June 2024

We have added several new features and enhanced many of the current features in the month of June. Here's a breakdown of what's new to Files.com in June 2024.

Improvements to our connections with external services. See the complete list of Integrations.

We've released a new version of the Files.com Boomi Connector. In addition to automating File and Folder actions, we have added a slew of new capabilities for managing Users, Groups, and Share Links as well as Files and Folders. If you've wanted to automate Files.com user onboarding or off-boarding from your Boomi processes, now's your chance.

Along with the ability to manage more than just files, switching from an SFTP connection to the new Files.com Boomi Connector will provide massively better performance. We've baked in improvements to connectivity, parallelization, throughput, and auto-retry capabilities.

If you're currently relying on FTP or SFTP connections with Boomi, check out what's available with the new Files.com Connector.

Learn more about the Files.com Connector for Boomi.

Improvements to the Files.com features, including Automations and Folder Settings, that streamline your processes.

Copy, Move, and Delete file Automations can use time-related patterns to limit which files will be acted upon by the Automation. You might use this to only copy files with the current date in the filename to another location, for instance. This is particularly handy if the source location is on a remote server that you can only download from, so you can't keep the source folder tidy.

No settings were changed for existing automations. To try it out, include our standard time-related patterns in the source pattern.

Learn more about Automations.

Files.com provides many convenient folder settings to streamline your processes and ensure integrity - you can configure a folder to automatically expire and delete files, limit filename length, limit the allowed filename extensions, limit allowed filenames with a regular expression, and rename uploaded files. We've added an option to all of these behaviors so you can choose to apply them only to the current folder, and not any child folders. This gives you full control over how to organize your file structure, even when you need different automated behaviors in the same folder tree. Administrators can enable this new option on any of these folder settings.

Learn more about using folder settings.

Changes to the methods you use for moving files, including FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, and AS2.

We've updated our web interface to make it easier to manage certificates for your AS2 identities. When defining the SSL Certificate for your new AS2 Identity, you can choose to generate the certificate directly in the browser, using a simple form to create your certificate and private key. As before, you'll provide the public certificate to your trading partner.

Learn more about configuring AS2.

The Files.com Agent connects an on-premise server directly to your Files.com site. We're constantly working to improve its performance and ease of setup.

We've updated our On-Premise Agent executable to support using the local machine's DNS servers to check for updates to the Agent. You should update to the most recent version of the Agent. You should ensure that your firewall allows outbound port 443 to access DNS servers to prevent your agent's connection from being disrupted.

Learn more about integrating with on-premise servers using the Agent.

Improvements to working with file contents within your site.

We've added a new option to our Watermarks feature. You can choose to apply a watermark only to previews within the current folder, and not to any of its subfolders. This can prevent needing to re-organize your folder structure just to manage how previews are displayed. You can enable this feature on any folder's watermark settings.

Learn more about using watermarks to preview images.

Files.com allows you to preview many types of files within the web interface, which allows your users to check the contents of a file without needing to download it first. We've added support for .WAV format files so that workflows which rely on audio recordings, such as call center recordings, can be more efficient. There's nothing you need to do to enable this feature; it is already available for all sites.

Learn more about the types of files that can be previewed.

Files.com achieves its best-in-class security by a platform that is tuned for maximum security out of the box. We also realize that every organization has unique security requirements, so we frequently provide new security features, allowing you to fine-tune your site settings to meet your needs.

The GPG Encryption or GPG Decryption settings for a folder now support using multiple keys for multi-party encryption. If your organization enforces rotating credentials on a regular basis, associating multiple keys to the folder setting can reduce the hassles of rotating credentials with your counterparties.

When your decryption setting has multiple keys assigned, decryption will be attempted with each key and will only fail if none of the keys can be used for decryption. When multiple keys are assigned for an encryption setting, encrypted files can be decrypted by someone with any one of the corresponding private keys. Administrators can update existing folder settings to add additional keys right now.

Learn more about using GPG/PGP.

Enhancements to web-based file sharing features, such as Share Links, Inboxes, and Public Hosting.

Administrators can configure Inboxes to send a receipt email when files are uploaded. Receipt emails provide a written record of which files were uploaded, which fosters trust with your Inbox visitors. The new setting can be set as needed for each Inbox. To take advantage of this feature, update the settings for each applicable Inbox.

Learn more about sending receipt emails.

When access control is enabled for a Share Link, visitors must follow a link from an emailed invitation to access the Share. If the link is used by multiple people, the original link is invalidated and a new one is mailed to the recipient. Our system now limits how often new links are generated. This prevents extra emails from being generated if a link is widely distributed or accessed repeatedly through an automated process. There's nothing you need to do to enable this improvement.

Learn more about Share Link Security.

Features that provide Administrators with in-depth information about files, file transfers, as well as many other operations whether they are initiated by a human, automation or system. Improvements here help you track what is happening with your site and when.

We've added more columns to the logging for API calls. This will help you trace the cause of errors in your custom integration code. If you're accessing API request logs through one of our SDKs or CLI, you should update to the latest version so that the columns are automatically included in the response. When you're using the web interface to view logs, you can select which columns are displayed on the page.

Learn more about API request logs.

We've updated the External Logging with more information when remote server sync processes fail, such as if there are more than 100,000 items in the remote folder. This makes it easier for you to discover why a file doesn't copy as expected. You can see the updated logging in the External Logs.

Learn more about troubleshooting syncs.

Webhooks, email notifications, SNS integrations and slack integrations help you stay informed about events so you can respond and keep your processes on track.

We've added a new option to our webhooks, Slack notifications and Amazon SNS notifications, so you can choose to only report activity within the current folder, not any sub-folders. This allows you more flexibility in how you organize folders that have these types of notification services enabled. Administrators can enable this option on any new or existing webhooks, SNS notifications or Slack notifications.

Learn more about sending notifications to external services with webhooks, Slack, or Amazon SNS.

Updates to official Files.com client applications, including our Desktop App, Mobile app and CLI App.

You can use the command-line interface app (CLI) to synchronize files between a local folder and a remote folder. The --delete-source-files flag will automatically remove files from the source after they are transferred to the destination. If this would result in an empty folder that you want to dispose of, you can also use the --delete-source-empty-folders flag.

For example, you might include these flags when using the CLI to pull data from a folder that is created every day by an external process. Since the folder is created each day, using --delete-source-empty-folders cleans up the source filesystem, which prevents performance issues.

Learn more about using CLI to synchronize files.

The Files.com web interface receives a lot of attention to make it accessible, attractive and efficient.

We've updated the file uploads panel to make it easier to see the status of each uploaded item, along with any applicable error messages. This simplifies troubleshooting uploads, especially if your users habitually send you screenshots for debugging. No action is required to enable this display.

We've updated the web interface listing of Remote Servers to add a Browse feature. Now you can explore and manage the contents of a remote server without first creating a Remote Server Mount. This provides a convenient tool for setting up or troubleshooting a Remote Server Sync. The button will automatically appear in the list of Remote Servers; there's nothing you need to do to enable this new feature.

Learn more about integrating with Remote Servers.

Improvements to our official developer documentation and SDKs.

The official developers page has been updated to a more modern interface that is easier to use. The new design makes it easy to select your favored programming language for code examples. We've grouped the API endpoints into logical categories and beefed up the search feature to minimize scrolling. And, because we know engineers, we've added a dark mode to the page to make things easier on your eyes.

Check out our new developer docs.

The API documentation for a Remote Server Sync Behavior has been updated to clearly describe the use of the remote_sync_interval parameter. This is necessary for managing syncs that should start a certain number of minutes apart.

Learn more in our developer documentation.

The optional path and behavior parameters have been removed from the method to update a folder behavior. These parameters didn't really make sense in the context of updating an existing behavior and were previously ignored. Update to the latest version of the SDK or CLI to see the changes.

Learn more in our developer documentation.

We've made more updates to the Python SDK for systems that have multiple IP addresses assigned. Update to the latest version of the SDK to take advantage of the latest improvements.

See the Python SDK on Github.