Best solution for sharing files & collaborating with vendors

August 7, 2014

Best solution for sharing files and collaborating with vendors and external partners Most of the companies have a need to share files and collaborate with partners outside their company network. Importantly, companies want multi-mode authentication, where they can provide full authentication for their employees but provide only restricted access for their partners and vendors. There […]

Share with Vendors and Partners

Best solution for sharing files and collaborating with vendors and external partners

Most of the companies have a need to share files and collaborate with partners outside their company network. Importantly, companies want multi-mode authentication, where they can provide full authentication for their employees but provide only restricted access for their partners and vendors. There are multiple public cloud solutions that help in sharing but most of them don't support multi-mode authentication. Businesses need a single cloud solution that provides seamless secure access for employees as well as partners.

Many enterprise customers use Microsoft Active Directory to manage internal employees and would like to maintain the same preferences in Active Directory or LDAP  in their cloud solution. For sharing and collaborating with external vendor and partners, enterprises want user authentication and rights management outside of their Active Directory. FileCloud provides such a solution that combines Active Directory for internal employees and provides additional user access controls for users who aren't in Active Directory. Additionally, FileCloud is built to provide granular customization options. This blog post explains two of the customization options around searching and creating new accounts in FileCloud that helps customers manage cloud access for their partners and vendors.

 

Restrictive Search

Uploading large files to public cloud would be time consuming and opens up privacy violations and security concerns. Using FileCloud, users can share files with other users in the FileCloud solution as well as guest users, without uploading to external servers. FileCloud provides additional fine tune options: In a typical setup, FileCloud allows users to search for other users within company's FileCloud instance. Searching for other users, is one of the most used features. Some companies want to keep the list of users private especially when they are working with multiple vendors and partners and they don't want a vendor searching for other vendors in the system. In these cases, Filecloud provides following search options to provide additional level of control.

a) Normal: user can search other users using a partial or full name; FileCloud provides a full list of users that match the criteria.

b) Less restrictive: "Exact Email Search With Explicit Account Invite" - users can't search for other users with partial name. Users have to know exact username to search. If they don't find the person they are searching for, they can invite the target user to register with FileCloud.

c) Very restrictive: "Exact Email Search With Implicit Account Invite" - with this option, users can't search with partial name. When an users search for another user, FileCloud doesn't say if the target user is present in the system. When sharing a file, if the target user is present, FileCloud sends the link to the file in an email. If the target user is not present, FileCloud sends an invite to register an account with FileCloud along with the link to shared file.

Learn more on the exact steps from FileCloud's support site: http://www.tonido.com/support/display/cloud/User+Account+Searchability

Restrictive User Registration

In a default setup, a link to create a 'new account' is visible on the home screen and users can register for an account using the link.  Some companies want to restrict new user signups hence don't want 'new account' signup link visible to all visitors to the homepage. This is useful for customers who want to control signups and avoid large number of invalid accounts. This feature is widely used by customers who would publish the user signin (homepage) to a wider audience such as a government agency that wants to protect registration. Here are the steps for administrators to restrict user registration:

Learn more on the exact steps from FileCloud's support site: http://www.tonido.com/support/display/cloud/Enable+new+account+creation+requests

Granular controls, like the ones explained above, make FileCloud standout among private cloud solutions and makes it the best solution to share large files and collaborate  with vendors and external partners. Learn more at www.filecloud.com

Image Courtesy: pakorn at freedigitalphotos.net

By Team FileCloud