HELITS UPFILES: why receiving files from outside should be a solved problem

Every marketing department knows the scenario: an agency partner is supposed to deliver print-ready files. The partner has no access to SharePoint, Teams is not externally accessible, and a WeTransfer share lands somewhere in a personal email inbox that no one regularly empties. Three emails later, with attachments too big for the mail server, someone drops in a Google Drive link.

The result: files in five different places, no traceability, no GDPR-compliant logging, and no way to integrate the process with Teams or SharePoint.

HELITS UPFILES, which runs in an early live version at upfiles.v-valdi.de, solves exactly this problem.

What HELITS UPFILES is

UPFILES is an upload portal that lets companies create public or semi-public file landing pages — for partners, customers, suppliers, trade fair visitors, or any other external contact who is supposed to submit files.

Anyone opening the landing page sees a clean upload interface. No login. No account. No app installation. The file is uploaded, lands encrypted in the configured target folder in Microsoft Teams or SharePoint, and the configured recipients get a structured email notification — with all the form fields the sender filled in.

That sounds simple. Technically, it is not.

What is under the hood

The upload process uses the Tus.io protocol — an open standard for resumable uploads. That means: if the connection drops during a large file upload, you don't start over. The upload resumes where it was interrupted. For files up to 500 MB (and into the GB range on the enterprise tier), that is a decisive difference.

Files do not land on our server — they go via presigned URLs directly into cloud storage (Cloudflare R2 or compatible S3 endpoints). That means: minimal latency, no bottleneck at an intermediate server, and data-protection control over the storage location remains with the customer.

Virus scans run automatically on upload (depending on the tier). MIME-type validation prevents files from being uploaded under a false type. The log of every upload is audit-secure — date, time, IP address (pseudonymised), uploaded files, form contents.

QR codes as a physical upload point

A feature we underestimated during development is the QR code integration. Every landing page in UPFILES automatically gets a QR code generated. The intended use: at trade fairs, in branches, on print materials.

A concrete example from our own use: at one event we handed out business cards with QR codes through which interested parties could upload their enquiry documents directly — no email address needed, no media break. The files landed straight in our Teams channel, structured by event and date.

That is also the reason we don't see UPFILES as an "internal tool" but as an interface between the company and the external world — digital as well as physical.

What v-valdi.de has to do with it

upfiles.v-valdi.de is the live instance we operate for an early customer test. v-valdi is a test operation through which we trial new product functions in a real environment before they go into the main distribution. Anyone who uploads files there today uses the same technology as the finished product — in a controlled environment with real usage scenarios.

That is our development approach for all of our own products: not laboratory testing as the only instance, but real usage with real requirements that honestly challenge the system.

For whom UPFILES makes sense now

The product is ready today for companies that:

• regularly receive files from external contacts and currently solve this via email or private cloud services
• use Microsoft Teams or SharePoint as their internal platform
• need GDPR-compliant logging for incoming files
• want to set up QR-based physical upload points

For companies without a Microsoft 365 environment, UPFILES is currently less relevant — the Teams/SharePoint integration is the core feature, not an optional add-on.

Technical details and pricing are on the HELITS UPFILES product page. Anyone who wants to test the live environment can try an upload directly at upfiles.v-valdi.de — no login required. That is intentional: the product should speak for itself.

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