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Creating and Managing Share Links

Share Links save time and effort for your administrators by letting your users securely share files over the web without turning to shadow IT. Shadow IT refers to employees using unauthorized software or hardware for work, which can improve productivity but creates security and compliance risks.

Each site has an Enable Share Links setting that site administrators can change. By default, this setting is turned on, because Share Links are useful for ad hoc, human-centric file sharing.

When a site administrator turns Enable Share Links off, no user can create new Share Links. Existing Share Links created before the setting was turned off remain available.

Even when Enable Share Links is on, a user must have sharing permission on a folder to create Share Links for files in it.

Once a Share Link is created, the included files are accessible by default to anyone with the URL until the Share Link expires, is manually revoked, or has its usage limited through its settings. Because sharing has broad reach, creating a Share Link requires that the user has sharing permission. This lets site administrators choose exactly which users can create Share Links.

Share Link permissions are assigned at the folder level. Only the users or groups you explicitly grant this access to can create Share Links. You choose which files and folders in your site a given user can share, and which they cannot.

If a user is assigned non-recursive sharing permissions on a folder, subfolders of that folder are not included when the folder is shared. Similarly, if a permission fence is placed on a folder below a folder the user has permission to share, the fenced folder cannot be shared.

Some organizations do not want any user to create Share Links, usually because of an organization-wide mandate against file-sharing applications. Site administrators can deactivate the Enable Share Links setting on their site. Doing so prevents the creation of new Share Links for every user, including site administrators and users who already have sharing permission. Existing Share Links are not revoked automatically.

Site Administrators can deactivate the Enable Share Links setting because some organizations' compliance programs forbid the use of any file-sharing applications.

You'll often need to update a Share Link after it's been created. You might want to extend the expiration for an expired link, change the password on the link, invite more contacts, or change its contents.

Both standard users with Sharing permission and site administrators can manage Share Links. Standard users see only the Share Links they own. Site administrators see all Share Links within the site.

Share Links are either "live" or "snapshot" links.

A live Share Link gives access to its files and folders as they currently exist on your site. Share Link owners and Site Administrators can change the paths included in a live Share Link after it has been shared.

A snapshot Share Link contains a read-only copy of the files as they existed when the Share Link was created. Users cannot add or remove items from a snapshot Share Link after it has been generated.

Share Links owned by a deleted user are still available to visitors, and site administrators can still manage those links. This serves two purposes: existing Share Link invitations and published link addresses keep working, and the registration information and access logs for the links are retained.

Removing all the links for a deleted user manually is a tedious task, so when you delete a user, Files.com prompts you to either keep their existing Share Links or revoke them all. Revoking the links permanently deletes each Share Link, any registrations for the Share Link, and the associated access logs.

You can also enable the Auto-revoke Share Links for deactivated users setting to revoke all of a user's Share Links automatically when that user is disabled or deleted, with no manual intervention.

Share Links that have passed their Expiration date do not appear in listings of Share Links, so you cannot extend an already expired Share Link.

The Auto-revoke Share Links for deactivated users setting automatically deactivates Share Links owned by a user when that user is disabled or deleted. When enabled, this setting prevents Share Links from being used to bypass user access policies. By default, the setting is turned off.

For organizations with strict access control requirements in legal, finance, government, and healthcare sectors, this setting improves security compliance and reduces administrative overhead by removing the need for manual revocation of Share Links when users lose access.

Effects of Enabling the Setting

When this setting is enabled, all Share Links created by a user are automatically revoked when the user account loses access to the system. This happens whether the user is disabled manually or automatically. Share Links belonging to users who are disabled by the Disable inactive users setting are also revoked.

Enabling the setting also enforces that a Share Link's Expiration date cannot be set later than the user's Access expiration date. If a user's Access expiration date is moved to an earlier date, the expiration date of every Share Link they own is updated to match.

Monitoring Visitor Activity

To manage your Share Links well, you need to know who accessed each link and what they did. Files.com provides detailed Access Logs and notification options for every Share Link.

Each time a visitor completes a registration or performs a file activity (download, upload, delete, move, or copy) within your Share Link, the activity is recorded in the access logs for the Share Link. Anyone who can manage the Share Link can review its logs.

The Share Link action logs capture the timestamp, the action performed, the affected file paths, and the registration information. This information is retained for one year, or until the Share Link is removed, whichever comes first.

All file activity for a Share Link is also captured in the history logs for the relevant folder, but those folder history logs do not include registration information.

Revoking a Share Link permanently deletes the Share Link, its settings, any registrations for it, and its Access logs. A revoked Share Link cannot be reactivated.

A Share Link can be revoked at any time by a site administrator or by the user who created it. When a Share Link is revoked, it stops working immediately, and anyone visiting the Share Link URL receives a "Share not found" message.