Overview

The Files App lets you and your clients securely share files, links, and folders with one another.

App setup

Default files channel

If you have companies enabled you can select a default channel on the Settings > General page. The default channel works as follows:

In App Setup > Files > Edit, you can configure the following:

Always-on visibility

You can control whether clients always have a Files item on the sidebar that they can navigate to. Turn this off if you only want clients to see Files on their sidebar if 1 or more files have been made visible to the client.

Clients can add files

You can control if clients themselves can add files. Turn this off if you want clients to only be able to access files but not upload ones themselves.

Clients can delete files

You can control if clients can delete files. Turn this off if you want to prevent clients from deleting files.

Clients can update folders

You can control if clients can update the folder structure you have put in place. Turn this off if you want to “lock down your folder structure” and prevent clients from creating, uploading, renaming, moving, and deleting folders.

Internal user experience

Key Workflows

There are two main workflows for internal users.

App view

To see a list of all file channels sorted by recent activity, navigate to the Files App by clicking on Files in your sidebar. Here you’ll see a files channel for every client, company, or group that you’re sharing files with. From here, you can select a files channel to see the contained files and take actions like upload new files or create folders.

Client Details view

To access a particular client’s files channel you can click on a client on the Clients page and then navigate to the Files tab. This will only surface the files channel associated with that particular client.

Creating files channels

After you create a client, they will always get a new files channel or be assigned to an existing files channel which will be either client-level or company-level. In addition, there are group-level files channels. These are useful if you want to share files with multiple clients associated with a company, but not everyone assigned to the company.

How to create a channel:

1. Click on the + on the messaging channels sidebar.

2. Select one or more clients, or select a company. Note that you cannot create a files channel that already exists.

Mass file share

If you need to send files and folders to multiple clients or companies, you can use the Mass File Share feature. Recipients will not have access to each other’s files.

How to mass share files and folders:

1. Click on the + on the messaging channels sidebar.

2. Select Mass file share

3. Choose whether to share the files with multiple companies or clients.

   Note: You cannot select both companies and clients at the same time. You can only choose multiple companies or multiple clients in a single share.

4. Upload the files and folders by clicking Upload or dragging and dropping them.

   Note: Empty folders can only be added using the drag-and-drop method.

5. Click Share to complete the process.

   Note: Mass sharing files runs in the background, allowing you to continue your work while the files are being sent. The sharing process may take some time depending on the number and size of the files.

Client experience

Email notifications

Clients will automatically receive email notifications if one or more files were uploaded by an internal user. From there, they can navigate to your portal to access the files.

Portal notifications

Clients can see files by clicking on Files on the portal sidebar. In most cases, clients will only have one files channel so there is no file channels sidebar.

Previewing files

Most file types can be previewed directly in the browser. You and your clients can double-click on a file to preview. See the FAQ below for a list of file types that support previews.

If a file type is not supported for previewing in the browser, you will be prompted to download the file. Microsoft file types such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. are not supported for previews.

Note: Fillable PDFs cannot be filled when previewing, the PDF must be downloaded.