You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Forum Discussion
Can we disable the team member folder?
PLEASE allow Admins of Business accounts to disable the auto-generated personal folder that is in each user's Business Dropbox.
For my business, as well as many other businesses, having a personal folder in each user's Business Dropbox poses many problems.
At the VERY LEAST, allow us to change the name of the personal folder so it's not directly tied to the user's name.
If I could at least rename the folder to "DO NOT USE", without having to make that the user's name, that would be useful.
First, it confuses employees, who mistakenly move or save files into this personal folder instead of the shared team folders.
Second, it can cause naming problems, as I name my users by generic names instead of their personal names, because employees change often.
For example, my user account names for my 3 users are the same as my shared team folder names.
So now, when user "Financial" access their Dropbox, there is a shared team folder called "Financial", as well as their personal folder called "Financial" that cannot be renamed. Employees will absolutely be confused by this and put things in the wrong folders.... all because Dropbox has forced these ridiculous personal folders onto us.
Third, most businesses require complete control over their cloud file sharing system, and the files within. Each user having their own personal folder causes a big problem for data security.
Our team is also very frustrated by this update. We don't want private folders for each person on our team account--we want our team to be saving their files to shared locations that can be accessed by their colleagues. One of the main reasons we purchased the Business subscription was to improve administrative oversight and control over the files/folders and how they are shared. We need to be able to manage file access on behalf of staff members--sometimes folks don't share folders with the right people or at all, and it's very important for making sure the right content is shared with the right people when there is staff turnover. Our organization pays for the subscription and the storage space, so it seems ridiculous that we are no longer able to have ANY control or oversight into how employees are using it. We already have ongoing headaches with members creating shared folders instead of team folders, which makes it much harder to update access when there are staffing changes. These new personal folders are only going to worsen the existing problems. If we wanted members to have personal storage, we would have purchased personal subscriptions.
We are seriously evaluating alternative tools for file syncing/sharing. It's ridiculous to require us to upgrade our subscription (again) just to have control over the file storage we are paying for. It's supposed to be a productivity tool, but these days I spend way too much time trying to fix problems with Dropbox to justify the expense.
- Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Hi there, rcottages, thanks for taking the time to post to our Community.
I completely understand where you're coming from, and rest assured that your feedback and comments have been passed along to our team.
I also wanted to provide some articles, tutorials and courses that you and your team members can use, to perhaps get a better understanding of the team space and how things work with the Dropbox team accounts.
If you have any questions, let us know.
