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YoucefDropbox's avatar
YoucefDropbox
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
5 years ago

Content Organization on Dropbox Business

Hi everyone,


My name is Youcef, and I'm a Product Manager at Dropbox working on Dropbox Business.


My team is currently looking into features to help teams organize better their content on Dropbox Business.

 

I would love to hear your current pain-points with content organization on Dropbox Business, if at all, and any ideas you might have that could make that better for you and for your teams.


Thank you so much.
Youcef

  • JeaniqueC's avatar
    JeaniqueC
    New member | Level 2

    Hi there, 

     

    An issue or limitation that I am running into with Dropbox Business within my organization is the inability to have the same folder in multiple folders within the organization. I work in an organization that has multiple departments that share the same files, however not everyone is in the same groups to access that folder. 

     

    For example: We own a Fabrication business and Festival Production business. 

    We'd like to have two seperate heiarchys: Festival Prod/Ops AND Fabrication 

    But we'd like to have the same/live folder in boths structures. Those who have access to the parent folder that the duplicated folder lives in, automatically now are included in the group for THAT duplicated folder so there's no access issues. (This is where I think it could get messy).

     

    We'd love to be able to be able to MULTI HOME/ DUPLICATE the folder into both structures. (We do this seemlessly in our project management software, Asana and it's an amazing feature)
    When someone adds data to the folder, it updates under both structures. This is optimal for organizations to share info across departments, branches, etc in the intersection of their projects. 

     

    Happy to discuss this further or a way to get this same outcome using other features. 

    Thanks!

     

    • ShiraW97's avatar
      ShiraW97
      Helpful | Level 5

      Thank you for posting this idea - I was in search of something very similar.  Is there a way to link a folder or document to multiple different places.  For example - someone on the team who works with grants may need to see the same contract as someone who works in research.  We want to avoid duplicating folders because then you have to make updates every where.  Is there a way to link them together so when you update in one place it automatically updates to all places the document lives?

      • YoucefDropbox's avatar
        YoucefDropbox
        Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

        Hi Shira & Jeanique,

         

        Thanks for your answers and for taking the time.

         

        I think Shortcuts can probably help here where you can link to a folder/file from multiple locations. See this help center article that can help: https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/share/shortcuts

         

        Let me know if this solves your problem.

         

        Thank you 🙂

  • tantanA's avatar
    tantanA
    Explorer | Level 4

    I Think one of our biggest issues are duplication and conflicts.

    We're a big team of around 120 designers with mixed specialities (Motion, VFX, Product design...)

    it happens quite often that conflicts happen when syncing or when 2 people work on the same file - this usually creates a strange new folders.

    If the original is "xxxx" -- > it would rename to "xxxx (1)" for some people - which brakes linkage of files in Adobe, Resolve and other programs - drives us nuts!

     

    Another cool thing would be a Digital asset management solution - a way to attach some tags to media files.

     

     

     

    • nicoleeellan's avatar
      nicoleeellan
      New member | Level 2

      Agreed! A solution to see if there are duplicate files, the location, and the ability to pick and choose which ones to keep would be great. I also run into issues with merging folders together and frequently run into syncing conflicts specifically with Adobe and photo sets where the image files get split into a bunch of different folders. 

       

  • Lauren Zuniga's avatar
    Lauren Zuniga
    Helpful | Level 5

    We struggle with the lack of integration between Dropbox Paper and Dropbox folders. We are a digital marketing/creative/PR agency and when transitioning to remote, we started using Paper to prototype content while keeping the finished files in folders to share with clients (usually in Word doc or PDf form). We love how much faster it is for collaboration and how you can see everything in the folder on the left side (I especially love that you can put emojis in the title and it becomes the icon in the side folder menu. The additional visualization elements help us live into design thinking principles.) In fact, we created a whole new system for client projects entirely housed in Paper called Workspaces where each client has a Paper "Workspace" where we can move through Discovery to testing with everything in one place instead of opening a ton of applications. We also use it for internal approvals and used to use Showcase in a similar manner for client approvals and we were sad that you discontinued that. But why can't we store Paper docs in Dropbox folders?? Why can't the emojis show up as cute icons in Dropbox Folder? I like that we can drop DB links in the Paper Space but I don't like that there is no way to keep them all together. I just think it's weird how well Dropbox integrates with other applications but doesn't integrate with its own products very well. 

    • YoucefDropbox's avatar
      YoucefDropbox
      Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

       

      Hi Lauren,

      Indeed, I can relate to the pain Dropbox x Paper that you're describing, given that we are heavy Paper users at Dropbox.

      The good news is this is something that our team is working on at the moment. We have released it already to a small fraction of users. Be on the lookout for an email soon from us to enable you to store Paper documents inside Dropbox.

       

      Thank you.

  • @YoucefDropbox, 

     

    I like a lot of pages that are being made with Dropbox or Dropbox Paper.  It would be nice if some example pages or section could be made into templates.

     

    When adding files in a folder, they keep changing order. We can sort files according to size, name, etc. We can rearrange the order of the columns. But we cannot rearrange the order of our files, like dragging it down or up. Or as @mlippmann mentions a tree structure, which would mean being able to grab a section and dragging it up or down in your index list (not only within 1 folder).

     
    • missspencer's avatar
      missspencer
      Explorer | Level 3

      I see that the thread you mentioned is from two years ago, and technology may have advanced since then. However, the topics discussed are still relevant to content organization, and I'm here to offer some insights.

       

      Even though the thread is older, your suggestion of having example pages or sections turned into templates for Dropbox or Dropbox Paper remains a great idea. Such templates can save time and make content creation more efficient.

       

      In the context of SEO and content optimization, serpclix  might still be a valuable concept to explore. Techniques related to traffic bots and searchSEO can contribute to better content visibility and online performance.

  • BZN-Nils's avatar
    BZN-Nils
    New member | Level 2

    As far as I'm concerned, so much of our issues have been solved with the new Collections.

    We often use Trello for larger collections of documents and attaching the Dropbox file works great.

    But for smaller sets, for one-off meetings, or even repeat use of multiple docs we were really stuck in email, creating aliases and shortcuts, even using webloc-links to refer back to Trello.

    Only discovered it a day ago, but seeing how you can group and share your content from all over Dropbox without using folders, it's great; it's like a filter on a specific label really, and I'm looking out to see what else you could do (Collections in Collections, sharing granularity, presentation features…

    I like it and noticed your thread, so thought I'd jump in—really want Dropbox to not ditch this beta.

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