Version 2: Major Updates to Sharebox

2018-05-22
Graphic showing with text "Sharebox Updates"

Since its release, Sharebox has been one of the best ways to share content with external users from within Alfresco. We have been hard at work for this latest release to give our Sharebox customers an even better experience with the Sharebox.

With the newer release, we have the following major new features and upgrades to our existing features.

  • External user multi-factor authentication
  • Improved Privacy and GDPR compliance features
  • Document and content previewer

External User Multi Factor Authentication

While Sharebox has always been secure, there was room for improvement. So in the latest version, we added a new token system that ties the Sharebox Token to the browser that was used when the Sharebox folder first opened with. It will have its own expiry date/time.

The association with a browser prevents the user from leaking data by accidentally forwarding the token email. The expiry (not to be confused with the date a share expires) prevents a token from lying dormant in the inbox, i.e if not activated within a set time period, you have to request a new one. 

This feature has been requested by our customers and available to all other customers with the newer version. The former single email based authentication will continue to work for the customers who choose not to enable this new feature. We have worked on providing a seamless automated migration path for existing Sharebox folders if you choose to migrate to this newer authentication system.


Improved Privacy and GDPR compliance features


We all know that GDPR is coming into effect in just a few days, and we recognize that Sharebox needs to be ready for it. As an external interface to your organization, it does deal with personal data such as external user email addresses. So we have added features to assist your organization in being GDPR / Data privacy regulations compliant. Any Sharebox folder invites now contains a section that explains your organizational data privacy policy, and the retention period (configurable). You can even have a link to your public data privacy policy page.

After the configuration retention period, any data stored in the audit log is deleted automatically, and you can optionally select to completely delete Sharebox share and the uploaded files. You can also choose to option to anonymize them (remove the external users' email address).

Document and Content Previewer

Last but not certainly the least, we have added content and preview support. For files of select Image formats and office files that can be transformed to PDF, external users can now preview them within the external client. The file types depend on the setup of your Alfresco repository server. If it can be previewed as PDF there, it most likely can be shown in Sharebox. All preview actions shall also be audited.


Request a trial

We will be happy to let you try Sharebox out on our Showcase server. Just contact us.

Or you can just read more, checkout videos, and download a product paper from our Sharebox page.