Custom fields allow you to collect additional information from users whom upload files through your Portals. Each Portal can have its own unique set of fields, giving you full control over what information is required for different teams, workflows or processes.
Custom Fields Are Configurable Per Portal
Every Portal in your account has its own Custom Fields section. This means that you can tailor:
What information you request from senders;
Which fields should appear on the upload form;
Which fields must be filled in before submitting;
What recipients are available for that specific Portal (in Business/Enterprise plans)
This makes it easy to create dedicated upload portals for various departments or use cases, each with their own input requirements.
Custom Field Types
When adding a custom field to a Portal, you can choose from several field types depending on the type of information you want to collect. The available types are:
Single Line - a simple one-line text input. Ideal for short entries such as names, order numbers, or reference IDs;
Multi Line - a larger text box suitable for longer messages or descriptions;
Check Box - a yes/no or agree/disagree option;
Radio Button - allows the uploader to select one option from a predefined list;
Dropdown Menu - a list of predefined choices shown in a compact dropdown. Only one option can be selected; Possible to set a default value.
Random ID - automatically generates a random unique identifier for each upload. Useful for anonymization or internal tracking;
Sequential ID - creates an incrementing number for each new upload (e.g., 001 → 002 → 003).
This gives you full flexibility to design your Portal forms exactly as needed.
‘Visibility’ and ‘Required’ Options
Each field has two important settings:
Visible - controls whether the field appears on the Portal upload page.
If Visible is ON → users see the field and can fill it in;
If Visible is OFF → the field is hidden from the uploader.
Required - controls whether the form can be submitted without filling in the field.
If Required is ON → Filemail will validate that the field contains a value;
If Required is OFF → the field is optional/
You can freely combine these settings to match your workflow.
It is possible to set a field as required while also making it hidden (Visible = OFF, Required = ON). In this scenario, the only way to submit the form is by pre-populating the hidden field using URL parameters. This is useful when:
A field must always have a pre-defined value;
You want to avoid showing certain technical or internal fields to the end user;
You want to ensure that the fields contain the correct values without relying on the end user.
To do this, you must use Filemail’s upload form pre-population feature. You do this by adding the value directly to the end of the Portal link:
Start with your Portal URL;
Add a question mark
?to begin adding field values.Add the custom field using this format: fieldname=value
If you want to pre-fill more than one field, join them with
&(the “and” symbol).
For example, if your Portal URL is
https://xxxx.filemail.com/p/default
and you want to make sure that:
Department custom field is always set to Marketing;
Region is always set to Asia
Your end url will be:
https://xxxx.filemail.com/p/default?department=Marketing®ion=Asia
It is also possible to add more than one value to types like "to" and "checkbox". This is done by using comma between values like this:
https://xxxx.filemail.com/p/[email protected],[email protected]