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App Folders and Business access

I am hoping someone can help with this as I am not getting anywhere and am being past from pillar to post between support desks! Previously I have a variety of 3rd party apps intergrated with my personal dropbox - one being Zapier for example. Since upgrading to Business Zapier and every other 3rd party app can only see my 'personal' files in my dropbox account and not the 'team' files. There doesnt appear to be any setting that allows this access, Zapier blame Dropbox, Dropbox blame Zapier - so hoping that there will be some techies on here that acutally have experience in creating such apps - what needs to happen here? Is this a setting on our dropbox account or is this the way these apps have connected via the API.

Probabably worth mentioning I am an Admin of said Dropbox account.

Any help greatly appreciated.

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Accepted answers

Greg-DB

It sounds like you're using the team space and member folders configuration in your Business account. The Dropbox API does offer the ability to access the team space, but the app will need to be written to do so. There's a developer guide that covers how to do that here.

All comments

Greg-DB

BPM_Steve

Thanks for the quick reply Greg - this is a pain - as it would appear most of the integration apps out there don't support this config. I'm guessing its fairly new? Is there anyway to switch to the old config?

Greg-DB

Yes, this is relatively new.

I can't say whether or not it's possible to change the configuration on your team, but you can contact Business support to ask:

https://www.dropbox.com/support/email/business_and_teams/submit

edsnails

Did you get anywhere with this BPM_Steve?
I've just upgraded to Dropbox Business and have the same problems. It's awful! 3rd Party apps (except Apple 'Files' app) won't show the business folders. I have tried support from Dropbox and the app and am getting nowhere.
Did you get your account switched to the old config?

BPM_Steve

Hi,
No I didn't - it would appear that most of the 3rd parties are using the older file structure. I have to say though the new file structure is a lot better. I did implement a work around however which has worked well for us. I created a complete copy of the Business folders onto the 'personal area' of my dropbox. Then used GoodSync to keep them in sync. You can then setup and apps etc to the personal folder (all works fine) and any changes are quickly synced to the business folders. If that all makes sense.

Drop me a line if you want to talk through the 'solution' in more detail. Always happy to help.

Steve

Roger D.8

BPM_Steve-

Mind posting the GoodSync settings that you found successful? Thank you.

Matthew G.30

I'm running into the same issue with Zapier. It will only access my personal folder and cannot access the team space. Other than the Goodsync solution, anyone come up with an app to do this? Anyone want to go in together on a developer who can figure this out?

jandrasko

Same issue here with PDF Expert -- has anyone found a solution?

Greg-DB

If any particular app isn't supporting access to the "team space", the best solution would be to have the developer of that app update it to do so, so you may wish to contact them to request it. The developer reference for this can be found here, and Dropbox API support is also available to help developers with this.

Thomasbackdrops

Dropbox. To say push it onto the App developer seems so silly. I don't understand why Dropbox isn't looking at features that are in their bigger competitors features and simply integrating them. Cantos is a perfect example. Why can't I in dropbox click on any file and say I want it associated with X, Y or Z folder but not actually have to make a complete new duplicate of the file. It seems quite a simple task compared to going through the extremly tedious task of doing a Zapier for each folder or other method. I've read soooooo many complaints about not having a feature like this. The copy feature in business is great but once you've copied it....forget it unless you have some way of syncing the copy that for some silly reason isn't available in dropbox.

Greg-DB

@Thomasbackdrops Thanks for the feedback! I'll pass it along.

jandrasko

All- I figured out a very easy solution for this related to the PDF Expert app. Simply share your teams folder with your personal Dropbox account. After doing this, both your Dropbox Pro folder(s) and your personal folder(s) will sync with PDF Expert. This obviously requires that your organization permits folder sharing with members outside your team. Good luck!

ny1979

I'm having the same issue Steve. I'm an admin of a business plan, two team members. One of the services I use organizes the files within my purple "personal" folder within dropbox as opposed to higher level such that it's not a team folder. how can I fix this

BPM_Steve

Morning,

Some 3rd-party apps are starting to support seperate business and personal folders. I know Zapier are for example which could help you. For a long time I had to use GoodSync to sync the folder in the personal folder with one in the Business folder. You can set it to sync on change meaning you can set it up and forget about it. If you need any help, let me know.

ny1979

Zapier while great will still be imprecise and inexact. Am I the only dropbox user who doesn't like that there are by default private spaces? I contacted the company that makes the app and they acknowledged my issue and said it would be submitted as feature request but basically they didn't offer to do anything else

sojourner16

I had the same problem. My workaround on a Mac was to setup an Automator task that watches my personal Dropbox folder and the moment a file is added to it from Zapier, the Automator moves that file on my corresponding teams folder. Works flawlessly but still would be far better to have Zapier be able to see my Team spaces in addition to my Personal space.

Refined I.

Perhaps Dropbox should get it together and create a Zap that works for business accounts. We're paying for Dropbox, should be a priority and not something that sits unresolved for years.

GB1984

Hi!

I've ran into the same problem and would you mind sharing your automator setup as I haven't used that application before? 🙂

Thank you,

George

KevinAi

This sounded like such a good workaround, but so far it still doesn't work 😞 either for the pro account or the personal account I've shared it with. I'm wanting Zapier to trigger.

psodevsupport

This is so bad from an API development perspective Dropbox team. How come you are not maintaining a versioning system of your APIs so that the old ones aren't affected. Adobe APIs have versioning system! 😡