Creating and Managing Share Links

Share Links can save time and effort for your administrators, allowing your users to securely share files over the web without turning to shadow IT solutions.

Once a Share Link is created, those 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 this is a very powerful feature, creating Share Links requires that a user has sharing permission. This ensures that site administrators can choose exactly which users have the ability to create Share Links.

Share Link permissions are assigned at the folder level, and only those users or groups you explicitly grant this access to will be able to create Share Links. This means that you can choose which files and folders in your site can be shared by a user, and which cannot.

If a user is assigned non-recursive sharing permissions on a folder, any subfolders for that folder will not be shared 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 can't be shared.

Some organizations do not want any users to create Share Links. This is usually due to an organization-wide mandate forbidding the use of file-sharing applications. Files.com allows site administrators to completely disable the creation of new share links for all users, including site administrators and users who have already been granted sharing permissions. Disabling Share Links for your site prevents new links from being created, but it does not automatically revoke existing links.

It's not uncommon to need to update your Share Link after it's been created. You might want to extend the expiration for an expired link, change the password associated with the link, invite more contacts to your link, or change the contents.

Both standard users with Sharing permission and site administrators have the ability to manage Share Links. Standard users will see only Share Links they created, while site administrators will see all Share Links within the site.

By default, a Share Link will be a live view into specific files and folders as they currently exist on your site. For example, if you create a Share Link that includes a folder, visitors to the link will see the current contents of that folder, including changes made to the folder since the link was generated. It's also possible to change which files and folders are included in a link by editing the existing link contents; this can prevent needing to create multiple links for the same recipients. If any items were originally sent that should not have been, you can remove them from the link contents without needing to re-issue the link.

In contrast, a snapshot Share Link contains a read-only copy of files that were shared at the time the Share Link was created. You cannot add or remove items from the Snapshot Share Link after it has been generated.

Share Links that were created by a user who has been deleted are still available by default, and site administrators can still manage those links. This serves 2 purposes - by default, you avoid disruptions to existing share link invitations or published link addresses, and you retain all of the registration information and access logs for the links.

Removing all of the links for a deleted user manually can be a tiresome chore, so Files.com will prompt you when a user is deleted via the web interface, asking whether you'd prefer to keep their existing share links, or revoke all the share links created by the user. Revoking the links will permanently delete them Share Link, any registrations for the share link, and the associated access logs.

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.

An key part of managing your Share Links is tracking exactly who visited the link URL, and what actions they performed. In addition to various notification options, Files.com also provides comprehensive Access Logs 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, that activity is recorded in the access logs for the Share Link. Users who have the ability to manage a Share Link can review the logs for the Share Link.

The Share Link action logs captures the timestamp, action performed, affected file paths, along with the registration info. This information is retained for 1 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 appropriate folder, but those history logs do not include registration information.

Revoking a Share Link will permanently delete the Share Link, its settings, any registrations for the share link, and its Access logs. There is no way to reactivate a revoked Share Link.

Rather than revoking a Share Link, consider instead changing its settings to deactivate it. You can do this by applying a password that will never be provided to anyone. This way, the Share Link access logs and information are preserved after the link is no longer usable.

For some cases, such as a link that should not have been generated or that was never used, you may prefer to revoke the link, deleting it entirely. 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 will immediately cease functioning, and anyone visiting the Share Link URL will receive a "Share not found" message.