Using Dropbox Teams with EVO's Slingshot Replications

Currently on EVO, Dropbox Team's support of Slingshot automations are limited to an Administrator User's "root", which is different from the "root" of the shared Team's space. This allows Slingshot Automations to have direct access to folders as subdirectories within the User's "root"; however, access to other top level folders, including the Team's "root" folder, will require manual moves to be performed or additional automations to be set up on on Dropbox. For this reason, we recommend using Shared Folders on subdirectories within the Admin User's "root" folder where possible in your Dropbox configurations to apply permissions for additional users and team members. 

In this tutorial we'll outline the following:

• How to create and apply permissions for a Shared Folder on a Dropbox Teams Account
• Setting up Slingshot Replications directly to a Shared Dropbox Folder 
• Notes and Caveats on Working with the Shared Dropbox Team's Space
• Moving a Folder to the Dropbox Team's Space
• Setting up Dropbox Automations to the Dropbox Team's Space

Prior to following the steps outlined in this tutorial, Slingshot Replications to the Dropbox Team's Account will need to configured. See the documentation below for completing this prerequisite:

• Configuring Dropbox Teams for Slingshot Replication

Creating a Shared Folder

By default, the administrator of a Dropbox Teams account will have an empty personal folder that matches their account username and is strictly limited to the Admin user. This folder is the "root" folder of the Administrator User's account, and is where EVO's slingshot replications will be written. To share data replicated from your EVO with other Dropbox users, a subfolder needs to be created within the "root" folder so that permissions can be explicitly granted for your data. 

To create a subfolder in the Admin user's "root", follow the steps below:

1. Log in to your Dropbox Teams Account as the Administrative User used to set up your Slingshot Automations.
2. Select the top level folder that matches your username, in this example "S Syra". 
3. On the following page, select Create, followed by Folder in the dropdown menu that appears, and finally Shared Folder.
4. In the top section of the pop-up menu that appears, enter a name for your Folder. In this example, the folder is named MySlingshotFolder.
5. In the "To:" field enter the e-mail addresses of Dropbox Team members or users you'd otherwise like to share access to this folder with. In this example, we're sharing with the Team user TestUser. 
6. To the right of the "To:" field select the dropdown menu to grant Edit or View access. View users can only view and download files, and comment in the selected folder. Edit users include all view permissions, and can additionally edit, delete, and add files to the selected folder. 
7. Once you've reviewed and are happy with your configuration, select the Share button to share your folder with the selected users.

Once completed, all designated users will be able to access the folder you've set permissions for using their own Dropbox accounts, and any additional subdirectories and files relative to the folder you just created will inherit the permissions you've set by default. 

Setting Up Slingshot Replications to a Shared Dropbox Folder

After following the steps to create a Shared Folder, and ensuring that permissions have been applied, new Slingshot Replications can be sent to it at any time. The following configuration assumes that no "Relative Path" has been set when initially setting up your Slingshot Alias.

1. Navigate to the EVO's Administrative Interface.
2. Select Slingshot from the left-hand navigation menu.
3. Ensure that the Replications tab is selected from the navigation bar at the top of the page.
4. In the Replication Jobs sub-menu, select the plus (+) icon to create a new Replication job.
   
5. In the pop-up configuration menu that appears, a Dropbox Alias can be configured as a source or destination by selecting Dropbox from the dropdown menu that appears for the "Source" or "Destination" fields, and then a pre-configured Alias from the dropdown menu that appears for the "Alias" Field. In the example below, a copy/replace replication job has been configured to run from the "media" share on my EVO to the "MySlingshotFolder" folder that was configured in the "Creating a Shared Teams Folder" section of this guide. More information on configuring Replication Jobs can be found in our documentation.
   
6. Once you're happy with your configuration settings, select Save.
7. In the pop-up menu that appears, select Yes, Enable to enable the automation.
8. Once the automation has been performed (in this case Daily at 1:00), all folders and subfolders written to the path on Dropbox will inherit the permissions that have been set for it, in this case Edit permissions for the user TestUser and the admin account. This means that any data from the "media" share in EVO will now be accessible for the user TestUser and the Admin account on Dropbox Teams.
   

Notes On Moving Files to a Shared Team's Space

Once a Slingshot automation is created for folders within the "root" of the shared Team's Space, the files can be manually moved or copied, or a separate Dropbox Automation can be created to forward the data received in the folder from Slingshot to a shared Team's folder. There are a few things to keep in mind when using the Team's Space in this way:

• EVO will not be aware of the Team's Space and will have no way of understanding the context of it's Slingshot Replications once files have been moved outside of the Administrative User's "root". This means that many of Slingshot's features such as its ability to keep files synced between the source and destination will not work as expected.
• Replications performed more than once to a folder configured for Dropbox Automation will result in duplicate files.
• Dropbox Automations will require that an automation is set for all subdirectories independently. Dropbox Automations are not recursive by default. 

The fastest immediate method to move files to the shared Team's Space, especially where many subfolders are involved, is to manually copy or move the DropBox Team's folder (in this case MySlingshotFolder) directly to the shared Team's Space in Dropbox.  

Slingshot Automations that only need to be performed once are alternatively the best option when replicating to folders configured for Dropbox Automations within the root of the shared Team's Space, since these do not require ongoing context awareness.

Moving the Team's Folder to the Shared Team's Space

1. Using the MySlingshotFolder folder as an example, files can be moved by right clicking the folder in the Dropbox Administration UI, followed by the Move option.
   
2. On the following page that appears, select the path to a shared Team's folder of your choice, followed by the Move button to initiate the move. 
   

Setting Up a Dropbox Automation 

Folder's in the User's root can additionally be set up as a staging area for files to be moved immediately to a Team's folder using Dropbox automations. Using the MySlingshotFolder folder as an example, the steps for completing this are as follows:

1. Log in to your Dropbox Teams Account as the Administrative User used to set up your Slingshot Automations.
2. Navigate to the location of the folder you'd like to set up automations for, in this case the Folder that contains the MySlingshotFolder folder.
3. Right click on the MySlingshotFolder folder and select Add Automation from the menu that appears.
   
4. In the following pop-up menu that appears, select the Choose a Category to Sort Files By option.
5. In the "Add Automation" menu, that appears, select the Custom Filters option followed by Add filters.
    
6. The following configuration filters for all 128 file extensions available to Dropbox automations, and all files that are between 0 and 100 GB, covering the vast majority of files, though this can be further limited depending on your needs:
7. In the "Move files to:" field, select "Choose folder" followed by a folder in your Team's space.
8. Once you're happy with your configuration, select Save at the bottom right of the window to save your automation.