You may remember that we unveiled our secure file transfer add-on when we released Collaborate 3.3 back in August last year. This new feature enabled individuals to quickly and easily transfer files from their personal My files space without the need to set up a team file sharing site. It’s great for situations where you have a file that’s either too large or too sensitive to send via email and you just need to get it from A to B securely. The reaction from clients that have used the feature has been great and we wanted to make sure everyone has the same benefit. So we’re delighted to announce that this feature is now included as standard with all Collaborate licenses, from version 3.3 and up.
You can activate this feature on your existing instance of Collaborate today by contacting your account manager or our support team.
What are secure file transfers?
Our secure file transfer feature provides a solution for securely sharing files with colleagues and clients that are too large or sensitive to send via email. It allows users to simply upload a file and share a link to download or view that file with anyone inside or outside of the organisation. For security, it’s possible to limit access to registered users only, restrict download and printing rights, apply automatic link expiry and manually revoke links to each shared file.
The below screenshots demonstrate how secure file transfer works:
The sender shares a file direct from My files, setting permissions, link expiry, and a custom email message.
The recipient gets an email with a link to the file.
The link directs the recipient to a landing page where he or she can view the file.
The file appears in the recipient’s My files as a received item.
Current features and benefits
Here’s a quick summary of the features and benefits of our secure file transfer feature:
- Offers the ability for users to quickly and securely send files to any recipient
- For securely transferring files that are either too sensitive or too large to send via email
- Users can apply expiry dates to shared files to automatically revoke access after a period of time
- When using the quick share feature, content automatically deletes when the link expires
- Users can apply digital rights management to shared files, to restrict saving or printing of the file and prevent unwanted data leakage
- All activity is fully audited at user and system level and it’s possible to review all shares, downloads, views, prints, revocations etc.
- Users have access to their own My files space where they can permanently keep their files and share them when needed
- The secure file transfer capability is built into and integrated with the rest of HighQ’s enterprise collaboration platform
For more detail and a demonstration of the functionality, you can watch a recording of our webinar How to solve your corporate file sharing dilemma.
New features coming soon
We’re releasing some additional features in Collaborate 3.4 based on client feedback and our plans to continually improve the platform, which will further enhance the secure file transfer feature. Firstly, we’ve developed a plugin for Outlook that will allow users to replace large email attachments with links to securely download the files from Collaborate and manually insert download links to your files from Collaborate in your emails.
We’re also introducing a new process that allows external users who don’t already have an account to self-register when sent a secure link to a file. They must validate their email address upon self-registration and they then get access to a simplified account consisting simply of the My files module that also allows them to send files back to internal users.
The registration screen external users will see when they follow a secure link to a file.
Finally, we’re adding the option to preconfigure and restrict the default security and expiry settings for all files shared through the system. This means that system administrators can pre-define the file sharing settings on their instance of Collaborate and restrict the options available to end users.
How to activate secure file transfers
If you’re already running Collaborate 3.3 you can activate large file transfers today by contacting your account manager or our support team. If you’re not on Collaborate 3.3 yet and would like to upgrade to activate large file transfers and all of the other new features, please speak to your account manager to discuss arranging an upgrade. Large file transfers will be activated as standard in Collaborate 3.4 which is due for release in March 2015.
