This seems like it should be easy, but. My partner and I use a single Dropbox.com account to keep all of our joint projects synced up between our computers - and this has been working great for years.
Time to delve into Dropbox terminology to understand what is happening. Dropbox has two fundamental ways to provide access to files: a) Sharing a folder. B) Sharing a link to a folder. The confusion stems from the fact that Dropbox uses the term ‘Sharing’ to describe two entirely different outcomes.
We've now added a MacBook Air to the mix, and we each have accounts on it and can grab it and go when we need to do some remote work. I've been trying to get the Dropbox synced to the Air - but I want to have it in the 'Shared' directory so that we both can access it - it shouldn't matter who is logged in. This doesn't seem to be working. I can located the Dropbox in the shared directory fine - but when I change the user who is logged in that user has no permissions to sync the Dropbox or access the files. I can get it to work if I create a separate /Dropbox folder for each user, but this ends up with 50GB duplicated twice over if the entire Dropbox syncs - a particularly ridiculous waste of space on an SSD. Any ideas how to make this sharing work????
You can do this using s, which will avoid permissions problems when new files are created: sudo chmod -R +a '$USER allow read,write,append,delete,list,search,addsubdirectory,deletechild,fileinherit,directoryinherit' '$DIR' where $USER is the username of the other user, and $DIR is whatever directory (Dropbox or otherwise) you want the other user to have full permissions in. We use this to share a single Dropbox folder between four users (2 adults with full access, 2 kids with access to their subdirectory only), and it has been working well for us.
The only limitation is that the user running Dropbox has to be logged in and running Dropbox. The other users don't have the Dropbox icon and status info in the menu bar.
One method I've used with some success is to set the permissions on the folder to allow multiple user accounts to 'Read & Write' to the /Users/Shared/Dropbox/ folder. You can do this by:. Going to the Get Info ( Cmd+ i) window on the /Users/Shared/Dropbox folder. Unlocking to edit permissions. Clicking on the '+' icon to add another user account and setting the 'Privilege' to 'Read & Write'.
Click on the gear triangle dropdown to the left of the lock icon, choose 'Apply to enclosed items.' And confirm that you wish to do this (irreversible) change I'm not very sure, but you may still have some permission related issues if you get files from another Mac's user account. That may require assigning ownership correctly. I wanted to use this same solution to work around a Dropbox for Business account with the 'Allow only one Dropbox account per computer' restriction enabled. The ACL solution is promising, but I encountered frequent permissions issues; it turns out ACLs are not inherited by existing files that are copied/moved into a directory, which is a deal breaker. Here's the solution on which I eventually settled; this assumes all local administrator users will share access to the Dropbox. Choose a user to run Dropbox.
The Dropbox folder will reside in this user's Home folder, and the user must be logged in for the Dropbox to sync. Change the umask for user applications to 002.
This will make new files group-writable by default; this should not be dangerous, since your user's group is probably wheel, and all members of wheel already have sudo permissions. For OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 and up: sudo launchctl config user umask 002 For older versions, see the Apple Support article. Restart your computer for the umask change to take effect.
Recursively modify the permissions of your shared Dropbox folder to give full permissions to both user and group: cd $HOME sudo chmod -R ug=rwX Dropbox/. For each user, add the group write permission to all pre-existing user files: cd $HOME sudo chmod -R g+w Desktop/ Documents/ Downloads/ Movies/ Music/ Pictures/ Public/ Sites/ sudo chmod g-w Desktop/ Documents/ Downloads/ Movies/ Music/ Pictures/ Public/ Sites/ The first chmod applies group write recursively; the second chmod removes group write from the directories themselves to keep them protected. Everything should now work as intended. The second user can add the first user's Dropbox to the Finder sidebar, and Dropbox runs surprisingly well on the background user account. Only the Finder integration and menu bar status are missing. Since each OS X user account can use this method to share its own Dropbox, this essentially provides for unlimited Dropbox accounts on a single machine.
This is simple actually. Login to 1st account. Sync dropbox to the shared directory. Let's say /user/shared/dropbox. Give permission to this shared directory to 2nd account. (to give 2nd account permission to edit/delete).
Login to 2nd account. Sync dropbox to shared directory. If you do this directly you will get an error that dropbox folder already exists.
Therefore, delete the folder first. Sync shared directory again. Since 2nd account is the creator of the shared directory now. Make sure 2nd account gives permission to this shared directory to 1st account.
With an established name as an enticing hook, Dropbox Business is often the first EFSS platform SMB owners look to when deciding to bring their content collaborations into cloud. And, thanks to its blend of simplicity, speed and a knack for feature design, it’s often the only platform they look at; we can’t blame them, it’s one of the providers on the market.
There’s no question Dropbox has set many trends in both device syncing and file sharing. The Business subscription also has some great options for third-party integrations to boost productivity. Also, despite a highly publicized breach that saw, Dropbox Business provides strong security features that should keep your content safe so long as you take advantage of them.
That said, we’ve yet to evaluate a perfect cloud tool here at Cloudwards.net. Stick with us for our Dropbox Business review to find where the platform shines and where it could use a little more work. If you’re looking for a personal Dropbox plan, don’t forget to check out our, which is a different animal all together. Alternatives for Dropbox Business. $ 240 00 yearly Details Total Storage: 2TB Price per user Total Storage: unlimited Price per user Note that the 2TB of storage you get with Dropbox Business is shared space. That’s generally how most EFSS platforms work, with a notable exception in OneDrive (read our OneDrive for Business review for more on this). That said, users can sign up for personal Dropbox accounts, too, and get 2GB of free personal storage.
If you’d like to give Dropbox Business a trial run before committing, you can try it out for 30 days first like we did. User Experience. Dropbox wrote the book how cloud storage works today. So the good news is that if you’re used to using services like Google Drive or OneDrive, the Dropbox experience should be instantly familiar.
Dropbox desktop applications are available for both Windows and Mac. As Linux fans, we love that both Ubuntu and Fedora are also supported. When you install the desktop client, a special cloud-connected folder gets added to your file system. This “sync folder” happens to be the linchpin of the entire EFSS experience. While the concept, which was dreamed up by Dropbox founder Drew Houston in 2008 because he couldn’t keep track of his thumb drives, is almost laughably simple, there’s still a bit to talk about when it comes to sync features.
We’ll cover those in the sync subsection, below. In addition to the Dropbox sync folder, you can login to the Dropbox web application to access your files. In part, this is so that you don’t have to download a client to get to one file, which would both be a hassle and security concern if it wasn’t your computer. The client is also where you’ll go to manage your Dropbox Business account, including managing users, which we’ll touch on shortly. Dropbox is known for simplicity and its web interface reflects that.
Content navigation is intuitive, the menu options are well organized, the color scheme doesn’t leave you cross-eyed and familiar options like file drag-and-drop simplify the experience. If you’re on the move, you can access content from your smartphone or tablet, too. Supported platforms include Android, iOS and Windows Phone. Regardless of channel, the Dropbox user experience is pretty fluid. For a business owner, that’s a big plus. Less time spent trying to figure out where your files are and how to add users means more time spent on doing what you’re business is geared toward. User Management.
As the account owner, you can manage your team from an admin console found in Dropbox web application. The console is where you’ll go to add licences, invite collaborators, create groups and manage various other settings. The admin console includes a dashboard to monitor account usage. There’s also an activity tab that will let you create custom reports based on a variety of factors, including logins, file shares, file edits and device syncs. You can grant users admin privileges, although advanced customization of those privileges requires a Dropbox Business Advanced or Enterprise account. Otherwise, user permissions are managed at the folder level, where you can grant either view or edit access. Overall, the role customization options, with Dropbox Business Standard at least, are relatively sparse compared with some tools.
Read about the best example of an EFSS tool that nails user role options in our Citrix Sharefile review. Dropbox does let you create user groups, which lets you manage folder access for multiple people at once, reducing the amount of admin work you need to do. Again, though, the settings options available for groups are pretty limited when compared to a handful of other services.
IBM Connections comes immediately to mind, a socialized EFSS platform that lets you create user communities complete with status updates and team wikis. Folder & File Sharing.
When you sign up for Dropbox Business, a central “team folder” is created that all of your added employees will have access to. Within this folder, you can can create subfolders, which can be made accessible to individuals or, as we just mentioned, groups. While folders are the primary means of sharing content between collaborators, licensed users can also share both folders and files by creating a secure link pointing to them. Just click on the “share” button associated with any given object. One of the nice aspects of link sharing with Dropbox are content control features that too many providers overlook.
These include expiry dates to terminate links and link passwords. Links can be restricted to team members or made accessible to anyone regardless of whether they have a Dropbox account or not.
As the account admin, you can also prevent users from distributing content outside your business if working with sensitive intellectual property. Dropbox also gives you access audit features for tracking shares. Via a “sharing” tab, you can easily track shared folders, files and generated links. Without this view, which many cloud storage tools don’t have, it would be very easy to lose sight of who has access to your content.
Device synchronization, or sync, means the same content can be accessed from different devices with content changes made on one showing in near real-time on the others. The central mechanism behind sync, as we mentioned, is what’s commonly called a sync folder. A sync folder looks just like any other file system folder. However, any file placed within this folder is stored both on your computer hard drive and on the cloud network.
Any change made to that file gets reflected in both locations as fast as Dropbox is able to transmit it over the Internet. By connecting multiple devices to the cloud in this way, you can hop from one device to another and work on the same content without having to handle the transfer yourself; same goes for your collaborators. Dropbox & Block-Level Sync Dropbox not only invented the common sync model in 2008, it continues to lead the way perfecting it today. Initial file uploads to any EFSS server can be slow. We generally track speeds of around ten to 20 minutes for 500MB in file uploads ove WiFi. With Dropbox, though, subsequent file changes beyond the initial upload get synced much more quickly than most services.
That improved speed is thanks to some algorithmic maneuvering called, also known as differential sync. With a block-level approach, only the changed portions of files get synced instead of replacing the entire file. This reduces the time it takes to reflect changes to a file to generally a few seconds. Despite the obvious advantages, most of the competition hasn’t gotten on board with differential sync.
In fact, Egnyte and OneDrive are the only two major players that come to mind, and the latter only differentially syncs Microsoft Office files. We often hear from fellow cloud users that services like Google Drive, Box and OneDrive are slow to sync and this oversight is one of the big reasons why., Dropbox Business now offers “smart sync,” too. Smart sync lets you configure content so it’s only stored online, not on your hard drive, but is still still viewable through Windows File Explorer or macOS Finder. The space-saving capabilities of smart sync comes in especially useful if you’re stuck using one of the small solid-state drives common with ultraslim laptops. Many other EFSS services offer a similar feature called “selective sync.” The difference is that with selective sync, you can’t see your online-only files in your sync folder.
Productivity Tools. Dropbox has its own work productivity app called Dropbox Paper. We’ve compared in another article and found that it doesn’t quite work as well as its competitors. However, its minimalistic approach makes it great for collecting meeting notes or brainstorming with collaborators.
Whether it can win a place as your preferred note-taking space depends on your needs, plus whether or not you’ve already fallen under the spell that is Evernote or one of the many other. Beyond Paper, Dropbox doesn’t actually have any native productivity tools.
Hopefully that will change given Dropbox’s knack for nailing user experience. While Dropbox may not have the native apps that two of its closest competitors, Google and Microsoft, have, a broad range of third-party app integrations mostly makes up for that.
In fact, one of those integrations is Microsoft Office. Microsoft’s free Office Online platform is actually integrated by default with Dropbox for viewing Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. However, you can only edit documents for free with a Dropbox Personal account. Editing Office files with Dropbox Business requires a Microsoft Office 365 subscription.
In addition to Office, Dropbox has many more third-party tools to pick from. You can search for all available options by visiting the page. Categories include communication (Slack), workflow (Trello, Asana), productivity (IFTTT), design (Airtable) and CRM (SalesForce), among others. Dropbox does falls noticeably short with regard to work productivity tools compared to Google Drive. But then again, so does every other cloud storage provider. Google has the luxury of a competitive, vital developer community that has led to the creation hundreds of different tools designed to enhance content creation.
One the most we hear when talking to business owners is whether or not their content will be safe stored in the cloud. While some of this worry might be overstated, it’s always best to be safe and do your due diligence when picking online tools. Dropbox, in fact, was the target of one of in 2012. Since then, Dropbox has taken steps to ensure better security. For Dropbox Business users, the situation is much better than Dropbox Plus users.
When at rest on the Dropbox cloud, your file content is scrambled using 256-bit AES encryption. That’s all good and as it should be. Your file metadata remains in plain text. Unfortunately, that’s the norm with most EFSS tools as metadata is used for indexing and speeding up the user experience. To thwart data breaches and other security issues, including server failure and natural disasters, Dropbox also keeps its cloud network secured in what are called.
In addition to data breaches, there are two other common types of that SMB should make themselves familiar with:, in which stolen files are held hostage for a payout, and, which are a type of in-transit eavesdropping. Dropbox protects you from ransomware with its versioning capabilities. MITM attacks, meanwhile, are repelled with in-transit encryption that uses TLS protocol secured with. Dropbox has two other security features that will appeal to business owners who require added assurance their content won’t fall into the wrong hands.
The first is, something we can’t recommend enough that you enable. With two-factor authentication enabled, your employees will need to input special code in addition to their normal user credentials when they login from an unrecognized computer. This code is sent via text and its goal is to prevent weak, crackable or stolen passwords from allowing authorized access to your cloud storage space. Additionally, should a synced device be stolen, as the admin, Dropbox lets you perform a remote wipe of that device. Or, what the service terms a remote wipe: basically it severs the sync folder connection and deletes any content inside of it. Be warned that any business content the computer’s owner might have moved outside the sync folder will still be vulnerable. For many SMB users, downtime and other technical issues means loss of income.
So when making a service recommendation, we also like to spend some time making sure it’s backed by a strong support network. Dropbox Business users find support by navigating to their admin console and clicking “help,” where they’ll find three options:. Dropbox guide. Self-support. Contact your account team The guide page actually has two different options: one for all business users (like team members) and one just for admins.
Both resources are aimed mostly at new users and are pretty rudimentary. The self-support site is more useful.
There, you’ll find articles on topics like recovering deleted files and sync troubleshooting. The content is thorough but clear enough that you don’t need to be very technical to make use of it.
You can browse by category or run a search. You’ll also find access a user forum, which we always like to see because they’re a good avenue for crowdsourcing solutions rather than relying on one support technician.
However, judging by past posts, it might be a week or more before you hear back from anyone. If you don’t feel like perusing the self-support site or can’t find your answers there, Dropbox’s contact options should get you a response. Dropbox Business Standard users have both email and live chat touch points available.
Dropbox Business Advanced users also get telephone support. Overall, the support businesses get is much better than that of personal users. Both live chat and telephone support are only available during weekdays business hours.
During those hours, you can generally get in contact with a support representative in short order. Emails can get you 24/7 support but even as a business user, you can wait up to 12 hours for a response. Faster support, including telephone support, are available 24/7, but only if you’re an enterprise customer. Dropbox Business isn’t perfect. But like we said earlier, no cloud storage service gets it all right. Despite a few flaws and the 2012 breach, the service continues to quickly add to its user base for good reason.
The user experience simple but at the same time offers plenty of features to both enhance and control collaborations. The biggest advantage Dropbox Business has, however, over every cloud storage tool we’ve tested, is its sync capability. Others have copied the model but none quite approach true real-time collaboration like Dropbox. The recent addition of smart sync just makes the experience that much better.
Subscribe The biggest weakness? At least compared to Google Drive, probably the service’s narrow productivity tool library. However, so long as you’re fine paying for an Office 365 subscription for your business, too, that shouldn’t be a big problem. We’d also like to see more customization options for both user roles and reports. Of course, we’d love to hear from SMB owners and remote workers regarding their own thoughts and experiences with Dropbox Business and how it ranks compared to other EFSS solutions.
So, let us know in the comments below. Thanks for reading!