairing a folder for files you deliver to the partner with a folder for files the partner submits to you and configuring the permissions for both automatically.

Partner Admin Settings

Partner Admin Settings control what administrative actions Partner Admins can perform for their organization. These options let Site Administrators and Workspace Administrators decide how much self-management to delegate while keeping overall governance intact. When none of these settings are enabled, Partner Admins behave the same as other Partner Users.

Allow user creation gives Partner Admins the ability to add and remove users for their Partner. This lets external teams manage their own accounts without depending on your Site Administrators for every user change.

Allow credential changes lets Partner Admins reset passwords and manage SSH keys for their Partner Users. Granting this permission lets Partner Admins handle access updates securely and immediately.

Allow bypassing 2FA lets Partner Admins change whether individual Partner Users are required to configure Two-factor authentication.

Allow Providing GPG Keys grants Partner Admins access to the GPG Key Manager, so they can provide the keys to be used for automatic encryption, decryption, or recryption. This supports secure, automated file exchange workflows while maintaining data confidentiality. Partner Admins can provide their own GPG Keys, but a user with folder admin or site admin rights must configure the GPG settings to use those keys.

Partner's Responsible Party

The Responsible Party identifies an internal owner for a Partner relationship. This is typically the employee or team within your organization who manages the day-to-day relationship with the Partner's users and serves as their internal point of contact. A Responsible Party can also receive copies of the notifications that the platform sends to those users, giving the internal owner visibility into events that affect them. A Responsible Party set on the Partner covers all of its users, and an individual Partner User can also have its own, which overrides it.

Assigning a Responsible Party is optional. A Responsible Party can be either a single internal user or an internal group. Because the role represents ownership inside your organization, Partner Users are not eligible, including Partner Admins. The Responsible Party assignment does not grant the user or group any additional access to the Partner's root folder data or settings.

Only Site Administrators and Workspace Administrators can view or assign a Responsible Party. Partner Admins cannot do so at either level, because choosing a Responsible Party means selecting from your site's internal users and groups, which would expose the names of your internal staff and teams to an external user.

Send Email Copies

The Send Email Copies setting controls whether notifications sent to the Partner's users are also routed to the Partner's Responsible Party. A Responsible Party must be assigned to the Partner before Send Email Copies can be enabled.

When Send Email Copies is enabled, copies are sent for any notification the platform delivers to the Partner's users, including account- and credential-related emails and folder activity notifications delivered to Partner Users.

Copies are sent as separate emails addressed to the Responsible Party. When the Responsible Party is an internal group, each member receives their own copy.

Because each copy is its own message, the Partner User cannot see that a copy was sent or who received it, and every copy is recorded as a separate entry in the Outbound Emails log.

Responsible Party for an Individual Partner User

Internal ownership often sits below the Partner level, so an individual Partner User can have its own Responsible Party, which overrides the one set on the Partner. A Responsible Party assigned this way always receives copies of the emails sent to that user, whether or not Send Email Copies is enabled for the Partner.

Use a per-user assignment when one Partner represents a single external organization whose users are owned by different people inside your company. A large client might have its users mapped to separate application teams, with a different internal relationship manager accountable for each team. Assigning the Responsible Party per user gives each manager visibility into the emails sent to the users they own, without breaking one client relationship into several Partners to get that separation.

When a Partner User has no Responsible Party of its own, the Partner's Responsible Party applies and is shown as that user's effective owner, receiving copies only while Send Email Copies is enabled for the Partner.

Eligible users and groups are limited to the Partner User's Workspace, so a Responsible Party assignment never crosses a Workspace boundary.

IP Whitelist

Site Administrators and Workspace Administrators can add IP Whitelist entries to a Partner's settings. Any Partner User can connect from any address in the list.

Using the Partner's IP Whitelist instead of adding those addresses to the site-wide IP Whitelist narrows the scope of the allowance. The allowed IP addresses are only applied to that Partner's users, and when the Partner is removed from your site, those IP addresses are automatically removed with it.

Partner Structure