Mobile File Sharing with Egnyte: Secure and Easy

Our smartphones allow us to access the world while on the go. Today, crucial decisions get made while executives are travelling, business meetings happen at airports and cafes, and teams collaborate across time zones to get work done. Our smartphones have to be ready for every challenge work throws at us. Secure mobile app collaboration and mobile document sharing have become critical for business growth and boosting productivity.

The Egnyte Mobile App ensures continued access to all business content, regardless of your location or time zone. It offers the following benefits:

Anywhere Access

You can choose to save your files on your device for places with poor connectivity or always get the latest documents off your online server. Instantly upload pictures and scanned documents as searchable PDFs, ensuring you retain access to notes from your whiteboard sessions, minutes of a crucial onsite meeting, and pictures from a factory visit.

Anyhow Access

Share your documents efficiently and securely as attachments or read-only links. Use your favorite productivity tools, such as Microsoft Office and Google Suits, and collaboration applications, like Salesforce, Jive, Teams, and Slack, to create and edit documents directly from your online server.

Content Safety, Guaranteed

Mobile file sharing, document uploading and downloading are secured using 256-bit AES encryption. It ensures your content is intelligible and accessible to you alone. If your mobile device gets stolen or misplaced, an administrator can delete sensitive content and all your credentials to maintain data integrity.

So, how do we achieve secure mobile app collaboration? Let’s explore some of the features of Egnyte’s Mobile App:

Access Files on the Go

Folder navigation is intuitive, and all your content is presented in a gallery format to allow previews before you open or download it. Recent Files provides quick access to files you worked on most recently - even on your other devices. You do not have to grapple with size or document format restrictions. The app supports images, word documents, spreadsheets and more, so you have permission to all your crucial documents on the go.

Mobile File Sharing

You can use the Egnyte mobile app to safely share links to your files or folders with your colleagues and business associates, vendors, suppliers, customers, and other individuals who are not part of your account or organization. Collaborate on the same content, get your files reviewed, documents signed and more.

Upload New Content

Save those crucial notes you’re sure you’ll misplace, audio or video recordings during meetings, and pictures taken during site visits. Scan handwritten notes, email attachments or documents and directly save them to your online server as PDFs.

Biometric Security

All documents, whether on the move or simply residing on your server are encrypted using secure 256-bit AES file encryption. In addition, Egnyte’s Mobile App supports Android’s Fingerprint authentication and iOS’s Touch ID to add an extra layer of security to help you safeguard your content from falling into the wrong hands.

Real-Time Tracking and Collaboration

Activity streams update all recent changes to the files and folders as they happen. You can tag collaborators with an @mention to assign action items or comment on their work. Ensure you synchronize offline folders with the repository for automatic updates when you go online.

Integrations to Boost Productivity

Mobile document sharing can be completed with Outlook, iMessage, Teams, Slack, Salesforce, and several other collaboration apps. Your team can integrate the online file server into their chosen editing applications like Microsoft Office, Adobe, Google Docs, etc. Additionally, real-time updates are available on Apple Watch and Android Wear

Egnyte’s Mobile App allows employees and partners to collaborate while complying with security and regulatory requirements. We ensure your sensitive content remains safe. You can quickly get feedback on flyers, proposals, campaigns, and marketing materials from business partners with mobile file sharing. Safely share sensitive documents to the recipients over a secure email link. You can configure the link to allow only specific people access to view and download the files for review. Are you ‘on the go’ often? Collaborate from your mobile phone or tablet and access your shared company files from the cloud or on-premise servers. Instantly share your files and folders for co-editing. Need to send a confidential contract to your customer? Secure mobile app collaboration allows you to do just that. Your customer can download the document through a secure link, and once negotiations are concluded, you can revoke access to the document from their devices. You can set expiry limits based on the number of views or a specific date beyond which access will not be allowed. Are you collecting RFPs from various vendors? Send them a secure Upload Link from your mobile or tablet. All documents collected will automatically get organized into separate folders on the online server.

Downloading files and folders from your mobility app allows you access to crucial files when you are at a remote location where speed or connectivity may be an issue.

Offline Access

Mark specific files and folders for offline use. The content gets downloaded to your device automatically and becomes accessible through the App interface.

Download a File to Device Storage

Similar to how you choose to save an email attachment or a picture, you can choose a specific file through the Android or iOS Egnyte Mobile App. Click on the Share icon and save it to the iOS Files App or Android’s Gallery App. If your tablet has other options to save files, you can pick those too.

Drag and Drop

iPad users can take advantage of the split screen functionality and drag and drop the files they need between applications and central storage.

Admin Setup for Downloads

Administrators must give you permission to use your device storage to store files and folders. If the setting is disabled, you cannot download files to your mobile device. They can also set a time limit after which files will be auto-deleted from local storage.

This mobile security feature allows administrators to maintain, monitor and control the list of mobile devices allowed to use Egnyte’s mobile app. It is extremely useful for highly regulated industries where individuals access sensitive customer data. Additional features include:

• Device entitlement with EMM (Enterprise Mobility Management) solutions identifies if users are accessing Egnyte accounts from a specific mobile device.
• Unmanaged devices can be completely blocked or allowed under additional restrictions to access the online file server for mobile file sharing, editing, uploading and other activities.
• Restrictions can be customized to include passcode locks, blocking of local storage, disallowing downloads, and blocking any third-party application from accessing the Mobility App, etc.
• From a device user’s perspective, there is no difference in how they work on the App. If they are disallowed from using it on an unmanaged device, they wouldn’t be able to access it at all. If they are allowed with restrictions, those menu options simply would not show up for them to use.

It is easy to take mobile document sharing one step further with Smart Uploads. Automatic Smart Uploads allow users to scan the gallery or photo library on their mobile phone or tablet and identify certain photographs taken at specific locations to their pre-configured folders.

• To start with, users must associate a geo-location with a project folder. Next, an upload folder must be assigned to this project folder. Your mobile device camera settings also need to be set to use location services with the Precise Location setting turned on.
• Once this configuration is done, take the pictures at the specific location. Launch the Egnyte App and look for the New Smart Upload notification. Here, you will see a list of pictures identified for upload. Review the list and remove any photos that you do not want uploaded.
• Smart upload takes care of scanning the gallery and automatically uploading pictures from that geo-location to the folder, saving users a lot of manual work. Users also have the option of manually triggering a Smart Upload by scanning their gallery and allowing the App to identify pictures taken at a specific location.

One important requirement for mobile file sharing is to assign documents to a team or individual for review, to get approvals, and to get documents published, etc. In strictly regulated industries, there are audit processes that cover how the document went through the different stages before being published.

To-Do

Create tasks for specific team members with comments and deadlines. Once the assigned member works on the task, they can mark it complete.

To-Review

Create tasks for users to review a document or portions of it and provide feedback. Again, reviewers can mark the document as reviewed if they’re satisfied.

To-Approve

Create tasks for users to either approve or reject a document along with their comments. Certain industries require this step to contain a digital signature.

The Egnyte Mobile App on both Android and iOS allows users to see the list of workflows and tasks assigned to them.

• The Workflow and Tasks list contains a list of tasks either assigned to you or created by you.
• Tasks can be filtered according to their current status - Assigned, In Progress, etc., or by type - To-Do, Review, Approve, etc.
• Regardless of their location, users can safely and securely access their task list from their mobile device, work on the documents based on their deadline, complete tasks, add comments, e-sign, and accept or reject workflows.

1. What version of Android or iOS is needed for Egnyte’s mobile app?

   A: You can use the Egnyte mobile app with iOS 12.0 or later and Android 9.x or later.

2. How do I send secure file share links from the Android App?

   A: Tap the three dots next to your file or folder. An action menu will open with the Share option. Here, you can also choose who will have what kind of access to the content. You also have the option of sharing Direct Links with your team member who has access to the folder but cannot get to it for whatever reason. In the Folder Details menu, you will get a path to the file, which can be copied and sent to your colleague.

3. How Do I Bookmark A Folder on my iOS device?

   A: On the mobile app, navigate to the folder you would like quick access to. Click on the Star icon on the top right corner of the page. The folder is now bookmarked and is accessible from the bottom bar of your App.

4. Does the App sync files to my mobile device?

   A: No, the app is not designed to automatically sync files to your mobile device since it can use a significant amount of wireless data. Instead, you can decide which folders or files you would like synced up, and the App will automatically synchronize this content alone. Navigate to your folder and select the three dots next to the folder name. Select the Auto-Update option from the menu. The folder will now be kept in sync with the central repository.

5. I keep getting logged out of my App on my iPad. How do I fix this?

   A: You could get signed out frequently if your Administrator has configured a mandatory timeout. If not, it might be because you have not selected the Remember Me option. On the Menu icon at the bottom bar of the App, click on Settings. Toggle the Remember Me option to ON. If Touch ID is enabled on your device, remember to enable Touch ID in the Settings under Passcode Lock. It will make logging in much faster and more secure.