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Disable desktop notifications for app's folder

Disable desktop notifications for app's folder

Thomas
New member | Level 1

I'm using Dropbox Sync to write down small files to sync things in my iOS app. Because records and datastores are too limited in my case, I can't use Datastore. Unfortunately, these internal files are generating a lot of notifications on my desktop. It annoys the user. The solution is to disable sync of this folder on desktop computers, but it requires an additional step for the user (after having annoyed it). All of this is degrading user experience.

By nature, what happens inside an app folder is less likely to be of interest for an human user. It would be great if we were able to set our app folders as "notifications free" if relevant. One can also imagine per subfolder filtering. For now, my apps are mobile only, but if I want to make a desktop version and use Dropbox to sync stuffs, disabling app's folder sync will be impossible and users would have to live with dozens of garbage notifications. It would be so awful that it would prevent me to use Dropbox at all to sync with a desktop version (even if user would like to use Dropbox).

37 Replies 37

Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff

Thanks for the additional feedback Jan. We do read everything and sincerely appreciate the insight and the time taken to write it. Unfortunately, I don't have any news to offer on this request though.

Thomas
New member | Level 1

And what about the "mute" parameter of the files/upload method. Steve M. seems to recall some limitations. What are they?

 

Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff

We don't have any more specific documentation, but I expect Steve was referring to older versions of the desktop client possibly not supporting the behavior, and perhaps some special logic beyond the parameter itself that determines whether or not to mute the notification. (E.g., it might make sense to show a notification regardless, even if mute was set, if there was a conflict.) I'll send this along as feedback to get this better documented though.

Thomas
New member | Level 1

So basically, it works as intended? As long as the user uses an up to date client and there is nothing he should be aware of, no notification is shown?

Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff

I haven't tried it out myself recently, but if you give it a try and it doesn't behave as expected, please let me know and I will bring it up with the team.

Jan_Zeman
Helpful | Level 6

Hi Gregory, thank you for your answer, very appreciated. Am I right in the statement that this would require a simple change in the DropBox desktop client(s)? Can you please share your opinion on this question here? When you say "I don't have any news", does it mean you have absolutely a zero chance to contact your other departments/colleagues/internal systems?

Joe C.56
Helpful | Level 7

Thank you for keeping up with this Jan. I've been following this closely. I can't believe it's not a feature that is available in the Dropbox app itself. And if this is the wrong forum (yeah it's the API forum but the only question that was up when I originally looked), why is it so difficult to pass it along to another team?

Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff

No, I don't expect it would necessarily be a simple change.

When I say I don't have any news, I mean that I don't have any announcement about this request potentially being implemented and released.

I have certainly contacted the team and opened this as a feature request with them.

Thomas
New member | Level 1

"I don't have any announcement about this request potentially being implemented and released."

And I thought it was solved by the "mute" parameter...

To be clear, I had a working implementation with Dropbox Sync. Because of this issue, I didn't bothered trying to update it to use the API v2 and moved on. I won't spend the time updating to the v2 if the issue is the same.

The stable API doc states that this "mute" flag is doing exactly what we're asking for: "mute Boolean Normally, users are made aware of any file modifications in their Dropbox account via notifications in the client software. If True, this tells the clients that this modification shouldn't result in a user notification. The default for this field is False."

So I thought I'll give it a try after all. But then, they might eventually be some possible limitations sometimes, then not really but try yourself, and then, this is potentially not implemented? Why is it so difficult to make a clear and definitive statement?

â–¢ The API works as intended, the issue is closed.

â–¢ The API has some bugs with the "mute" flag. They will be addressed.

â–¢ The "mute" flag does something completely different from what's stated in the documentation. A feature request has been opened.

 

 

Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff

Thomas, to clarify, there were essentially two different forms of this feature request. One is a way to mute notifications on a case-by-case basis, which we added to API v2 via the mute parameter. 

The other is to just mute all of the notifications for items the Apps folder, which hasn't been implemented and is considered an open feature request.

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    Jan_Zeman Helpful | Level 6
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