Dropbox promoting team membership to random folder share recipients?

Question

I recently shared a work folder with a mix of client and (their) sponsor staff. Soon after that I started receiving requests to join our business team. I've never seen this before so I'm assuming Dropbox decided it was in their business (profit) interest to push business account holders to fill up their team slots, so they need to ask for more?

Now I suddenly have to deny all of these requests and explain that 'no, you don't need to join my team to have all the file access you need for this project.' And that 'team members are intended to be our business colleagues that need much broader file access, but Dropbox has just started promoting this to drive up their revenue.' It's extra work and it causes potential tension from client staff (or in this case sponsor staff too) that feel they are being denied access to something they need.

Can I turn off this automated promotion by Dropbox? It's clearly a new thing and I'm guessing we can't shut it off, but it's obnoxious and inappropriate for the company to be driving us to admit team members that we don't want, just because we have a few open slots.

Someone please help. Please stop this annoying business practice.

Thanks,

Joseph

pacergh · Answer

Good lord, thank you for this!

You're right—something changed because I now get these requests WHENEVER I share a folder with folks outside my organization.

They have their own bloody DropBoxes, too, but keep asking to "join my team."  It is NOT clear to them what they're asking—they think they are simply asking to join the shared folder!  (I know; I asked!)

I *hope* this fixes it—it seems it should.

If I had more time we'd migrate from DropBox to Google Drive over all of these ridiculous changes DropBox has been making.

Remember when DropBox was the best solution because it just worked, and was simple?

Well, it stopped just working, and it's no longer simple.  And I don't mean "simple" to mean "lacking in features," I mean "simple" as in clear and easy to use, not some complex hierarchy of nested feature sets.

Megan · Answer

Hi @josephfinneran, thanks for taking the time to post in our Community!

First of all, I'm glad you managed to get to the bottom of this, and figure out the appropriate settings for your team, in order to find what fits best for you!

This was indeed the particular settings, and situation that must have caused this.

We listen to your needs because it allows us to fully appreciate how Dropbox fits into and influences your daily routine, so your feedback regarding this has been very valuable and I will endeavor to make sure your voice is heard.

If you need anything else, let me know.

josephfinneran · Answer

Replying to my own message having sorted this out with a nice support chat with Dropbox. As shown in the attached grab, if you go to the Admin Console > Settings > Membership you'll see this screen. It seems that all these toggles are in the default "On" position now.

If the second toggle is left on, any "coworker" defined as "...those that work with your team members" "may ask to join your team." What that means in practice is that if a Business Account holder/team member shares a folder with almost anyone, that share invitee will also see language promoting them to 'ask to join your team.' And as you see in the highlighted text box below, as soon as you accept their request, you (the business account holder) will be charged for a license for any new team members beyond your allotted slots.

Once folks send you that request they are now listed under the "Members" tab in the Admin console as "Pending Requests." You can dismiss those requests one at-a-time on that Member page. I am also sending them all apologetic emails to explain that they don't need to be team members to access the content we've shared, and that this is just part of Dropbox trying to drive up license revenue.

Maybe this has been around for a while, but based on the sudden uptick in requests for team membership I suspect there's some new, prominent language being added to share invite notices to push this harder than before. I hope this is helpful to anyone else that's suddenly seeing lots of team membership requests flooding their inbox.

Best,

Joseph