Share Link Ownership

Share Links have a user ID who "owns" the link. The owner has full control over their links, and receives the enabled share link notifications. The owner's permissions are used to determine which paths may be added to a Share Link, along with what allowed actions can be set for the link. Users who are not Site Administrators or Read-Only Administrators can only see Share Links they own.

Ownership of a Share Link is important because it allows standard users to take control over the entire Share Link lifecycle without being granted wider administration rights. This means, for example, a line-of-business user who has mistakenly shared a file with a contact has the ability to resolve the issue without delaying or escalating the problem to higher authority; they can review the access logs to determine what file access happened and disable the link themselves.

Ownership for New Share Links

The owner of a new Share Link is automatically assigned, depending on how the link was created.

When a Share Link is created by any user via the web interface, that user becomes the owner of the Share Link. For automated Share Link creation (through CLI, APIs or SDKs) the authenticated user owns the new Share Link, unless they are using a site-wide API key.

When a Share Link is generated through the API using a site-wide API key, no owner is assigned to the Share Link.

Updating Share Link Owners

Site Administrators have full access to every Share Link, regardless of who the assigned owner is. This includes Share Links that do not have an assigned owner. This means that Site Administrators can change the settings for any Share Link, including the owner.

Site Administrators can modify any existing Share Link directly to change the owner.

Owners of a Share Link who are not Site Administrators cannot reassign their own Share Links to a different owner.

Deleting a Share Link Owner's User Account

Removing a user who owns Share Links will trigger the Auto-revoke Share Links for deactivated users setting logic. If that setting is enabled, any Share Links owned by the user are automatically removed.

If Share Links aren't automatically revoked because of that setting, Site Administrators have the option to re-assign all Share Links owned by that user to a different user.

Share Links With No Owner

When a process uses a site-wide API key to generate a Share Link, the Share Link will not have an assigned owner.

Share Links without owners work in the normal way for their recipients, and they can be managed by any Site Administrator.