Introduction to Link-Based File Sharing

Audience: Site Admins, User Admins, Access Group Managers, power users, end users

Purpose: Explain what Shares are now, what changed, and how links work end-to-end

Prerequisites: Ability to create Shares; familiarity with your site’s folders/workspaces

A Share lets you grant time-limited access to files via a link.

You can:

Guest registration required for all links (inbound & outbound). Recipients register once, then authenticate for future links (unless deleted/suspended based on site settings).
MFA layered on top of Guest Users:
- Sharetru Federal Sites: TOTP authenticator app only.
- All Other Sites: TOTP app or Email or SMS.
Set Days until expiration and usage limit moved to "Advanced Settings" in when creating a Shares link.
Per-recipient vs. per-link usage counting.
- System-sent emails: usage counted per recipient.
- User-sent (copied) links: usage counted per link (shared pool).
Domain allow-listing (whitelisting): Admins can restrict which recipient domains can receive outbound links.
File Sharing Limit: up to 50 files per single outbound Share. (No total size limit.)
Go to Folder shortcut in the Shares dashboard (kebab menu).
Expanded logging tied to a registered GIST user (identity, MFA method, timestamps), with SIEM forwarding if configured.

Existing Shares automatically adopt guest registration.
Link passwords are retired. Old link-level passwords are replaced by each guest user’s account password and 2FA from their registration.
Not all legacy links migrate:
- Already expired shares won’t migrate.
- Shares created by a deleted user won’t migrate.
- Shares that point to deleted files/folders won’t migrate.