Permissions for Sub-Folders

[DSG]

Hi People,

Drop box Business user.

We have 3 folders at the highest level..

Folder 1

Folder 2

Team folder

We have different permissions for access to Folder 1 & Folder 2 depending on staff's requirements. Some staff can only access Folder 2, but all can access Folder 1.

Team Folder is not used (could be the solution, see below)

We now have the need to lock certain folders within Folder 1 and Folder 2 to just 1 or 2 users e.g

Folder 1>Financials

Folder 2>Financials

My impression is this cant be done using our structure unless we move these folders to their own folder 'Folder 3' and set permissions for that.

A bit of googling makes me beleive this may be possible in the 'Team Folder' as these have extra features.. If so how do I do it?  and can I move Folder 1 and Folder 2 inside of 'Team Folder' with ease or is it a PITA?

Thanks

[Sanchez · Accepted solution]

Hi there, 

Any sub-folder will inherit the sharing properties of the parent folder. That is, if you give users access to a folder, they will be able to access any sub-folders within it. If you add other users to the sub-folders, and they will not have access to the folders above it, but they will be able to access anything within the folder (and subsequent sub-folders). Here’s a bit more info

https://help.dropbox.com/business/team-folders

With Team folders, you have to create groups for the initial share of the folder. A group can consist of one or more users. Within the Team folder, you can then create sub-folders, and share with individual users. 

I hope this helps! 

Thanks

[dmaister]

I know this post is several months old, but the problem with this solution is the ability to deny access to a subfolder to a segment of the parent group.

This particular section outlines the issue that won't allow the OP to do what he wants to:

Can I restrict access to a folder inside a team folder?

Access to folders inside team folders can be granted to new people. However, access can't be taken away from people who are members of higher-level folders. If you have access to a folder, you have access to all folders inside it. If you don't want certain people to access a folder inside a team folder, you can:

• Move the folder to a higher level of the team folder
• Create a new shared folder and only grant the relevant people access

With this restriction, the ability to create a "Financials" subfolder with restricted permission to managment is not possible. Dropbox's recommendation to move a folder to higher level of the team folder doesn't work quite well either (if the entire team still has access to the "TEAM" folder). And creating another shared folder increases the "mess and confusion" (referred to here) at the root folder level of participants and becomes unmanageable from a folder management perspective when there are people who may have access to multiple teams (or even the ton of distinctly shared folders from other dropbox users.

If Dropbox can allow explicit deny, either by group or individuals in subfolders, that should help with the specific need and allow businesses to continue to manage a single folder hierarchy within the company or team. I don't know if that would cause other issues, but I think the concept of explicit deny's should work with Dropbox's permission tagging model.

[Sanchez]

Hi @dmaister, welcome to our forum! 

Thank you for the detailed explanation of the issue you are facing with this. I wish I could provide a better solution for you. What I can do, is to let our team know about your explicit deny idea, which is a great one! 

Thanks for your feedback. We do appreciate it!

 

[whoisjoshua]

I really apprciate the detail provided here in this complementary follow-up to the OP's issue. 

I am writing because I have the exact same issue/dynamic within my organization, where I just upgraded to a DB business account on trial and I am now kind of in this pickle. I work the same way with partioning rights to the financials sub-folders of each client account folder that the team is on, and I am glad to know I am not the only one. I can't imagine there aren't a TON of small businesses with a similar use-case. 

It's unfortunate, becasue I chose to upgrade to Business Account because I thought 'Granular Permissions' meant I could literally choose the sharing settings individually for every single folder within the whole folder structure. This seems so logical, to be able to 'hide' certain folders, even within a team folder, so that only the account owner or Admin can see them. 

I hope this or something like this makes it's way into Dropbox Business, or I am going to be sorely having to downgrade back to my personal Pro account or spend way too many hours I don't have creating a bunch of 'Teams'  and trying to figure out folder logistics in my head.... 😕

[Sanchez]

Thanks for your input on this, @whoisjoshua. As always, I am making your feedback available to our team. This type of data is invaluable to us, and we always welcome it. 

Cheers

[JetBoxer]

I have to agree with everything that was said in this post. I too just now bought the business subscription for the granular permissions, and discovered that these are waterfall permissions. I dont know why this is such a problem, given it is standard in any linux, unix system with a chmod. Also this is standard in github.

[MannyIT]

This is certianly the standard on many other systems and it baffles me Dropbox hasn't taken the time to understand the gravity of this requirement for it's business customers. We'll likely have to move away from Dropbox due to this very specific limitation.

[MannyIT]

This shouldn't be marked as solved as the suggested solution isn't an adequate solution to the Dropbox product limitation being highlighed on this thread.

[dmaister]

Sanchez, can someone at dropbox follow up on this? Thanks!