With Dropbox teams, you can organize members of your team into groups. Share a folder or file with a group to grant access automatically to all group members. There are two types of groups:
|
Company-managed groups |
User-managed |
Group creation |
Only admins can create groups |
Admins and team members can create (if allowed by admins) |
Ask to join |
Team members can't request to join |
Team members can request to join |
Leave a group |
Team members can't leave a group on their own |
Team members can choose to leave a group |
Add/remove members |
Only admins can add or remove team members to or from a group |
Both admins and group managers can add or remove members to or from a group |
Transfer group ownership |
Admins can change a company-managed group to a user-managed group, and assign a new manager |
Admins can change a user-managed group to a company-managed group to take control of it |
Not using Dropbox yet? See how Dropbox makes managing file permissions easy.
Sections in this article:
Create a user-managed group
Team members can create user-managed groups if their admin allows it.
Create a company-managed group
Only Dropbox team admins can create a company-managed group.
Is it possible to create a group that includes everyone on the team?
Yes, when you create a Dropbox team, a group named “Everyone at [Your Team Name]” is automatically created. It includes everyone currently on the team and new members will be added automatically as they join.
Notes:
Adding a member to a group will invite them to all shared folders that were shared with the group.
Add members to a user-managed group
Group managers can add or remove members to a user-managed group at any time.
Notes:
Add members to a company-managed group
Only admins can add members to a company-managed group. Team members can't request to join a company-managed group.
Remove members from a user-managed group
Group managers can remove or add members at any time.
Removing a member from a group removes the person from all shared folders and team folders the group has access to.
Remove members from a company-managed group
Only admins can remove members from a company-managed group.
Change the name of a user-managed group
Group managers can change the name of a user-managed group at any time.
Change the name of a company-managed group
Only admins can change the name of a company-managed group.
Only user-managed groups have the ability to add or change group managers. Group managers can edit or delete a user-managed group. They can also add and remove members from the group. A group can have multiple managers.
Add or change a group manager for a user-managed group
If you’re transferring management, first add a manager with the steps above and then remove your management permissions, or remove yourself from the group entirely.
Deleting a group is permanent. If you’ve accidentally deleted a group, you’ll have to recreate the group as you created it initially. Deleting a group does not delete any of the files or folders the group had access to.
Delete a user-managed group
Group managers can delete a user-managed group at any time.
Delete a company-managed group
Only admins can delete a company-managed group.
Members of user-managed groups can leave a group at any time. Only admins can remove members from company-managed groups.
Leave a user-managed group
Any team member can share a folder with any group, even a group you aren’t a member of.
Share a folder with a group
All members of the group will be invited to the folder.
What happens if I add the group named “Everyone at [Your Team Name]” to a folder?
Adding this group to a folder will share it with everyone who is already on your Dropbox team. It will not send invites to people at your organization who do not already have a Dropbox account.
Can people in a group have different permissions to a shared folder?
Yes. Group managers and folder owners can set permissions on a group or folder to view-only by default and can grant edit permissions to individuals. Users with edit permissions can edit contents of a folder, while the other users cannot.
Will group permissions override individual permissions?
Users are always given additional permissions rather than fewer permissions. If a group and individual's permissions are ever different, the user will always have the permissions that grant them the highest level of file and folder access.
What happens to permissions if a user is listed more than once in a group?
If users are listed in a shared folder more than once due to their group memberships, those users will default to the permissions that grant them additional functionality. For example, if the group is granted edit permissions but a user invited individually to that group has view-only permissions, then the group member will actually have the additional edit permissions granted to the group.
To limit a group member's access, first remove them from the group and then invite them as an individual shared folder member with "viewing" access. Or, invite each member individually to set distinct view or edit permissions for each member.
Dropbox team admins can choose whether team members can create user-managed groups. By default, team members are allowed to create user-managed groups.
Note: Only admins can create company-managed groups. Users cannot ask to join a company-managed group.
To turn off the option for team members to create user-managed groups:
Edit your team's groups
View and manage a specific team member's groups
As the admin of your Dropbox team, you can also view and manage the groups of any single team member. This can be helpful when onboarding new employees, since you can easily add them to all of the correct groups, as well as when an employee changes roles and you need to adjust their groups.
Under Group membership, you'll see a list of all the groups that team member is a part of.