How to save email attachments to Egnyte automatically with Couchdrop Mailboxes

Businesses frequently need to collect files from external parties via email - vendor invoices, customer documents, partner submissions, and contractor deliverables all arrive as email attachments. Egnyte provides excellent cloud storage, but it lacks a native way to automatically save email attachments to a dedicated email address.

While Egnyte offers add-ons for Gmail and Outlook, these solutions require users to manually click "Save to Egnyte" for each incoming email. This manual process creates bottlenecks when you're away from your desk, processing high volumes of emails, or coordinating with teams where multiple people need access to incoming files. External parties sending files also have no visibility into whether their attachments were successfully saved or are simply sitting in someone's inbox.

In this tutorial, you will configure Couchdrop Mailboxes to automatically save email attachments directly to your Egnyte storage. You will create a dedicated email address that external parties can use to send files, connect this mailbox to your Egnyte account, and verify that attachments are automatically saved without any manual intervention. When you finish, you will have an automated file collection system that works 24/7, regardless of whether anyone is checking email.

Prerequisites

To complete this tutorial, you will need:

• A Couchdrop account with permissions to create Mailboxes and storage connections. You can sign up for a free trial at couchdrop.io/register.
• A licensed Egnyte account with access to create or use folders for file storage
• Your Egnyte domain name (the portion before .egnyte.com in your Egnyte URL)
• Admin access to your Egnyte account to authorize the connection to Couchdrop

Step 1 — Connecting Egnyte Storage to Couchdrop

Before creating a mailbox, you need to connect your Egnyte account to Couchdrop so that incoming email attachments have a destination for storage.

Log in to your Couchdrop account and navigate to + Create → Connect to Storage from the main dashboard. In the connection type list, locate and select Egnyte.

You will see a configuration screen with several fields:

• Connection name: Enter a descriptive name for this Egnyte connection, such as Vendor Documents. This name helps you identify the connection when setting up mailboxes and other features in Couchdrop.
• Egnyte domain: Enter only the subdomain portion of your Egnyte URL. For example, if your Egnyte URL is https://companyname.egnyte.com, enter companyname without the .egnyte.com suffix.

Click Authorize Now. A popup window will open displaying the Egnyte authorization screen. This OAuth authorization allows Couchdrop to access your Egnyte storage securely without storing your Egnyte credentials. Log in with your Egnyte account credentials if prompted, then click Allow Access to grant Couchdrop permission to read and write files in your Egnyte account.

After authorization completes, the popup will close and you will return to the Couchdrop configuration screen. Click Test Connection to verify that Couchdrop can successfully communicate with your Egnyte account. A green success message confirms the connection works correctly.

Next, you can optionally select a specific folder in Egnyte as the root location for this connection. Click Select a location to browse your Egnyte folder structure. For this tutorial, you might create or select a folder called Email Uploads to keep incoming attachments organized separately from other files. If you leave this blank, Couchdrop will use the root of your Egnyte account.

Click Save Settings to complete the Egnyte connection configuration.

You have now connected Couchdrop to your Egnyte storage. Couchdrop can now read and write files to your Egnyte account, which allows the mailbox you create in the next step to automatically save attachments there.

Step 2 — Creating a Mailbox for Email Attachments

With Egnyte connected, you can now create a mailbox that generates a dedicated email address for receiving attachments.

From the Couchdrop dashboard, click Mailboxes in the left navigation menu, then click Create New in the top right corner.

The mailbox creation wizard opens with the first configuration step. Click Select a location to choose where email attachments will be saved. You will see a folder browser showing your connected storage, including the Egnyte connection you configured in Step 1.

Navigate to your Egnyte connection and select the folder where you want attachments saved. For example, if you created an Email Uploads folder in Step 1, select that folder now. If you want attachments saved to a subfolder within Egnyte, navigate deeper into the folder structure before selecting. This folder will receive all attachments sent to this mailbox's email address.

Click Continue after selecting the destination folder.

On the next screen, provide a Mailbox name that describes what this mailbox will be used for, such as Vendor Invoice Submissions or Customer Document Uploads. This name is for your reference only and helps you identify the mailbox's purpose when reviewing your mailboxes later. External users sending emails will never see this internal name.

The Expiry dropdown allows you to set an automatic expiration for this mailbox. For ongoing file collection, select Never expire to keep the mailbox active indefinitely. For temporary projects, you can set expiration periods ranging from 1 hour to 1 year. After the expiry time, the mailbox will stop accepting emails and can no longer receive attachments.

Click Continue to finalize the mailbox creation.

Couchdrop creates the mailbox and displays its details, including the unique email address assigned to it. The email address will follow the format <^>unique-id<^>@mail.couchdrop.io, where the unique ID is automatically generated by Couchdrop.

Click the Copy button next to the email address to copy it to your clipboard. You will use this email address to test the mailbox in the next step, and you can share it with external parties who need to send you files.

You now have a dedicated email address that automatically saves all attachments to your Egnyte storage. Any email sent to this address will have its attachments extracted and saved to the Egnyte folder you specified, with no manual clicking or intervention required.

Step 3 — Testing the Automated File Collection

To verify your mailbox works correctly, you will send a test email with an attachment and confirm the file appears in Egnyte.

From your regular email account (Gmail, Outlook, or any email client), compose a new message addressed to the mailbox email address you copied in Step 2. The email should look like:

To: <^>abc123-d933-47a7-9953-2f2ce7d1cf6c<^>@mail.couchdrop.io
Subject: Test Upload
Body: Testing automatic attachment saving to Egnyte

Attach a small test file to the email. Any file type works for testing - you might use a PDF document, an image, or a simple text file. For this example, attach a PDF named test-document.pdf.

Send the email and wait approximately 30-60 seconds for processing. Couchdrop's mailbox system receives the email, extracts all attachments, and transfers them to your configured Egnyte location automatically.

Log in to your Egnyte account and navigate to the folder you configured in Step 2 (for example, Email Uploads). You should see the attachment file test-document.pdf saved in this folder. The filename matches exactly what you attached to the email.

If the file does not appear within a few minutes, check the following:

• Email address accuracy: Verify you sent the email to the exact address shown in the Couchdrop mailbox details, including the full @mail.couchdrop.io domain
• Mailbox status: In Couchdrop, navigate to Mailboxes and confirm the mailbox shows as active and has not expired
• Egnyte connection: Under Connections in Couchdrop, verify your Egnyte connection shows a green active status
• Attachment size: Most email servers limit attachment size to 25MB. If your test file exceeds this, try a smaller file

You have successfully configured automatic email attachment saving to Egnyte. External parties can now send files to this dedicated email address, and all attachments will automatically appear in your Egnyte storage without any manual steps required from your team.

Configuring Mailbox Security and Notifications

Now that your basic mailbox works, you can configure additional security controls and email notifications to manage who can send files and stay informed about incoming attachments.

From the Couchdrop dashboard, navigate to Mailboxes, locate your mailbox in the list, and click View Details. Then click Edit in the top section to open the mailbox settings.

Under the General Settings tab, you will see the Mailbox allowed senders field. By default, this field is empty, which means anyone with the email address can send attachments. To restrict access to specific email addresses or domains, enter allowed sender patterns in this field.

For example:

• To allow only your vendor John Smith: john.smith@vendorcompany.com
• To allow anyone from a specific domain: *@vendorcompany.com
• To allow multiple specific addresses: john.smith@vendorcompany.com, jane.doe@partnercompany.com
• To allow multiple domains: *@vendorcompany.com, *@partnercompany.com

The asterisk (*) functions as a wildcard that matches any characters. This allows you to permit entire domains while blocking individual addresses outside those domains.

If someone sends an email from an address not matching your allowed sender patterns, Couchdrop will reject the email and the attachments will not be saved. The sender will not receive a bounce message - the email is simply not processed.

Navigate to the Expiry and Alerting tab to configure email notifications about mailbox activity.

The notification settings include:

• Send email on Success: Check this box to receive an email every time an attachment is successfully saved to Egnyte
• Send email on Failure: Check this box to receive an email if an attachment fails to save (due to connection issues, permission errors, or other problems)
• Send email to custom recipients: Check this box to enable the recipient field below
• Email address of recipients: Enter email addresses that should receive notifications, separated by commas

For example, if you want both yourself and your accounting manager to receive alerts when vendor invoices arrive, you would:

1. Check Send email on Success
2. Check Send email to custom recipients
3. Enter: you@company.com, accounting.manager@company.com

Notification emails will indicate which file was uploaded, who sent it (the sender's email address), and whether it was saved successfully.

Click Save at the bottom of the settings page to apply your changes.

With sender restrictions and notifications configured, you now have granular control over who can use the mailbox and immediate visibility into all incoming files.

Next Steps

In this tutorial, you configured automated email attachment collection for Egnyte using Couchdrop Mailboxes. You connected your Egnyte storage to Couchdrop, created a dedicated email address for receiving attachments, tested the automatic file saving workflow, and configured security controls and notifications.

You can now share the mailbox email address with vendors, customers, partners, or anyone else who needs to send you files. All attachments sent to this address will automatically appear in your Egnyte storage within seconds, with no manual intervention required. Your team has immediate access to files through Egnyte's sharing and collaboration features, while sender restrictions prevent unauthorized parties from uploading files to your storage.

To expand this workflow, you might want to:

• Configure File Actions to automatically process attachments after they arrive, such as moving files to different folders based on sender or filename patterns, converting file formats, or encrypting sensitive documents
• Set up multiple mailboxes for different purposes, such as separate addresses for invoices, customer documents, and partner submissions, each saving to different Egnyte folders
• Use Couchdrop's API to programmatically create and manage mailboxes as part of your business workflow automation

For more information on these advanced features, see our documentation on Working with File Actions and Managing Users and Groups in Couchdrop. To learn more about other ways to collect files automatically, check out Creating Upload Links for File Collection.