Never notified when new shared files are waiting for me

[DCC]

Except for my RSS Feed, I get absolutely no notification from DropBox that I have new shared files.

I rarely go into my DropBox account to perform any action.  Everything is done via desktop.

DropBox used to have a changed system tray icon once new shared files finished uploading, to tell me I had new files.  But I had to be at my computer to see that.

That changed several updates ago, so that only during uploading does the sytem tray icon change, which is useless if I am not sitting at my computer, staring at the system tray icon.  Once new files have finished uploading, all I see is a blank and useless icon in the system tray.  

That is backwards thinking.  I want to be notified after uploaded files are waiting for me, not while they're uploading, because I don't sit at my computer 24/7/365 to wait and watch.

I have notifications checked via the system tray icon, but never see any notification of any type.

Now that DropBox is eliminating the ever-so-useful (to me) RSS Feed, so that I always get an e-mail when away from the computer that I had new files, I am now left with no way to know when I have new files unless I go into my online account (which I rarely do) or constantly check the DropBox folder on my computer.

Both are a waste of my time, when techonology is supposed to make things easier and less wasteful.

Any suggestion from anyone as to an alternative to the RSS Feed, so that one does not have to be ball-and-chained to their computer's DropBox folder?

I am frequently away from my computer, so getting an e-mail notification of new shared files was my best friend.

Thanks in advance.

[Walter]

Hey there @DCC - thank you for feedback on this - I'll make sure to pass it along to our team for their consideration. 

Let me give you some more context about this change.

We're removing the Events RSS feed from our website to focus on future improvements to displaying activity in your Dropbox.

You can continue to use http://dropbox.com/events to see a log of activity happening in your account. If you are looking for more powerful ways to retrieve activity data, Dropbox Business customers can access a detailed activity log through the Dropbox Business API.

Please see the following article for more information on the Dropbox Business API 

https://www.dropbox.com/help/business/business-api

If you are looking to be notified of many files being deleted, or changes in shared folders, you can enable email notifications for them. To check your email notification settings, please visit:  https://www.dropbox.com/help/account/email-settings

I know it's not optimal, yet, I hope it helps to some extent. If there's anything you'd like to add, please let me know. 

Thanks! 

[DCC]

Hi, @Walter.

I appreciate your reply. 

Nothing under the online Settings - Notifications deals with new files uploaded and waiting for me at the time they finish uploading.  Weekly e-mails of changes to shared folders is not useful to me.

I do not want to have to constantly log into and check my online DropBox account to check for files.  Nor do I want to always click on the system tray icon to see if anything new is there and/or constantly check my computer DropBox folder all the time.

When one or more new files newly arrive in my shared folders, that is when I want to be notified via e-mail.

I hope that e-mail notifications of changes to shared folders is something that will soon be offered, as has been the case for a long time with the other services I use.

Again, thank you kindly for your expedient reply and information.

[Walter]

Thanks for your swift response and additional comments about the Events RSS feed changes.

We understand that this decision affects your workflows, and want to help you understand the available options to continue monitoring activity in Dropbox.

As mentioned, you'll still have access to http://dropbox.com/events, which shows the same information as the events RSS feed. If you're a Dropbox Business customer, we reccomend utilizing the Dropbox Business API or the activity log to stay up to date on recent changes.

Also note that I have reported back to the team all of your comments for future consideration.

Thanks for using Dropbox and sharing your ideas with us. Oh and happy Weekend!

[legaldeejay]

I agree with this completely.   The only way I would ever get e-mail notifications is through the RSS feed.  Your suggestion to check the Events page does not resolve the issue because there should be a way to immediately receive an e-mail whenever a file or folder is added to a shared folder on Dropbox.   The notification settings in Dropbox don’t seem to work because I never receive e-mail notifications, except through the RSS feed.   So please improve Dropbox by implementing a better notification system.

A possible solution for you would be to use Zapier which integrates Dropbox with a Gmail account so that whenever a new file is added to a certain shared folder in Dropbox, that will send an e-mail to you using your Gmail account.   However, this does not work if somebody adds new folders of files within your shared folder which is how I usually receive new files.

Again, Dropbox, telling us to go to the Events Page is NOT the solution we are looking for.  We want a system of automatically sending e-mails or a better notification system.

[legaldeejay · Accepted solution]

Another solution is to use a folder monitoring utility which will send you email notifications of any changes in a folder in your OS, such as FolderSpy.

[Brian1]

Zapier also supports RSS, but the flaw for these external tools is that they're only monitoring one folder (sure, you could setup dozens of them, but that's nuts).

The advantage of what Dropbox had offered for years and removed late today, was that it monitored it all.

We're removing the Events RSS feed from our website to focus on future improvements to displaying activity in your Dropbox.  

---

Like what?  And please, I beg you not to mention going to dropbox.com/events, because that's a "pull" solution, not "push."  RSS exists for a reason, and it's the opposite of going to a web site to keep checking on something.

And why would you remove what was already done and working before you rolled out whatever the new thing is?!  That doesn't make sense.

[DCC]

@legaldeejay

FolderSpy -- Brilliant suggestion.  This worked like a charm and is exactly what I needed, in real-time, whether I'm at my computer or away from it (push to smartphone).  Now I can turn off the IFTTT applet, which only ran about once an hour.

After searching until my forehead hit the keyboard since the announcement of the RSS Feed being taken away from us, and using every possible search phrase I could think of, FolderSpy never came up in the searches.  Guess I just didn't come up with that "one more" possible search phrase.

MANY MANY MANY thanks for your suggestion -- it was a lifesaver !!!!!!!

[DCC]

And I forgot to mention, as an FYI for anyone who wants to monitor their entire DropBox desktop folder residing on their hard drive, like I do, and not just one shared folder, FolderSpy will monitor the entire Dropbox folder and all sub-folders, instead of just one chosen folder.   Select the parent Dropbox folder as the path in setup, and voila !!

I set it to only monitor "create" so that it doesn't always e-mail when Windows constantly writes to the hard drive. 

One e-mail per new file uploaded anywhere in Dropbox -- and that's it -- perfect.

Again, thank you, @legaldeejay.

[Brian1]

That's an interesting tool, useful in other scenerios to be sure, but it's monitoring a hard drive, not Dropbox, and it gets complicated fast if you have two locations. For example, if a user at one location saves a file into c:\dropbox, that would trigger an email -- whether the file made it to Dropbox.com (and thus the other site) or not. You really have no idea if it did.

So, what, you monitor the other site, too?  If you get two emails showing the same file, you know it made it to the cloud. That's elegant (not).

Etc.  There are more scenarios like this.

A better idea: An RSS feed on Dropbox.com.

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