Have you ever wondered what happens to the files you send over to your clients? Are they aware they received a file? Are they ignoring your email and not downloading? Or did they get the file two hours ago and just haven’t gotten back to you yet? What about that fax you sent yesterday? Yes, you may have received a print out that the fax went through-but do you really know if your recipient grabbed the document from their fax machine? Wouldn’t it be convenient if you received notifications in real time when your documents were received?

Email notifications make getting the answers to these questions much easier. Check out the different ways you can set up and use email notifications:

Upload/Download Notifications

Users can be set up within your ShareFile account to be automatically emailed when files are uploaded and/or downloaded. This eliminates the need to reach out and let them know each time you add something to their folder or send them a file. You can easily turn on these notifications when creating new users but to give this permission to existing users, click on the folder you’d like them to receive notifications for and choose ‘View/Edit Folder Access,’ then select the notifications you’d like those users to have.

Proactive Notifications

If you have users uploading to folders on your ShareFile account, they are able to use Proactive Notifications to alert other users in the folder that a new file has been uploaded. These Proactive Notifications go to all users in the folder even if they do not have the Upload/Download Notifications turned on. Admin users are able to turn these notifications on for your account by clicking on the Admin link on the navigation bar and choosing Advanced Preferences. Once enabled, users uploading will see a check box on the upload form allowing them to send the notifications when necessary.

Consolidated Notifications

All of our notifications are defaulted to be sent in real-time, which for some may be too frequent. To change the frequency of email notifications, users can click on the ‘My Settings’ link on the navigation bar, which will allow them to change their alerts to every 15 minutes, every hour, twice a day, or once a day. This options is available to both Employee users and Client users that have the ability to see the ‘My Settings’ link on the top navigation bar (this permission is given when the user is set up and can be modified under ‘Manage Users’).

Upload Receipts

After following the three tips listed above, you should have your notifications set up to best fit your needs. You also have a good start on notifying your users of any activity that they do. But what about when they upload a file to you using the ‘Request a File‘ feature? Since they do not get upload notifications for that feature, we’ve created an easy way for anyone responding to your ‘Request a File’ link to get a receipt. To turn on these receipts for your users, click on the ‘Admin’ tab, navigate to ‘Advanced Preferences,’ and click Yes for ‘Send upload receipts for Request a File.’

Now that you have customized your email notifications, you’ll never worry about your document delivery again. If you’d like any additional information on the email notifications options, contact your personal account manager for assistance.

Not yet a ShareFile customer? We would love to help you out—sign up for a free trial to test out for yourself.