Creating locked folders that are invisible to rest of your team

[jonob]

When you didnt share a folder you created with the rest of your team, that folder was invisible to them before recently. now the whole team can see the folder, it just now appears as a locked folder...

i don't want the rest of my team to even see the folders that they cannot access. 

how do i do this please?

[Sanchez]

Hey @jonob, welcome to our community! 

It sounds like you have one of our new Dropbox Business accounts, on which the folder structure has changed a bit. There’s an article discussing this new team space and member folders here. 

Unfortunately, what you’re asking for here isn’t currently an option, as all folders in the team space are visible to all team members. I know this isn’t ideal, but what you could do would be to share a folder from within your team member folder (the purple one). This would give users you share it with access to this folder only, and they would not see anything else in your member folder, as it is private - for your eyes only! 

Cheers

[rmckinnon10]

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@Sanchez wrote:

Hey @jonob, welcome to our community! 

It sounds like you have one of our new Dropbox Business accounts, on which the folder structure has changed a bit. There’s an article discussing this new team space and member folders here. 

Unfortunately, what you’re asking for here isn’t currently an option, as all folders in the team space are visible to all team members. I know this isn’t ideal, but what you could do would be to share a folder from within your team member folder (the purple one). This would give users you share it with access to this folder only, and they would not see anything else in your member folder, as it is private - for your eyes only! 

Cheers

---

I believe I have the older structure and like the way it works. I am able to create multiple team folders and hide their names and access with permissions.  Will I be forced to use the new structure at some point or how will that work?   Thanks

[Sanchez]

Hey @rmckinnon10, 

I’ve asked the team for clarification on this… I’ll get back to you when I have a concrete answer

Thanks! 

[Sanchez]

Hey again, @rmckinnon10, 

Our team doesn’t currently have plans to make this change mandatory for teams already on the “old” structure. However, if such a move ever becomes part of our road-map, we will give you plenty of notice and support! 

Cheers

[jonob1]

this doesnt make any sense at all though...??

If you dont want to share a folder to your overall team, you dont want to share it - so why is dropbox creating any visual folder shared to the team relating to the folder you don't want to share with them??

Really random and very annoying as a user who wants to create private folders

[Karina]

Hey again @jonob1

Thanks for getting back and sharing your thoughts. This is extremely valuable feedback, especially being since this is the new Business structure rolling out. I'm happy to forward your comments along to our Development team. 

As some advise, if you’d like to keep certain folders out of sight for certain members of your team, here's what you can do:

• Create these folders inside your Team Member folder (which is your own private space), and then proceed to share them (as you normally would with shared folders). 

• That way, they won’t be located in the Team Space, and won’t be visible parts of the structure that are locked up and prevent non-folder-members from accessing them. 🔒

Hope this helps, and please let @Sanchez and myself know if you've got any further questions. Thanks! 

[jonob]

If you have different tiers of a business you need different sections in the Team Workspace or ability to create different groups of team workspace with different docs available in each depending on seniority. Your current model is only considering 1 tier of employee as a mass group workspace. As a company you need restricted visibility at different levels for Eg. managers, directors, finance, exec board.

[rmckinnon10]

Thanks for

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@Sanchez wrote:

Hey again, @rmckinnon10, 

Our team doesn’t currently have plans to make this change mandatory for teams already on the “old” structure. However, if such a move ever becomes part of our road-map, we will give you plenty of notice and support! 

Cheers

---

Thanks for following up.   -Bob

[Karina · Accepted solution]

Hey again @jonob thanks for taking the time to write back! 

I completely understand your thought process on this and get your point of view! As mentioned, I'll include all the comments in my feedback report regarding this thread. 

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

To try and explain the purpose of the new structure to anyone curious:

• It's essentially, grouped into two sections, the personal and Business section of your account. This completely splits everything in half and, from there, you can chose how to organise the account. 

• The team space is shared with everyone on the team, so that there's structure to the team as a whole, and it focuses more on sub categorizing the team into a customizable structure depending on levels and tiers within the work environment - This helps the team be on the same page and avoids complications. 

We've got a cool example on the Help Center, showing how this would look for a new team member: 

So, even though the team space is accessible to the entire team, not all content is accessible, and can limited depending on what each members role is on the Business, and what content they need access to. 

Admins can also choose if they'd like everone or only admins on the team to have edit-access to the top - level of the team space.

So, if you've got a Business with different departments, you would organize it somewhat like this: 

Member Folder

Karina LastName (my personal space)

(I can create nested shared folders if I'd like, or keep files private - each one of my team members has their own team member folder, and no one else can see each others)

Team Space

HR (shared folder)

Marketing (shared folder)

Finance Team (read only folder)

Legal (no access folder)

Management (no access folder)

If you'd like to prevent members from seeing the main department folders, you can label the top-level with generic names (turn all folders into "no access" folders, and sub-categorize all the different departments and levels of your Business. 

Hope this example helps anyone experiencing any confusion, or simply wanting to get a visual understanding of what this looks like. 

Happy Friday!