Send documents to someone outside your company
Pick documents, pick a contact, send a link - or send a plain update with nothing attached. They can send documents back on the same link.
Pulling permits is the case this was built for: you send the expeditor a set of plans and forms, and they send the approved permit back. They will never have a SyteNav account, and the files are too big to email. So you send a link instead.
Two ways in. On a job, open the Sharing tab under Docs & Legal - that picks up everything on that job, grouped by where it lives: Plans, Permits, Submittals, Compliance, plus your company files. From the Files page, click Share documents for company paperwork like your W-9 or insurance certificate.
- 1Open the job and go to Docs & Legal → Sharing (or the Files page for company paperwork).
- 2Click Send to one person.
- 3Pick who it is going to from your contacts, or just type a name and email.
- 4Tick the documents to send - or tick none, and it goes as a plain update.
- 5Give it a title (e.g. "Permit package - 19 Shady Nook Ave") and a message if you need one.
- 6Leave "Let them send documents back" on, and say what you need back.
- 7Set when the link should expire, then create it. Copy the link, or open it straight in your email.
They open the link with no account and no sign-up. They see who sent it, your message, and every document you picked, ready to download. If you left the return trip on, they can attach documents and send them straight back to you.
SENDING WITHOUT ATTACHING ANYTHING. Documents are optional. Pick none and the message becomes the whole thing - that is how you tell an architect the slab height moved half an inch without having to attach a file just to say it. They still get a link, they can still send documents back on it, and it is listed on the Sharing tab like any other send. The only rule is that it cannot be empty: with nothing attached, you have to write something.
TWO WAYS OUT, AND THEY REACH DIFFERENT PEOPLE. "Send to one person" goes to ONE person outside your company, on a link, with no account needed. "Send scope update" goes to your team and the trades working on it - in the bell, by email and on their phone. Use the first for an expeditor or a lender; use the second when a change moves somebody else's work. A scope update can carry documents too: open "Attach a document" in the dialog and tick the revised sheet, and everyone told gets a link to it.
THE SHARING TAB IS THE RECORD. Both kinds are listed there newest first: what went out, who it went to, whether it has been opened, whether anything came back, and for a broadcast the names of everybody told and anybody who could not be reached.
Tapping a document opens it full screen, and on a phone you swipe left or right to move to the next one - no going back to the list between each file. Photos, PDFs and everything else page through the same way, with a counter showing where you are, and "Open original" is always there if a PDF will not preview on their browser. On a laptop the arrows and arrow keys do the same job.
The link is not lost when you close the window. Every link you send is listed on the Sharing tab of that job (and on the Files page under Shared), showing whether it has been opened and whether anything came back. Copy the link again any time, download what was returned, or turn the link off - and turn it back on if you turned it off by mistake.
Plans got revised? Click Add documents on the link you already sent instead of making a new one. The recipient keeps the same URL and sees the new files marked with the date they were added. Documents already on the link are never replaced or removed - so a link only ever grows, and nothing you sent quietly changes underneath the person you sent it to.
That is also why the files you send are a snapshot: rename, re-file or delete the file on your side and they still see exactly what you sent.
This is the opposite of a compliance request. Use a compliance request to collect insurance and licences FROM a sub; use this to send documents TO someone.
IT IS ALSO NOT THE CLIENT PORTAL. The Sharing tab sends a set of documents to somebody outside your company - an expeditor, an architect, a lender. The client portal is a single standing link to the whole job for the person paying for it: progress, schedule, selections and their invoices. That one lives behind the share icon in the job header, not here.