Note - you may want to read up on the basics of sharing here.
With so much information floating around on our computers and in that great "Cloud" we would all be lost without some kind of "reference" to which the information is tied. That is also why Cargosnap makes the Reference so central to all we do. And we adapt to the reference you're already used to.
But ... When you share a file with another company, that lovely Reference may become a confusion. Because: it's your reference, after all. But not your Customers. Right? A customer may use their own Purchase Order or Delivery Number to reference your company. And, when they seek your information , they would like to use their own reference.
Now. The "Customer Reference" in a share is a field exactly designed for that. Because often times, you know the Customer Reference. Let's make the life of our customer a bit easier and use that one, right?!
Let's have a look at how that works, shall we?!
Imagine that you -WarehouseCo- have a customer -ShipCo- who list their reference on all their order documents. Maybe even as a barcode (how kind of them!).
In that case, just 3 simple steps will get you to fully use this solution.
Step 1: use a workflow to "capture" the Customer Reference
Step 2: set up your location default to use the Customer Reference field in the shares
Step 3: Share!
Let's delve into them a bit:
Step 1: use a workflow to "capture" the Customer Reference
In "Workflows" create or edit one of your workflows where you 'touch' the customer reference. Include a "barcode" step, mapping to a (new/existing) field with a name like "Customer Reference":
Step 2: set up your location default to use the Customer Reference field in the shares
Step 3: Share!
In the step above you could see the file was shared with the Customer reference pre-filled. That was possible, because in the workflow we set up in the first step, the Customer Reference was captured. Now Once the share is out to the customer, let's have a look what such a shared file looks like to the Customer / recipient!
As you can see, the customer may now use their own reference to locate the file they are looking for in the list of items you shared with them (beware: the query also will work on your reference!).
Advanced: Want to make it extra cool? Well combine your knowledge of the Customer Reference with this article and you can also add this customer reference to the Subject of the email. (TLDR; go to global settings -> fields and obtain the field ID for the customer reference. Then use that reference in the location sharing detail, by including a value {{field:that-id}} in the subject line.
Maybe not as good as apple pie, but pretty nice too, right?!