Following our blog post about secure file sharing with external accounts, this blog post will cover how to maintain those accounts (remove/delete after a custom number of days). Enable Automatic Deletion/Disabling of External Accounts In the previous “Best Practices” post, we outlined how to automatically create external accounts. We also explored the benefits of automatic […]
Following our blog post about secure file sharing with external accounts, this blog post will cover how to maintain those accounts (remove/delete after a custom number of days).
In the previous “Best Practices” post, we outlined how to automatically create external accounts. We also explored the benefits of automatic account creation and how this process improves your security and your internal and external user experience.
Those accounts will stay on your FileCloud server even after the shares have expired. FileCloud offers unlimited external accounts, so you don’t need to worry about exceeding a certain limit. However, these accounts can accumulate over time and become messy to manage.
You can remove them manually, but there is a better way: configure a "Workflow" action to remove them periodically.
Log in to your admin portal and create a "New" admin workflow:
Choose the condition "If a user's last login is older than…."
In this example, we are setting the following parameters:
"last_login_days_ago":"60" -> If the user hasn’t logged in the last “60” days.
"day_interval": "1" -> How often do we want this workflow to execute? We are configuring it to run every day: "1"
"user_account_type":"USER_ACCOUNT_LIMITED_ACCESS" -> Restrict the workflow to only execute on External accounts.
In this next step, set the action that will be executed when the parameters are met. To delete the account, simply select “Delete user account.” However, as you can see from the screenshot below, there are a variety of options you can take to suit your operational needs.
Now you can define the notification rules, which can include sending an email to an admin and/or informing the user that the account is being deleted (set to the option to "1" if desired)
This workflow will run daily and remove external accounts that haven't logged in within the last "60" days. You can set the number of days you prefer and the action you want; for example, disable the account, change user status, notify the user that their account will expire soon, etc.
With this automation in place, you can maximize the benefits of secure file sharing by automating the creation and maintenance of external user accounts. It’s one solution within FileCloud among many that contribute to a more efficient and secure content collaboration platform. In the next blog post, we'll cover how to set up external accounts with two-factor authentication (2FA) to maximize security and prevent unauthorized access to your FileCloud environment.
Article written by Daniel Alarcon, Technical Support Manager | Edited by Katie Gerhardt, Junior Product Marketing Manager
