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Need recommendation for advising team on local syncing best practices

We will be doing a very large reorganization of our Dropbox - making new structures in folders, moving files, and archiving unneeded stuff. In terms of offering the team guidance on re-syncing only needed items and disposing of the "old", is it as simple as requesting they trash their entire local folders and starting over? Our biggest fear is loss of work not saved past their own desktop.

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Walter

Hey @Rebecca16, thanks for using Dropbox and posting on our Community!

Can you please clarify if you're all part of the same Dropbox for Business teams account or if you have individual accounts?

If you'll be making changes to your folder structure, there's no need for the team members to delete any of their folders, they'll just need to let the Dropbox desktop app sync the changes you made till it's up to date.

I hope this helps a tad and please keep us posted!

Rebecca16

@Walter We are all currently individual accounts but need to switch to a business teams account and absorb everyone. Whether we do this before or after the reorg is unclear at this time. Would it make a difference?

In general, is it possible to wipe a desktop app of all content before resyncing with the "new" folders? We would want to avoid people accessing old archived versions of things on their local space.

Hannah

Hey @Rebecca16, sorry to jump in here.

Allow me to advise, that if you're planning on upgrading to a Dropbox Business team, re-organizing folders at this time will be somewhat redundant.

I'm only saying that, because with the upgrade, the folder structure of everyone on the team will change anyway, to reflect the structure of a Business account.

Upon upgrading, a new folder will appear in each user's Dropbox folder, the member folder, named after each member.

The space outside this member folder will be the 'team space'.

How the team space is organized, will be up to the team admin.

You can read more about the team space here and how to manage it as an admin here.

I hope this helps!

Rebecca16

@Hannah thanks for that info. It does open a new set of questions for me regarding switching over.

If we do an upgrade to Business Teams, what does that do to everyone's current access to current folders?

What does the structure default to in regards to the current folders/files we all share?

In terms of making sure everyone has access to the folders in Business Teams, can we just grant edit access to the top level folder?

Can anyone who is on our Business Teams account upload new files anywhere or only places they have edit permissions for?

What is an alternative upgrade to Business Teams that keeps the current structure functionality the same - i.e. what we see and how we share in our current individual account setup?

Jay

Hi @Rebecca16, the current folders would be moved into a personal folder in the individual team accounts. Shared folders would appear in a separate section.

You can grant edit access to the top level folder, however, this would also mean that users can delete entire folders from the team. Users will be able to upload wherever they have edit access.

Currently, there isn't another upgrade that would keep your current structure the same way.

Rebecca16

@Jay So, folders I personally created and shared with others would go into a personal folder (even if shared with others) and all the folders shared with me goes into a shared folder.

Jay

If it is a normal shared folder, either created by you or by another person, then it would appear in your personal folder.

Team folders (which are also shared folders in a manner of speaking, but for the team) would appear outside the personal folder in the main team space. Sorry for any confusion.

Rebecca16

@Jay those team folders are what we create after we upgrade the subscription, correct? And in theory we can move folders from our personal folder to Team folders space? Is that something the Admin does so as not to create an issue with everyone trying to move folders around?

Jay

That's correct, you can move folders you own from the personal folder into team folders.

This is usually done by the users, however, the team admin would need to access those other user accounts, if they have the option to do so.

Rebecca16

@Jay Ok, now knowing these things I am curious as to the advantages of moving into a Business Teams account and absorbing everyone compared to just keeping everyone on individual plans since changing account types seems to then create the "issue" of a whole new structure type? In terms of the overall benefits (differences) of a Business Teams versus our individual accounts, can you point me to a place that lists it out?

Jay

The different plans appear on this page, with the differences between them.

Broadly speaking, Dropbox Business teams allow the team admin to own all data on all the user accounts, with the option to delete users at any moment.

Personal accounts mean the data is owned by that user, and no other person. If someone has a shared folder, and they're the owner, they own that data and can easily remove anyone else from the folder, which no option to regain access to the folder if the owner doesn't allow them.