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I'd like to receive real-time email notifications

Dear Forum Users,

I am currently using a free Dropbox account for the purpose of testing. The objective of the overall exercise is to identify web-based solutions for the storage of and collaboration on documents of various standard file types (MS Office files, pdf files etc).

I understand that in the notifications menu in Settings I can check the box for "Activity in shared folders (weekly digest)". This presumably means that once a week I get an email message describing what "happened" in shared folders (i.e., additions, revisions, deletions; additional users with access to the folder etc).

My company is currently using Egnyte for sharing and jointly working on documents with clients. Egnyte offers the option of receiving updates of the type referred to above on a daily or even on a real-time basis. The real-time notifications have become an essential element of our workflows, so we would only consider switching to Dropbox if a paid Dropbox plan offered the same feature.

I have noted that upon installing the desktop app it may be possible to receive notifications of the kind I am referring to although they would presumably not be sent / received via email. Unfortunately, relying on the use of the desktop app is not an option for us. The notifications about changes need to be sent by email and they need to work even if only the web-based version of Dropbox is used.

If anyone knows whether any (and, if yes, which) paid Dropbox plan provides the exact functionality that I am looking for I would be grateful for a reply. From some brief research in the "help" section of the website, I note that the notification settings for Dropbox Paper are different / separate from the ones for the regular Dropbox. Ideally the answer would also describe which notifications (if any) are available for Dropbox Paper.

From my research, I also note that the use of an additional third-party programme such as Growl or Zapier might make it possible to receive the kind of notifications that we are interested in. We would be happy to consider this option. The cost of additional app subscriptions is not a concern, but whatever we end up setting up has to absolutely, reliably work.

Whatever the responses may be, many thanks in advance for your time and trouble.

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Accepted answers

Lusil

Hey @UN_for_DP_forum, thanks for reaching out to us.

You are right, currently, you can receive email notifications for:

The activity on shared folders and Paper docs on a weekly basis (digest).
Comments, mentions, to-dos and changes that occur to Paper docs you follow soon after they have been made.

You can also have a look at this article, which mentions that, with the Zapier integration, you can get custom alerts via email for changes and additions made to your Dropbox folders.

In any case, I understand how important this is for you, so if you'd like to receive email notifications about changes that happen in real-time to shared content, you can post it as an idea here, where other like-minded users can comment and upvote.

I hope this helps to some extent, but let me know if you have any other questions.

All comments

Lusil

Hey @UN_for_DP_forum, thanks for reaching out to us.

You are right, currently, you can receive email notifications for:

The activity on shared folders and Paper docs on a weekly basis (digest).
Comments, mentions, to-dos and changes that occur to Paper docs you follow soon after they have been made.

You can also have a look at this article, which mentions that, with the Zapier integration, you can get custom alerts via email for changes and additions made to your Dropbox folders.

I hope this helps to some extent, but let me know if you have any other questions.

UN_for_DP_forum

Many thanks for the quick reply!

RoseKnight

I like to receive real time email

Jay

Hi @RoseKnight, if you're interested in getting real time emails, you can suggest this change for others to vote on, so the dev team can look into this in future!

BFDCchair

We’ve been on Trial with Business Basic and we clearly have misunderstood the Features Matrix at the Account signup. It appeared to us (unfamiliar with Dropbox) that we (as individual users) could request notifications—when a User EDITED content—if we were SUBSCRIBED to a FILE. For two weeks, we’ve been testing and we just learned that we’ve been checking the “ping on edits” box..,but that function was not available at Business Basic level.

If individual User Account Preferences were sensitive to Account Levels, we’d have solved this problem on the second day of the trial, saved many dozens of hours of rollout-testing here and many hours for your Help Desk team

Business Basic, User Preferences show “ping me when edits occur in a file”.

That is NOT an option in Basic. That checkbox should be dimmed...or reply with “you need Advanced...”

Think of the time we could all save ...

I have to add... the Help Desk at Dropbox Business is the finest, most responsive, most timely that I’ve ever come across. We’ve received serious, detailed and thoughtful email replies to questions. I’m sure it’s a hard job, answering the same questions day-to-day. But Dropbox executes its Help Desk superbly.

FondazioneAlghero

hi, i have a problem,

how can activate notification to mail, for file modify?

Mark

You cant I'm afraid. The only update you can get is a weekly digest email for everything.

You can set these up at https://www.dropbox.com/account/notifications

FondazioneAlghero

those who have the shared folder (by the administrator) do not see real-time file updates and do not receive email notification of changes

Mark

@FondazioneAlghero yes I'm afraid that is correct.

FondazioneAlghero

I like to receive real time email

Walter

Hi @FondazioneAlghero; sorry to jump in, but have you considered following the folder?

FondazioneAlghero

I as administrator of the folder already receive notifications.Those who have been invited by me do not receive notifications about my changes. Is that clear?

Walter

In that case, you can ask them to follow the folder from their end @FondazioneAlghero.

FondazioneAlghero

how? by selecting in the notification section? on which box exactly?

han_premium

How is this marked as solved? This feature is still not implemented, and I would very much like to receive real-time email notifications for changes made to specific folders by specific users.

Can someone provide the link to such a feature request so that I may upvote it?