Use Cases

Below are common patterns where customers use Share Links, with the configuration details that make each one work.

Previewing Confidential Images

In this example, you want to share some images with an external contact, but you don't want them to download the files. To accomplish this, you would create a Share Link that allows visitors to preview the contents that are shared with them.

To make things secure, assign a password to the Share Link, enable access control for the link, and share your link through email invitations generated by the platform. Your images are protected against someone discovering your link address or the email being forwarded.

Assign a clickwrap to your link, which will require your contact to agree to the terms of the clickwrap before gaining access to the files. Their agreement will be tracked, along with the information about when they agreed.

To guard against visitors taking screenshots of your confidential files, configure your link to apply a watermark to every preview, including the email of the person the files were shared with.

Sending Files Too Big for Email

In this scenario, you want to provide access to a file on your computer that is larger than the typical email attachment limit (usually 25MB), but you don't want this file stored within your Files.com site long-term.

To achieve this, you'll create a Share Link and attach the file directly to your link without first uploading it into your site. This creates a "snapshot" share link, where the file is copied to a hidden directory of your site.

Configure the link's security options to require a password and only allow people who follow the link from an email invitation to access the file.

Use the expiration date setting on your link to make the file available for a short period of time, and set the link to automatically expire after the file has been downloaded once.

When your contact downloads the files, or the link expires, the large file that was copied to hidden storage is automatically deleted from that hidden storage.

Accepting Film Festival Submissions

For this example, you wish to accept film festival submissions from a variety of sources. People who upload their files to you don't see any of the files uploaded by others, and you don't know ahead of time who will be submitting files to you.

Create a Share Link for a folder and set it to allow uploads only. Customize the link URL key to something that matches your intended purpose ("filmfestival") (giving you a link URL containing that key - https://mycompany.files.com/f/filmfestival). If you've customized your account domain, that custom domain will be used for the link.

Collect the standard registration information from your submitters (full name, email, company), and even use a custom registration form to capture non-standard information (the name of the project). Add a clickwrap to display rules for the film festival that participants must agree to before they upload their screeners. The text is stored, along with all of their other registration info and the date and time they accessed the link.

Your link organizes the uploaded files into sub-folders, which are automatically named with the name of the project, the submitter's email or any other of the fields you collected from your custom registration form. This allows multiple submissions from the same person to be kept separate.

To prevent your hopeful participants from contacting you to ask "Did you get my files?", enable upload receipts for your Share Link. With upload receipts enabled, your submitters receive an email listing the files that were uploaded along with any answers they provided in the registration form.

If you have a staff member responsible for monitoring the submissions and processing them, configure a Share Link notification for that user, and they'll be automatically notified each time a new submission is received.

If there's a strict deadline on when submissions must be received, configure the expiration date for your link. Visitors who attempt to access your link address after that expiration date will see a message that the link is not available. Customize the message that would be displayed, allowing you to funnel the potentially unhappy would-be participants to a single point of contact within your organization.

Shared Data Room

In this example, you are collaborating on a project with external contacts. Both you and your contacts will need to upload and download files as you iterate.

Create a Share Link for one or more folders related to your project, and configure it to allow visitors to both upload and download. If it's appropriate for the external contact to delete files as well, configure the link to allow full access instead.

To ensure only your desired contact has access to the data room, add a password to your link, turn on access control, and generate an email invitation to share the link with your contact.

When your contact accesses the link, they'll be able to perform all of the file management you've granted access for. When you make changes in the link's folders, your contact will immediately see those changes.

Document Collaboration

This scenario is another example of collaboration with external contacts, specifically for common business files: documents, spreadsheets, presentations.

Some pre-requisite settings must be configured to enable co-authoring within Share Links. Either the Files.com editor or Microsoft Office for Web must be enabled in your site's Online Editor Integration setting. If no editor is enabled, you will not be able to collaborate on documents with Share Link visitors. Once an editor is chosen, update your settings to enable the Use Online Editor for Full Access Share Links setting.

Create a Share Link for the folder with your work document files and configure it to allow full access, including download, upload, modify, and delete.

Add a password to your link, turn on access control, and generate email invitations to share the link with your contacts. This ensures that only your desired contacts access the link.

When visitors access the link, they'll be able to preview and edit the documents directly within their browser. Any changes they make will be instantly available to you, and your changes will be immediately reflected for them, too.

Download and Submit to An Inbox

In this scenario, you have a PDF order ticket that needs to be downloaded by your customers and then uploaded along with other files to be printed. You want to use an existing Inbox for the upload submissions.

Create a Share Link that contains the PDFs to be downloaded, and configure it to allow visitors to download from the link.

In the settings for your link, you associate the desired Inbox with your Share Link.

Other settings for the link allow you to add descriptive text that will be available to your web visitors. Take this a step further by embedding the share link within your own custom web page on your own site, or any other domain. The transfers are still secure, no matter where the link is embedded.

Soliciting Project Bids

In this scenario, you want to publish a project specification and share it with many potential contractors to bid on the project.

Create a Share Link containing the project specification and configure it to allow visitors to download the files.

In the settings for your link, enable access control and use the share groups to send email invitations to all of the relevant contact emails in one step.

To automatically track which of your contacts have not accessed the link, require registration from your visitors. If you're using the standard registration form, your visitors won't need to enter any information to view the files, because their names, company and contact will be automatically stored when they access the link from their invitation email. Your staff have access to view the email invitations that have not registered and update contact lists as needed to remove defunct addresses.