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Dropbox admin guide
Dropbox Business is a home for all your team’s work. With an intuitive admin console, team space, and advanced security features, Dropbox gives you the tools you need to get your team up and running.
As an admin for your company’s account, you have special privileges. You can add or remove team members, monitor sharing activity, oversee billing information, and protect company data.
This guide introduces you to the features, permissions, and security controls you’ll manage as a new admin. To learn more about Dropbox foundations like how to sync and share, take a look at the Team Member Guide.
Let’s get started with how to set up your team.
Dropbox in the cloud
Dropbox securely stores your work online, in the cloud. You can save, access, and share your important stuff from anywhere, at any time, across any device.
When a file is stored in the cloud, you're no longer limited to your hard drive or a single device to access it. Everything you add to your Dropbox account is updated on dropbox.com and on any computer, phone, or tablet you have signed into. Make a change or delete a document? That’s reflected, too. Relax knowing that Dropbox always has your back.
Access your account
You can access your Dropbox account in 3 ways: on dropbox.com, with the Dropbox desktop experience, and with the Dropbox mobile app. Get started by signing in to your account on dropbox.com. Then, install the apps on your computer, tablet, and phone to get the most out of your account. Learn more about the apps in the Team Member Guide.
dropbox.com
In this guide, we’ll focus on dropbox.com. Sign in to your Dropbox account to add and share your stuff, get team updates, manage team settings and account preferences, access features like Paper, and manage your own account settings.
Sign in to dropbox.com
When you sign up for a Dropbox Business account, you'll be prompted to set up an account on dropbox.com as a team admin. To use Dropbox, you need to sign in to your account with the credentials you selected during this initial setup.
How to sign in to your Dropbox account.
How to sign in to your Dropbox account using Google Sign-in.
Secondary admins
You don’t have to work full time for your company’s help desk to be a successful admin. You don’t even have to set up your team alone. We recommend that all teams have at least two admins who can help with specific tasks like managing account security or onboarding new users. If there’s another person who should help onboard your team, add or change an admin.
Dropbox admin console
The admin console on dropbox.com is your central hub for visibility and control. Depending on your admin role and Dropbox Business account, you’ll see different tabs that help you oversee users and team workflow, and invite team members to create accounts.
How to: access the admin console
In the admin console, you can set team-wide controls and permissions, find account information, and get support. Explore each area of the admin console before setting up your team:
Insights: Gather key insights on your team's activities, access shortcuts to important admin actions, and quickly find members to manage their accounts. Learn more about the insights dashboard. (All admins)
Members: Add or delete team members, monitor their activity and take quick actions (e.g., reset passwords or add another member as an admin). (All admins)
Activity: Monitor your team’s workflow by viewing specific events or creating full reports. You can access more detailed information by clicking on a team member's name. (Team and user management admins)
- Content: Manage and monitor team folders, shared folders, and shared Spaces. Admins can add, delete, and copy shared and team folders, and manage folder membership. (Team admins*)
Groups: With groups, both admins and team members can create lists of people who should have access to the same files, folders, and Dropbox Spaces (based on departments, teams, or projects). (All admins)
Account: Add more licenses to your plan, update billing information, and review billing history. (Team admins)
- Help: Get access to resources such as the help center and this guide, or contact your account team for additional help. (All admins)
*Available to all admins on Enterprise teams.
Learn more about different types of admins.
Glossary
- @mention: a way to notify someone of a comment or to-do on a file, Paper doc, or overview
- admin console: an area on dropbox.com where admins can monitor workflows and manage users and settings for their teams
- admin roles: the sets of permissions an admin can have—support admin, user management admin, or team admin
- avatar: an image that represents your user or account, shown as your profile picture, initials, or a person icon
- the cloud: a network of storage locations that allows you to access content over the internet, instead of from a local hard drive or removable storage device
- cloud storage: online storage space that can be accessed by different, connected devices
- content: any kind of files and folders you create or store on your devices
- cloud content: files that are created and stored online, like Dropbox Paper docs and GSuite or Microsoft Online files
- Insights dashboard: a screen in the admin console where admins can manage team member invitations, add licenses, monitor member activity, and check usage statistics
- Dropbox App Center: a place on dropbox.com where you can find, connect, and manage third-party apps
- Dropbox Business: Dropbox plans designed for businesses with multiple users. Four plans offer customers various features to suit their needs: Standard, Advanced, Enterprise, and Education.
- Dropbox Paper: on online document workspace with easy-to-use writing, sharing, and collaboration tools
- Dropbox Transfer: a feature that lets you deliver files and folders that are large or don’t require collaboration
- edit access: a way to share files and folders with others that allows them to edit your content
- email templates: standardized email messages admins can use to invite and onboard their team
- file request: an invitation you can send to others to ask them to upload files to your Dropbox account
- folder structure: the way that team folders are organized inside the team space, whether shared with the whole team or specific groups
- groups: groups of team members set up by admins or users to simplify sharing content across the team
- members: any non-admin user on a Dropbox Business account
- multi-factor authentication: a security feature that adds protection by requiring a code, in addition to your password, for login
- pilot: a test period in which an admin can select a small number of users to test Dropbox tools before onboarding the entire team
- pin: a feature that shows a specific file at the top of a folder, so you can find it easily
- recover: to bring back a file or folder that was deleted from your Dropbox account
- restore: to revert a file to a previous version saved in your Dropbox account
- secondary admin: an admin who provides support and shares duties with the primary team admin
- selective sync: a feature that helps you save hard drive space by moving content to online-only storage, where you can access it from dropbox.com
- Smart Sync: a feature that lets you store files and folders online but still see and access them from your computer or mobile device
- SSO: short for “single sign-on,” a sign-in method an admin can set up that allows team members to sign on through a single service provider, like Google
- star: a feature that makes it easier to find files by displaying them in a single list, no matter what folder they are stored in
- support admin: a user with privileges to manage some group and member-level settings
- sync: short for “synchronize,” the process that updates your content locally and in the cloud so the latest version is available on any device
- team activity: summaries of member usage found on the admin console, including active members, storage space used, links store, active folders, and active devices
- team admin: a user with privileges to manage team or company-wide account and user settings
- team folders: folders that simplify sharing by making the content inside available to all members who have access
- team settings: settings admins can use to mange how the team uses features and tools like syncing and app integrations
- team space: a folder or set of folders created by a team’s admin to simplify sharing and organizing content
- team-wide rules: settings admins can use to mange how the team can share content, both inside and outside the team
- user management admin: a user with privileges to manage most member-level settings
- view-only permissions: a way to share your files and folders with others that lets them see your content but not make changes
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