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How can I know when someone accesses a shared folder?
I used to be able to share a folder with someone, send them a link, and then be able to hover over their little icon to see if they had accessed the folder. This is very important when I am trying t...
It doesn't work that way anymore. When you invite someone, they have access, period. They have the ability to leave* and join the share at will, until they remove it from their Dropbox or you remove them from the share. You can see that they're a member, but you can't see when they leave or join in (until they remove it from their Dropbox).
* Leaving a share does not remove it from their account. It simply takes the share out of their Dropbox. They can no longer access it, but they can rejoin it at anytime. When a user removes a share it is removed from their account completely and it can no longer be rejoined.
Matt, refer to my reply above. It no longer works that way. As soon as you invite someone to a shared folder, they have access. There is no longer a need to accept the invitation.
No. Just open your folder. Take a look at the picture attached. The files of the folder are listed on the left, and the names of the people on the right. MB is me. The other person I shared the folder with "c" hasn't accessed it yet. I know this by placing my cursor on top of the "c" and the message in grey (I covered her email address to protect her privacy) appears.
Rich wrote:
JMRhodes wrote:
Seems to me no one has actually answered the question
I have answered it.
How, though, do you know though if that person has responded and accessed the shared folder?You don't, as the share function no longer works that way. As soon as you invite someone, they have access. You cannot see when they access the files. You can only see if they are a member or not, and they are a member as soon as you send the invitation.
Rich, you are correct but, whatever your good intentions, not helpful. "It no longer works like this" means Dropbox decided, unilaterally, to get rid of a functionality that is important to many people.
I share key folders around the world (literally - 82 countries), and no longer being able to know if specific indivdiuals have acessed the folders is a significant problem for me. I don't need to track their accesses, just know thay have actually, as we used to say in the old days, "accepted the invitation". We are seriously reconsidering whether Dropbox, which is otherwise excellent and, importantly, ubiquitous, is the right solution for our organisation. As far as I can tell, the "new way" doesn't even tell me if the other person has Dropbox installed or not - although we try to check, its tricky for us in all situations.
I am curious to hear Dropbox's justification for this change - it certainly doesn't to seem to be about a better user experience.
I totally agree that this is a problem, I work with people around the world in many time zones, with different levels of understanding of how dropbox works and sometimes with limited internet. Not knowing if they have accessed the folder is a huge pain, as I cannot pinpoint when someone is having problems. I like dropbox a lot, but just cannot imagine why anyone would want to remove this function... Especially, it works with files! if you select a file (not a folder) you can go in the activity log and check if someone has viewed it. So this gives you some indication about the folder (if they have viewed a file in it, they have accessed the folder). But still, it does not give a garantee of access to the folder if there are not files in it yet. If we have it for files, why not for folders?
