Inboxes accept files from people who are not registered users on your site. Depending upon how you've configured your inbox, there are 2 ways your counterparties can submit their files: either through a web page or by sending an email with attachments. The same inbox can accept files through web and through email.

Inboxes are useful for accepting contest applications from the public, allowing customers to easily send you digital assets for processing, collecting form submissions, collecting files though emails, and many more.

Inboxes can be customized with a registration form, and can also be emailed to specific recipients. When emailed through your site, the email recipients will receive a link to upload the files. Alternatively, you can communicate your inbox URL or inbound email address of your inbox directly to your users or even publish the inbox link or email address of your inbox in your public facing website or your intranet portal.

Example Use Case: Collect Job Application Forms

In this scenario, you need to collect not only a completed application form, but also custom demographic information.

Add an Inbox for your folder and require visitors to provide registration info. Customize the registration form to add the demographic fields you want to collect. You can embed the inbox into your own corporate site right alongside your job listings board.

You can automatically organize the uploaded files into separate sub-folders to keep each applicant's data separate from other applicants. For instance, you could automatically create sub folders with the job title, applicant's name and date of submission. If different teams need to be notified about responses to specific job listings, you can use email notifications to alert the appropriate people as appliations are submitted.

Example Use Case: Download a Form 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 Inbox for the upload submissions, and provide the PDF order ticket though a Share Link.

After you create a Share Link that contains the PDFs to be downloaded, and configure it to allow visitors to download from the link, associate the desired Inbox with your Share Link.

When visitors access the Share Link, the interface will show both the Share Link and the Inbox in the same URL.

Example Use Case: Receive Timesheets via Email

In this scenario, you have a group of contractors who submit electronic timesheets as email attachments. The contractors don't need to access any files in your site, and you don't want to create user accounts for every possible employee of each contracting company.

Create an Inbox for the timesheets to upload to, and then configure it to accept uploads via Email. If you enable inbound email authentication, you can add a list of acceptable email domains that are permitted to email to the inbox. This prevents invalid uploads from other addresses if your inbox email address is shared inappropriately.

You can take this protection even further by configuring the folder settings for your inbox folder to restrict what files can be uploaded. For example, you could reject any files that do not have a specific extension, or that don't match a specific file name pattern.

Since the contractors will care very much whether their timesheets were received, you can enable an automatic email reply whenever a file is successfully uploaded via email.

If any problems arise, you can use the inbound emails log for troubleshooting any failed uploads.

Example Use Case: Receive Files from Devices via Email

Scanners, multi-functional devices, CCTV, X-ray machines or similar devices can email files directly to a folder in your site. Folder Admins can share the received content, create an automation, or integrate with notification services.

Inboxes vs User Accounts

Inboxes are intended for use cases where the user of the inbox would not be a regular user of your site. Each inbox exists on its own, and each inbox session is treated independently. As a result, visitors will not be able to see other files in the Inbox, including files they may have uploaded in a previous session. If you require visitors to interact with files after uploading, you should instead create User accounts for those visitors.

Inboxes vs Share Links

Inboxes differ from Share Links in a few important ways. Only site administrators and folder admins can create an Inbox for a folder, while any user with sharing permissions can create a Share Link.

Inboxes do not have an expiration date; they remain active until they are disabled by a site administrator or folder admin. In contrast, Share Links can be given an expiration date, and your site's settings might require that all Share Links expire within a certain period of time.

Inboxes are always associated with exactly one folder, but Share Links can include multiple folders that visitors can upload to.

Inboxes can be linked to directly on the login page of your site; Share Links cannot be listed on your login page.

Inboxes can be configured to receive files through email attachments. This feature does not exist for Share Links, which only support being accessed through the web.

Inboxes only permit visitors to upload, while Share Links support a variety of allowed actions for visitors. However, an Inbox can be used in tandem with a Share Link, if the Share Link settings indicate the Inbox should be displayed when that Share Link is visited.

When deciding whether to use an Inbox or a Share Link, some helpful questions to ask are: "Do I want this to be a relatively permanent upload location, or just available for a limited time?" "Do I need to receive files from email?" "Should people be able to navigate through a folder structure, or see the files that others have uploaded?" "Who needs to invite people to the link, and do they have admin rights?"