Asynchronous (Backgrounded) Operations

Certain large or complex operations on files may be performed in an asynchronous manner. Examples of operations that may be performed asynchronously include copying files, moving files from Files Native Storage to a Remote Server, moving files on or between Remote Servers, renaming files or folders on Remote Servers, and deleting folders on Remote Servers. Any copy, move, or delete operation can potentially be an asynchronous operation. We are constantly optimizing our platform, and its services, so the potential for an operation to be asynchronous is always evolving.

Asynchronous operations improve performance of operations and to make features on remote mounts behave similarly to locally attached storage.

An asynchronous operation can be triggered from any connection type, including actions triggered from the web portal, from any protocol connection (FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, etc.), through the REST APIs, and via the use of our SDKs.

When a request is being processed in the background, some status information will be shown in the web portal UI under a dropdown that says Actions In Progress.

Asynchronous operations triggered through the REST APIs will return a FileMigration ID in the API response, which can be queried for the status of the migration operation.

Some of our SDKs will take care of managing the asynchronous operation and treating it as a synchronous operation for you. It is our goal to extend this capability to all our SDKs, including those used by our iPaaS partner connectors.

The Files.com Desktop app, Mobile app, and 3rd party client apps will be unaware of asynchronous background operations and will reflect the current view of files and folders. Once the asynchronous operations have completed, refreshing will reflect the updated file and folder view.

The results of the asynchronous background operation may be reflected differently between user sessions. For example, the user session that initiated the asynchronous operation will reflect the outcome before other user sessions do.

Although the vast majority of asynchronous background operations complete successfully and quickly, we have seen occasional cases where operations will get stuck in that Actions In Progress view. If you notice this, please report it to us right away and we will investigate.