Sharing Files
Public links, organization-wide sharing, restricted access, and expirations.
Every file in your Vault is private to you by default. You can open it up in three different ways.
Open the share dialog
Open a file (or open its menu and choose Share). The share dialog shows the current access level and lets you change it.
Access levels
Restricted (default)
Only the people you explicitly add can see the file. Add team members by name or email. They'll get a notification that the file was shared with them.
Organization
Everyone in your workspace can see the file. No additional configuration needed. The file appears in their search results and is referenceable in their chat conversations.
Public link
Anyone with the link can view the file — no MainBranch login required. Use this for sharing with vendors, partners, or anyone outside your workspace.
When you generate a public link, the file is reachable at a URL like mainbranch.com/vault/file/[id].
Expirations
For organization-wide and public links you can optionally set an expiration:
- 1 day
- 7 days
- 30 days
After the expiration passes, the link stops working. The file is still visible to you (the owner) — only the shared access expires.
Revoking access
Open the share dialog and switch the access level. Switching from Public to Restricted invalidates the public link immediately. Switching from Restricted back to Organization opens it up workspace-wide.
You can also remove specific people from a restricted share by clicking the × next to their name.
How the public viewer looks
A person opening a public link sees a clean viewer with:
- A preview of the file (PDF, image, audio, or video player).
- Buttons to download or open in a new tab.
- No MainBranch sign-in prompt.
They cannot see other files, reshare, or modify anything.
File previews
Inside the Vault you can preview most files without downloading:
- PDFs — Full document viewer with zoom and pagination.
- Images — Native browser image viewer.
- Audio — Player with play, pause, and scrub.
- Video — Player with standard controls.
- Office documents — Read-only preview maintaining formatting.
Files that take too long to load show a timeout with a retry option.
Notifications when shared
Whoever you share a file with (via Restricted sharing) gets a notification in their MainBranch inbox. They can also receive an email notification depending on their preferences. See Account → Notifications.
Audit trail
Every share, unshare, and expiration is recorded in the workspace audit log so admins can review who has access to what.