File Automations with SharePoint

As a modern MFT, Couchdrop has many features to help you get your files where they need to be. Couchdrop’s file automations let you move, encrypt, rename files, and more, and integrates directly with SharePoint and other storage both on-premises and in the cloud.

Automate file transfers into and out of SharePoint

With a cloud SFTP solution like Couchdrop, you can automate file transfers into and out of SharePoint. For example, a bank can pull financial data from a remote partner’s server, then share that information along with other relevant files for a specific team to an internal SharePoint site. It can then keep a copy in SharePoint, and then encrypt and share out the information (minus the internal docs) to a third party like analysts or auditors. And with Couchdrop, all of this can be done automatically through file automations.

With Couchdrop Automations, you can pull files from another location, including a private file server, and send files through SFTP into SharePoint and vice versa. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to create a simple scheduled automation using SharePoint and an SFTP endpoint in Couchdrop.

Before enabling automation workflows, you’ll need to connect SharePoint to your Couchdrop account. If you need help with this, take a look at the tutorial video Couchdrop Demo SFTP to Sharepoint.

Creating a simple scheduled automation using SharePoint and SFTP

For this example, we’ll create a simple scheduled automation in Couchdrop to move files in a specific folder (hosted in a remote SFTP endpoint) into SharePoint at midnight every day, then rename the file to add a timestamp. For a full list of automation options, see the article configuring Couchdrop automations.

To start, go to the Automations tab (on the left sidebar on desktop). Then follow these steps:

• Click Add a new automation
• Choose “Create a scheduled workflow”
• Name the Automation and choose when you want it to run.
• Pick a directory to monitor. This will be the folder the files will be pulled from. This can be any Storage Integration you have connected to Couchdrop, including other cloud storage like Google Workspace or Dropbox. In this simple automation, the folder monitored is called “To Move to SharePoint’’ using Couchdrop’s hosted storage.

• Click Actions and then click the Add action dropdown. Choose “Move File” and then choose the mounted SharePoint folder as the destination.
• Multi-step automations are supported in Couchdrop. In this case, the file is renamed using the {EXISTING_NAME} variable and then adding the {TIMESTAMP} variable, then moved to SharePoint.
• Click Save and Continue and add any email notifications. Check that the Summary looks right and then choose Save and Continue once more.

Summary of this file automation

You can test the workflow by adding files into the folder and then going into the Workflows and clicking the three dots and choosing Run/Trigger Workflow.

Testing the automation

After enabling the automation, we uploaded a file into Hosted Storage into the folder To Move to SharePoint to see if it would work as expected. 

Before running the automation, the target folder in the destination SharePoint is empty. 

We added a new file to trigger the automation. If everything worked as expected the file should move automatically into SharePoint. 

The file is showing in Couchdrop, but how about SharePoint itself? 

Success! The file also shows when logging directly into SharePoint, showing that the automation triggered and worked successfully. The file has also been removed from the To Move to SharePoint file in Couchdrop because we chose a Move operation instead of a Copy command. There are currently over 10 different file actions that can be done in Couchdrop.

Try Couchdrop free for 14 days

Couchdrop works with multiple cloud storage providers and can move files from any supported cloud storage or on-premise platform (Windows, MacOSX or SFTP server) to SharePoint or vice versa. Multi-step automations can do complex file transfers between multiple platforms with no manual input required.

To get started with Couchdrop, register for a free 14-day trial today.