Some types of Dropbox Business admins can monitor how certain data is shared inside and outside the organization.
View sharing activity
- Sign in to dropbox.com with your admin credentials.
- Click Admin console in the left sidebar.
- On the Activities page , sharing events appear along with the other types of events. To filter by sharing events only, select Sharing in the drop-down menu.
The Activity page shows a summary of the team's most recent activity. It doesn't show all actions taken by the team. You can generate a full report of the activities for a specific period by clicking Create full report in the Activity tab . You can also view a particular team member's recent sharing activity by clicking Members in the left sidebar, then clicking the person's name in the list.
What if an unknown person joins a shared folder?
If an unknown person joins a shared folder, administrators will be able, from the Activity tab , to see it and also see who sent the invitation.
What types of events are logged?
Shared folder events are logged when someone:
- Create a shared folder
- Invite a person to a folder
- Joins a folder
- Remove a person from a folder
- Change another person's role in a folder
- Transfers ownership of a folder to another person
- Unshare a folder
- Change sharing permissions for a folder
- Change general sharing permissions for shared folders in the Admin Console
- Move a shared folder from a work Dropbox to a personal Dropbox (and vice versa), especially when both folder -level and team -level settings allow sharing outside the team.
Shared file events are logged when a file is:
- Added
- Downloaded
- Edited
- Previewed
- Deleted
- Permanently deleted
- Restored (when deletion of a file is undone or a file is returned to its original location)
- Recovered (when the previous version of a file, prior to a set of changes, is recovered)
- Renamed
- Moved (when a file is moved from one folder to another)
- Copied
- Is rolled back (when a person's account is rolled back to a previous state along with the files affected by that action)
Shared link events are logged when:
- A team member creates or shares a link
- A user, who is not a team member, creates or shares a link from a shared folder owned by a team member
- A link is shared or created through a third-party application
- A team member removes a link
- A team member changes the visibility of a link
- A team member sets a password or expiration for a link
- An admin changes the general sharing permissions for shared links in the Admin Console
- A team member opens or saves files from a link to team-owned content
File request events are logged when:
- A team member creates a file request
- A team member receives a file uploaded in a file request
Paper sharing events are logged when:
- Shared a Paper doc or folder with a team member (or unshared it)
- A team-owned doc or Paper folder is shared with someone not on the team (or unshared)
- A team member views a Paper doc
- Someone outside your team views a Paper doc
- A team member is mentioned in a Paper doc
- A non-team member is mentioned in a team-owned Paper doc
- The default sharing setting for Paper docs is changed
- Permissions for a member of a Paper doc are changed
- You're requesting access to a Paper doc from a team member or someone who's not on your team
Opening a link or adding files to a Dropbox account are only logged in the All Activity report . An event will be logged when someone inside or outside your team opens or adds the link to their Dropbox.
The share audit log doesn't track when a member leaves or adds a shared folder, because that member still has access to the folder and can add it at any time.
View your sharing activity in the stats dashboard
If you want to get a general overview of your team's sharing activity over time, use the stats dashboard . Provides general usage statistics, such as the number of shared links created and the number of active shared folders. Learn more about the Stats Dashboard .
View and manage external sharing
You can see which shared files, folders, and links are being shared with people outside your team, as well as details about how they're being shared, including:
- Shared items: type, size, and location
- Security: access level and any passwords or deadlines
- Sharing: who shared the content, when and with whom
- Activity: status of viewing or editing content
You can view this information by downloading a report or by viewing the external sharing page. You can also manage access to affected files and folders from a dedicated external sharing page.
Note. Both the dedicated page and the report:
- They only include files and folders that are shared directly. For example, if a folder is shared, the folder will be included, but the files within it will not be included.
- They include files and folders that a team member has created a shared link for.
- They're only available to teams with less than five million external shares.
- They don't contain Dropbox Paper docs.
Download an external sharing report
You can click Create Report from the External Sharing page and Statistics Dashboard to create an external sharing report. The report contains external sharing data for the entire team and cannot be filtered.
View, filter and manage external shares
You have access to a dedicated external sharing page in the Admin Console, where you can view, filter, and manage files and folders that are shared externally.
Note. Dropbox is committed to keeping this page as up-to-date as possible. The report will include the most recent information.
To open the page dedicated to external sharing:
- Sign in to dropbox.com with your admin credentials.
- Click Admin console in the left sidebar.
- Click Security in the left sidebar.
- Click External Sharing.
You can search and filter files shared externally based on details such as file name, date shared, person who shared, and file type.
To manage an externally shared file or folder from the external sharing page:
- Follow the steps above to open the page dedicated to external sharing.
- Hover over the name of the file or folder you want to manage.
- Click “ … ” (ellipsis).
- Click Manage Access .
If the file or folder is in a team folder, you'll see the sharing window. If the file or folder isn't in a team folder, you'll have the option to sign in as a team member . In both cases, once you open the sharing window for the file or folder, you can manage access to it the same way you manage access to any file or folder on Dropbox .
