Guest users

For a graphical description on the benefit of this feature, please see this blog post.

Introduction

  • A guest user is a user configured under the predefined Guest role.
  • Guest users do not login with username and password, but with special access links.
  • Guest users do not have a home folder, but instead can access files and folders which other users might share with them.
  • Regular users can add guest users by simply specifying a name and an e-mail address when sharing files or folders. This is of course subject to a permission setting.

Enabling the feature

The guest access can be enabled/disabled at any time from the control panel, under “System configuration” » “Security” » “Guest users”. For the users to get the option to share with guest users, the permission option “User can share with guest users” needs to be checked, when adding or editing the user account.

Adding permissions

By default, guest users can only download files. To allow them to perform more actions, like adding comments, for example, sign in as superuser and edit the role Guest.

Deleting guest user accounts

  • Guest user accounts are automatically deleted when there are no longer any files or folders shared with them.
  • Guest accounts can be configured to get automatically deleted after a defined period if inactivity (“System configuration” » “Security” » “Guest users”).

Upgrading guest user accounts

Guest user accounts can be upgraded to regular user accounts by the superuser. To do so, open the control panel to edit the user account and simply remove the Guest role or select another role. Note that you would need to close the user editing form and open it again in order to set a password for the account.

Requirements

Given that guest user access links are sent automatically via e-mail, this feature requires e-mail sending support enabled in FileRun.

Troubleshooting

If a guest user cannot find his access link, it can be retrieved by the admin users from the control panel, when clicking to edit the guest user account.