Files and Smart Attach (webmail)

Files is the personal cloud file store built into the HiTechCloud webmail. Every mailbox user gets their own space to keep files and folders, share them with colleagues or with anybody by link, and see who opened a link and from where. Smart Attach uses it from the compose window: a large attachment is uploaded to Files and the email carries a download link instead of the bytes.

Both features are self-hosted: files live on your own server and nothing is ever sent to a third-party service.

Opening Files​

In the webmail, click Files in the left sidebar. The page has three views:

• My files — your folders and files. Double-click a folder to open it; the breadcrumb at the top takes you back. Double-click a file (or click its name) for a preview: images, PDFs, text, audio and video open inline, everything else is offered as a download.
• Shared with me — files and folders other mailboxes shared with you.
• Trash — what you deleted. Restore an item or delete it forever; Empty trash removes everything. Trashed files still count towards your quota until they are gone for good.

The quota bar at the bottom of the sidebar shows how much of your space is used.

Uploading​

Click Upload and pick one or more files, or drag files from your desktop onto the page. Large files are sent in pieces, so a slow connection can carry a multi-gigabyte upload without hitting the web server's request limit. The maximum size of one file and the per-user quota are set by the server administrator (see Configuration).

Organising​

Use New folder to create folders. Each row has actions to download, share, rename, move (pick a destination folder) and move to trash. Two items in the same folder cannot share a name; an uploaded duplicate is stored as name (2).

Sharing​

Click the link icon on a file or folder to open the share dialog. A share on a folder covers everything inside it.

A link can carry a password (the visitor must type it before downloading) and an expiry (1, 7, 30 or 90 days, or never). Once it expires, the page says so and nothing can be downloaded. Remove revokes a share at any time; moving a file to the trash revokes all of its shares.

Who accessed a link​

Every time a link is opened or its file downloaded, the webmail records the time, the visitor's IP address, browser and — when possible — approximate location. Open the share dialog and click Who accessed on a link to see the list and a world map with one dot per location.

Location is looked up offline. If the server administrator installs the free MaxMind GeoLite2 City database at /usr/share/GeoIP/GeoLite2-City.mmdb (or the path given by GEOIP_DB), the log shows country, region, city and a dot on the map. Without it, the log still records every access, with the location marked unknown (or Local network for private addresses). The webmail never contacts an external geolocation service.

Smart Attach​

When you attach a file in the compose window, each attachment chip shows a small Send as link toggle:

• Attachments larger than the threshold (10 MB by default) are marked automatically and travel as links. The chip says so when you hover it.
• Click the toggle on any attachment to send it as a link regardless of size, or click it again to attach the file normally.

When you press Send, the files marked as links are uploaded to the Smart Attach folder of your Files, a share link is created for each, and a styled block listing the downloads is appended to the message. The recipients click a link to download; the email itself stays small.

Under Settings → Categories → Smart Attach links you can set how many days the links stay valid (default 30, 0 = never) and an optional password that every Smart Attach link will require. The links are ordinary Files share links: they appear in the file's share dialog with their access log, and you can revoke them there.

Scheduled and undo-window sends work the same way — the links are created when you press Send, and the queued message carries the finished link block.

In the HiTechCloud panel​

Account owners see Emails → Webmail Files in the panel: every mailbox of the account with its Files usage, file count and number of shares, and an Open webmail Files button that signs the panel user into that mailbox's webmail through the usual SSO hand-off. The panel only reads these figures; files are managed inside the webmail.

Administrators have a read-only Emails → Files Storage overview in the admin panel with the usage per hosting account and per mailbox.

Configuration​

The server administrator sets these in the webmail's environment file (/etc/hitechcloud/native/webmail/webmail.env on a native install; the installer writes sensible defaults):

Restart the webmail service after changing them (systemctl restart hitechcloud-webmail).

Files are stored under FILES_ROOT/<user id>/<random key>; the names you see are kept in the webmail database, so a file name can never become a path on the server.