Files (aka Drive in some cloud platforms) is an Integrated File Management system in Carbonio CE that stores your files. It acts as your personal storage location where you can save and use files for collaboration by sharing them with internal and external users more conveniently than attaching them to your email. In this article, we will describe this feature using use-case scenarios so that you can relate it to your day-to-day workplace environment. So, stay to know some amazing facts about your personal storage.
As the scope of workplace collaboration increases, email solutions are equipped with many other tools besides email functions, like chat for instant messaging, files for file sharing, etc. Therefore, features like chat and files are as important and useful for an email collaboration platform as Contacts and Calendar are. So, in this article, we will see how File Storage in an Email server can be useful for you and your organization.
Importance of Files
Can you find any cloud email collaboration platforms that do not have the feature files (file server) with their solution? The answer is no.
Also, why do cloud platforms not exclude files from their feature list and reduce the price of their packages? The simple answer to this question is Files is not an advanced feature anymore. It has become as basic as contacts and calendars are.
How many open-source email collaboration platforms have built-in file servers in them? The answer is very few. At the same time, some others have the feasibility of third-party integration.
So, you should have understood by now that the Files feature is valuable and essential for users. But we would try to understand its usefulness in our way with some real-life scenarios.
Use Cases of Files
Convenient Way to Share
Media, broadcast, post-production industries, manufacturing industries, and Offices with multiple branches mostly need to share large files more frequently than others. Regardless of these categories, if you need to share large files with others (within your organization/external users), Files is the most convenient way to do this. Sending or sharing a large file using the Files feature will save you time, effort, network bandwidth and other system resources. In short, your email attachment management has become more convenient than ever.
Share Files Regardless of Size and Remote User Platform
Each collaboration platform has its own predefined limits for an acceptable email attachment size. Therefore, even if your platform allows you to attach a large (let’s say 100 MB) file, there is no guarantee that your remote end receiver will receive the attachment you just sent. Most likely, your attachment is going to be discarded without informing you or even your remote end recipient.
Secure Your File Sharing
Security is another key factor of the Files feature. If you send a file as an attachment, there is no way for you to prevent the remote recipient from forwarding that attachment to anyone else. But with the Files feature, you can generate a link that can only be accessible from your organization’s email account.
On the other hand, you can generate links for that file for external users to use while setting an expiry date on that link to make sharing more secure.
Not Only Share But Also Keep Track Of Any Changes
Files can provide you with another useful feature that is known as versioning. With this feature, you can keep track of any change in a file and in case of need, you can download an old version of that file to use it. This feature is useful, especially when multiple team members are working on the same file or you are modifying the same file repeatedly. Versioning can make your file handling more effortless than ever.
Save Space in Your Email Server
Regardless of this, if you are sending or receiving large attachments, it can deplete your server storage more rapidly than you can imagine. Whereas with the Files feature, you send large files to as many users as you want using the link of the file without reducing your server storage.
Preview It Before Using Any File
The Files also helps you with your document management. The Files Preview feature lets you preview and edit your documents (docs, ppts, xls, etc.) without downloading. So, if your system has a built-in Files feature, most likely, you will be able to preview/edit it.
So, these are the broadly known use cases of having the Files feature. But you may already have encountered some other scenarios where the Files feature is easier to use rather than attaching a large file.
Organizations that do not have Files feature in their collaboration tools need to rely heavily on 3rd party File Servers to share files. You can imagine the significance of a file server from the fact that a file server can be a separate solution. You can reduce costs significantly while setting it up or making it operational.
But you can get the Files as an out-of-the-box feature with Carbonio CE.
The Files feature of Carbonio CE covers all of the above-mentioned use cases, and these are the broadly known use cases of having the Files feature in any cloud platform; hence, you can understand it is no lesser than any cloud drive or file-sharing feature in terms of usefulness.
You can read more on the Files feature of Carbonio CE on this link.