New named Dropbox structure

[t4ngml]

I am a user of DropBox Business, on Windows 10.

Last week, I suddenly realized that the shortcuts to some of my Dropbox folders were broken.

A quick look learned me that the structure had changed.

While I used to access my folder through:

C:/User/{username}/Dropbox (COMPANY NAME)/, I can now find them at:
C:/User/{username}/{COMPANY NAME} Dropbox/MyFirstName LASTNAME/

Now, both structures seem to remain while the first one is now a hidden shortcut (although I can't seem to see where it links to).

So that I don't really know where my files actually are.

Is this change documented anywhere?

Thanks

After a couple of days, I realized this happened to all of this Dropbox Business users across the company, Mac and Windows, and that it messes up with backup strategies.

I didn't find anything about this new structure in DropBox's changelog.

[MattS91]

Can anyone from Dropbox please acknowledge the issues we are all facing and update us on what is being done to resolve this before you start losing your customers! 

We are all very frustrated, your support teams are ignoring our questions and following a script that is completely off topic and sending us round in circles, moving the goalposts at every opportunity and being actually quite rude in how they are dealing with our VERY legitimate complaints about how Dropbox has treated their paying customers. 

We haven't been able to administer our account for well over a week, HR folders are accessible to the entire organisation (yes files are private but it's still dangerous to have confidential information somewhat accessible to the wider staff base). This may result in GDPR compliance issues for both us & Dropbox. 

None of your support teams are taking the brevity of this seriously.

Why is anyone paying for this service when it's obviously broken and unfit for purpose! 

For the love of god can someone please communicate with us!

[MattS91]

@Megan Still having the same issues, we cannot administer our account! 

Support isn't providing updates, when is this getting resolved? We are paying for a service we cannot use!

We're coming up to two weeks of this same issue!

[MattS91]

Another day and surprise no communication from Dropbox! 

@Megan @Walter @AnyOneFromDropbox

Can we please get an update on what is happening?!

Are we getting reimbursed for each day this is ongoing? 

[aquinasburke]

The private folder for each user is a serious file management problem.

We understand that administrators can view the contents of these "private" folders, but we think that's problematic from a privacy standpoint (even if notified). Also, that workflow creates work for our administrators and doesn't build trust with our users.

Our business account is for business files. We don't want users storing private or personal files in our business account. We have a hard enough time preventing people from storing files on their desktops; we don't want another location where files can become disassociated from workflows.

We understand this might work for other organizations, but there should be an option to disable this "feature" for all users.

[MattS91]

2 weeks and we've finally getting responses! How is this customer service?

Can someone please call me to discuss my complaints! 

[MattS91]

We have put in several complaints to Dropbox over the last 2 weeks, not one has been followed up! 

We are unhappy with the service we are receiving, please contact us to discuss it with us!

This upgrade was miss-sold and needs recitifying

[mgarnel]

Why did you mess up a perfectly working system?!?! All folders moved, structure changed, new folders are simply not synced or, if synced, aren't available to all users that have access to parent folder.

No warning, no ackowledge, no answers! Google searches for help all lnk to commercial **bleep**e from DB and support actually doesn't support anything. Used to think that dropbox was a reference in terms of stability and reliability. Now, I'm already looking into competitors alternatives.

Way to go!

[MmmmJason]

As a longtime Dropbox Business Advanced customer, I recently received an email saying my plan would be "upgraded" in 7 days that included numerous changes that will be incredibly disruptive to our business operations.  The changes include:

• Forcing the rename of the root Dropbox folder, breaking bookmarks and other integrations.
• Creating a new "team space" folder where all existing folders will be moved, creating yet another break in existing links and an even longer file path name.
• Forcing all folders that are available offline to "online only", requiring all users + admins to go back through all folders and mark respective folders offline again.  This may result in some users having to re-download large amounts of data, stressing their bandwidth connections (especially remote workers).  They may also lose access to critical files after the migration.
• Forcing the team admin to become the owner of the existing team folders, even if they don't actively use or manage those folders personally (e.g. the IT admin personally becomes the owner of the HR and Finance department folders).
• Downtime overnight while the entire change happens without any preview or testing phase.

Naturally, this is terribly disruptive to our business operations as it requires making everyone go through a downtime without any way to know the impacts or prepare for them.  This will then cause disruptions to our delivery to services to our customers.  I contacted Dropbox support and was told there is no way to opt out permanently and that they are willing to offer me a refund of my annual fees (several thousand dollars) if I wanted to leave and go to another platform.

Furthermore, while you can postpone the upgrade up to 30 days, you cannot permanently opt out of the change.  And, you will have to re-postpone within 7 days of the new date, for up to another 30 days.  I was told this could go on indefinitely, but of course if you miss it, the upgrade will be forced upon your entire company and there is no way to go back.

Frankly, all of this sounds like an ongoing nightmare that benefits no one, and would serve to only drive customers away to other platforms like Microsoft's OneDrive or Google Drive.  What's even more remarkable is that most business customers likely already pay for either Microsoft365 for Office apps, or Google's services for their apps, both of which come with online storage that the customer chooses not to use but do pay Dropbox for separately.  Most business customers using Dropbox choose Dropbox because it's different and administration has been friendly and easier.  This change is in the complete opposite direction, and what's worse is the way in which Dropbox is forcing customers into the rollout with very little notice is insensitive to how their customers actually use their product.

I'm posting this message to see if anyone else is being affected by the same issue and if so, to please comment and let Dropbox know this change is not welcome.  Or at the least, to allow us to opt out permanently, or provide some smoother way to make the transition that just an overnight change without any migration or test process.

[marathon]

Haha, the "solution" to this incredibly important issue is that "you should have received an email about this, I hope that clears it up." This would be funny except it's not.

You Dropboxers do realize that making a change that automatically removes all of our content from our local computers and puts it into your cloud-based service, without our permission, borders on criminal behavior. This is not a small change that you notified us about, and gee, it's no big deal, we told you about it.

[pacergh]

Yea, no, you cannot keep putting off the migration.

I knew about it.  But there was nothing, ultimately, we could do to stop it EXCEPT dropping Business and going to paid personal with shared folders, which negates a lot of the Business management side of things.

The OTHER issue was their changing everything to Cloud-based rather than on the device.  Holy crap, this messed up things.  My ability to search through my folders depends on the files being on the device, and multiple devices still haven't fully synced (despite forcing everything to be offline).

And, yes, I probably should have noticed this change and acted accordingly.

Here's the rub, though—I chose DropBox because it was a simple, streamlined, and accessible file sharing service that integrated into my devices' file browser directly.

Now DropBox is trying to be the one Cloud-business product to rule them all, with tasks and project management and all this other rubbish I get elsewhere from more industry-specific or otherwise-superior products.

I have DropBox for file sharing.  It used to be the best in simplicity, features, and cost.

Now, it's screwing up it's file sharing, making it worse, making it more complicated, and trying to add services I DO NOT WANT or CARE about.

If I wanted NetDocuments or some Oracle file-sharing junk I'd do that.  Hell, I could roll up some Amazon AWS sharing solutions using S3 Buckets if I really was hard up for cheap, complex, and multi-faceted file-sharing solutions.

But I'm not.  I want something simple, easy, and that laypeople can use (and that I don't have to spend a bunch of time managing, because while I *could* with the IT background I have, that is *not* my job now—I am now the owner of a professional services company, and I want to wear my IT hat as little as possible.)

It's a shame.  I chose Dropbox over Box.com early when I began my company, and I have been wondering lately if that was a mistake.

Ironically, because of OTHER services my company uses, we have access to Google Drive and MS OneDrive.  We kept Dropbox because it was still the best at integrated into our local file systems, and syncing simply.

However, Dropbox's recent "upgrades," which add no real functionality as far as I can tell, and only made things worse, have me looking at migrating to these other solutions.  (I may still give Box.com a chance, too, but that will cost more—not a lot, but more than what we have with Dropbox—and I already have the Google and MS solutions as part of other plans.  We just don't use them at the moment.)

It's a real shame.  Still, change is inevitable I suppose . . .

Dropbox should stop chasing Enterprise-do-it-all Rainbows and focus on their core product, and making improvements based on that.  Instead, their core product keeps getting worse . . .