Instead of sending each item separately to a service for processing, items are communicated to the service as one or more groups. Common portions of a file path for files within the group are transmitted once to the service. For example, a root portion of the file paths for the files within the group may be common to each of the files. The unique portions of the file path for each file are transmitted to the service without including the common portions. The size of the groups may be configured differently depending on needs of the specific instance of the protocol (i.e. smaller sized groups for more bandwidth-constrained situations). The size for the group may be determined in many different ways. For example, the size of the groups may be automatically determined based on a configuration and/or a user input.