Share Links are designed with flexibility in mind. Your users can configure individual share links, and site administrators can update site-wide settings to set sensible defaults. In some cases, site-wide settings will prevent users from making certain selections.

Site-Wide Sharing Settings

Some settings, available only to site administrators, determine specific behaviors for all Share Links within your site.

The Allow Share Links to use custom URLs setting, which is disabled by default, controls whether your users can change the address of their Share Links from the system generated URL. You can require your users to always provide an internal note for every Share Link with the Require internal notes setting. The Custom "Not Found" Message setting lets site administrators customize the page that is displayed to visitors who attempt to access an unavailable Share Link.

Customizing Your Link URL

By default, Files.com generates a random alphanumeric URL key for your Share Links. This prevents bad actors from guessing the address of your links. You might want to use this for a Share Link that you intend to make public because a friendly name may be easier to share with others, either verbally or through marketing materials.

Site administrators have access to the Allow Share Links to use custom URLs setting, which controls whether users are able to change a Share Link's URL from the autogenerated address. If a site administrator enables the Allow Share Links to use custom URLs setting, then users who manage a Share Link can choose to change its address to a new, unique text value.

A custom URL may offer convenience, but also carries security risks because it has the potential to be guessed in the same way that common passwords do. For this reason, only site administrators have the option to enable this setting.

Descriptive Text for Your Visitors

The audience for your Share Link will usually be people who do not use your Files.com site on a regular basis. Their interface is designed to be clutter-free, to cut down on any decisions your user needs to make. You may need to provide extra information or instructions to your contacts, such as whom to contact if there are problems with downloaded files, which TPS reports need to be submitted, and any other frequently asked questions.

You can add a publicly visible description to each link, which your share visitors will see. You may format this text using Markdown, but not HTML.

Custom Message For Unavailable Links

The Custom "Not Found" Message setting lets site administrators customize the page that is displayed to visitors who attempt to access an unavailable Share Link. This is a helpful place to publish the contact information your counterparties need to get assistance. You may use Markdown for formatting the message, but HTML tags are not allowed for security reasons.

A Share Link may be unavailable for a variety of reasons: the publish date is in the future, the expiration date is in the past, the maximum number of recipients has accessed the link, the link has been revoked, and so on.

Only a single Custom "Not Found" Message setting exists, which is applied for any unavailable Share Link address. There is no way to override this message for individual Share Links.

Internal Notes

Depending on how your organization uses Files.com, your users may create dozens or even hundreds of Share Links they need to manage. The internal note associated with each link provides a convenient means for tracking its purpose. You can store any custom text, such as a reminder about the associated project (e.g. "RFPs for Riverside") or a summary of its contents (such as "Preview product videos"). Visitors to a Share Link will not see the text you enter as an internal note - it is only visible to internal users.

Site administrators can enable a site setting to Require internal notes. When that setting is enabled, Share Link creators cannot leave the internal note blank when they are saving a Share Link.

Even if the site setting to Require internal notes has not been enabled by a site administrator, Share Link creators can always see and change the internal note for their links.

Allowed Actions for Visitors

By default, each link allows visitors to download the contents. Each Share Link can be configured to allow different levels of access, depending on your needs.

For live Share Links, you can select between 5 options for the allowed actions, ranging from only allowing previews to allowing full file management. You can only assign allowed actions that are permitted by your own privileges. For example, if you have download access but not upload access, you cannot create a share link that allows visitors to upload.

A Share Link that allows only uploads will function very similarly to an Inbox. The visitor can upload items but cannot view any of the files that have been uploaded. In order to allow uploads, you must include at least one folder path in your share link, and you cannot include any file paths. When a visitor to a Share Link that allows only uploads tries to upload items with duplicated names, the duplicates will be automatically renamed, even if your site's settings would allow overwrites from logged-in users.

Rather than using the Allowed actions of a Share Link to potentially enable both downloads and uploads for a visitor, you could instead opt to associate an Inbox with the Share Link. This allows you to provide restricted (only previews or downloading) access to the items you are sharing while also providing a location for uploads.

For snapshot Share Links, you can select between allowing visitors to preview only or to download.

User Permissions Limit Allowed Actions

Users can never create a Share Link that gives more access than they have. For example, if a user account does not have permissions to upload to a folder, they cannot create a Share Link that allows visitors to upload.

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.

Full Permissions Are Required For Online Editor Integration

A site administrator can enable the setting to Use Office Integration for Full Access Share Links. This lets visitors make changes to Office documents stored within the Share Link using your site's Online Editor Integration. This will work only if the share link allows Full access, including download, upload, modify, and delete.

Let's examine why this level of access is required. When you begin editing an Office document within an online editor, your selected Online Editor Integration must transfer the file from your site's storage to its own editing system, whether that is the Files.com Editor hosted within the Files.com infrastructure or the Office for the Web servers controlled by Microsoft. As you make changes to files within the editor application, updated versions of the documents are uploaded to your site. In order to replace the old version of your document with the updated file, the old version is deleted from your storage so that the new version can take its place.

Displaying a Watermark During Previews

You can add a watermark to any preview generated in a Share Link. The automatic watermarks are only displayed when previewing the file on the Share Link page. If the file is downloaded, then it will not contain the automatic watermark. This can be useful to avoid screenshots when your link supports previews only.