Users
User accounts give each person and connected system an identity, a defined set of capabilities, and a record of its activity on your Files.com site. For an administrator arranging file exchange, the account connects the participant to the files and services they need. Keeping those identities separate lets you change one person's access or retire an integration without sharing credentials or losing track of who did the work.
A colleague reviewing invoices and an application collecting them each need their own account, even when they use the same folder. The colleague's account follows that person's access requirements; the application's account follows the workload. Human Users and Machine Accounts explains how that distinction affects credentials, account ownership, and controls for unattended work.
Account Scope and Permissions
Each user belongs to a Workspace within your site. Users in the Default Workspace can work with the site's shared resources according to their permissions; a custom Workspace provides a separate environment for its users and resources. Child Sites have their own accounts, settings, and data. Choose the environment that owns the work before creating its accounts.
Create external organizations as Partners and their people and machine accounts as Partner Users, unless they need the documented cross-Partner access arrangement. Partner Users share the Partner's folder permissions, cannot join Groups, and cannot receive individual folder permissions. This gives each external organization an access boundary its administrators can maintain.
For regular users who need the same access, assign folder permissions through Groups. Assigning permissions once to a Group makes access consistent across its members and lets membership changes reflect changes in responsibility. Direct user permissions are also supported, but use Groups and Partners as the primary permission boundaries to avoid ad hoc access changes.
Administrative permissions determine which accounts and settings a user can administer. Their consequences depend on the permissions granted: a Site Administrator has access across the site, while delegated administrative permissions apply to a particular scope. Grant administrative authority for the responsibility the person needs to perform; ordinary file access does not require site administration.
Authentication, Connections, and Folder Views
Authentication establishes the identity of the person or system connecting. An employee may sign in through your identity provider, while an unattended application uses an API key or SFTP/SSH key. Protocol access determines which connection methods the account is allowed to use. Even when an account can authenticate through an allowed protocol, folder permissions still determine the file operations it can perform.
The file system layout controls the root and paths presented to that account. It can show a colleague a simplified view of the folders they work with, without reorganizing the stored files. The layout does not grant folder permissions, and permissions outside an assigned root do not make those paths reachable. FTP/SFTP folder settings separately control the client root and starting directory for those connections.
These choices work together. Giving an application SFTP access does not grant it access to invoices, and assigning an invoice folder as its root does not supply read permission. Its credentials, allowed connection method, and folder permissions must all support the intended transfer.
Username Rules and Identity Scope
Files.com is a multi-tenant platform. By default, all usernames must be globally unique across all Files.com sites. Shared connection endpoints can use the username to identify the site, so the name must be unambiguous across that shared namespace. If a username already exists on another Files.com site, it cannot be reused on your site.
Custom Username Namespace
Organizations that require site-scoped usernames can change this behavior by configuring a custom domain and setting the Custom username namespace option to Usernames must be unique only within this site. This allows the same username to exist on different Files.com sites.
When this option is enabled, all users must connect using an address that resolves to the site's dedicated IP addresses. The dedicated endpoint identifies your site before Files.com looks up the username, allowing the lookup to be limited to your site. If a custom SSL certificate is configured, users must authenticate through the custom domain or the dedicated IP addresses.
Switching Back to Globally Unique Usernames
If a site is configured for site-scoped usernames and uses single sign-on, the SSO integration must be disabled before switching back to globally unique usernames. All usernames associated with the SSO provider must first be updated to use a different authentication method before the setting can be changed.
Reserved Usernames
Certain usernames commonly tried during repeated unauthorized login attempts are reserved by the system and cannot be used. Attempts to create a user with a reserved username result in a Username is reserved error. When this occurs, select a different username.
Account Details
Site Administrators can update a user's name, email address, company, tags, and internal notes. Tags categorize accounts and can be used to target User Lifecycle Rules. Internal notes record information administrators need about the account's purpose or owner.
The primary email address is also used for password recovery. Changing it can redirect recovery emails, so permission to edit an account includes a consequential credential responsibility. Administrative permissions define which delegated administrators may change accounts within their scope. For provider-managed accounts, SCIM management controls determine whether changes can also be made directly in Files.com.
Listing Users
User accounts are displayed in a table that supports filtering and column selection. You can filter users by attributes like username, full name, email address, company, Site Administrator status, and account status to narrow the view. You can also choose which columns are visible to review the exact user details that matter for administration, auditing, or cleanup tasks.
Account activity timestamps and exports support reviews of who still uses the site. User Activity & Logs explains those fields and distinguishes account changes from actions performed by the user.