Workspaces Invitations

An EFT administrator can invite internal users to join existing Workspaces in the VFS tab. External users cannot be invited via the VFS tab; they can only be invited by email address in the Web Transfer Client (WTC).

When a user is invited via the WTC, EFT follows the following logic flow:

  1. EFT will first look for a matching email address in the existing Site user profiles and usernames. For example, let's say a Workspaces folder owner invites a user to share a folder with the email address test@gs.com. EFT will search for a user in the existing Site for either a username of "test@gs.com" or a username with an associated email of test@gs.com. If a match is found, then EFT sends an email to the invited user to let them know that they have been invited to share a Workspaces folder. Internal users are not invited, they are automatically joined.

  2. If more than one internal user is associated with the invited email address, either by username or profile e-mail address, EFT will decline to add the user.

  3. If the email address is not associated with any internal username or email profile and the Site-level Workspaces tab has the Allow invitation to new EFT users for Workspaces option enabled, then EFT will add the user to the Workspaces folder as a "pending" user, and the user will be invited to create an EFT account to gain access to the shared folder. However, if the option is not enabled, then the invitation request will be denied.

Internal Users

When adding participants to Workspaces folders, the email address is the unique participant identifier. Existing users will be added to a Workspaces folder only if there is one and only one match for the e-mail address being invited. Before completing an invitation, EFT will check both the username and email address fields for all users on the Site for matching addresses.

  • If two internal EFT users on the same Site have the same email address, they cannot both be joined to the same Workspaces folder. For example, if user accounts test2 and test3 each  have the email address user@gs.com, and the administrator attempts to add users test2 and test3 to a Workspaces folder, EFT will not permit test3 to join, and will state that it's due to duplicate users. In the WTC, the "Unspecified error has occurred" message will appear. If Workspaces trace level logging is enabled, then the log will report the offending email address.

  • If one user’s username is the same as another user account's e-mail address and a Workspace owner attempts to invite that address, an error will occur and the user will not be invited.

Guest Users

When guest users are invited to join a Workspaces folder, they must individually accept and activate each Workspaces invitation, then create an account to gain access to the Workspaces folder.

  • When guest users join a Workspaces folder, their user accounts are created under EFT's Guest User Settings Template. Guest users are permitted to create Workspaces, but cannot invite new guest users to share the folder. Guest users can only invite users who already have an EFT account.

  • The EFT VFS tab indicates which users are in the "pending" state, meaning they have not yet accepted their invitations. Once a user accepts an invitation, the "Pending" status is removed. Invited users have 5 days to accept and activate a pending invitation, after which the invitation will expire. This is a hard-coded value and cannot be modified.

  • Workspace owners and EFT administrators are not notified when an user's invitation expires. When an invitation expires, the user is automatically removed from the Workspaces folder and no longer will appear as a pending user. There is no resend-invitation option. To re-invite a user whose invitation has expired, the Workspaces owner, via the WTC, has to re-invite the user, at which point the invited user will go back into a pending status and will again have 5 days to activate the account. Pending user status can only be viewed via the VFS Tab.

  • A guest account that has been disabled (e.g., due to the Workspace expiring) doesn’t automatically get re-enabled if a new invitation is sent to them. The EFT administrator must enable the account or remove it, and then the guest would have to recreate it.