How to connect Google Drive to Dropbox Protect

You can connect Google Drive to Dropbox Protect to manage and monitor document security and access for your organization.

API permissions

When connecting Google Drive, Protect requests the following authorizations:

• Access your Google Drive: This permission lets Protect discover and index your files and folders, making your Google Drive content searchable within Protect.
• View activity on your Drive files: This permission allows Protect to access your file activity, such as edits and shares, ensuring the most up-to-date information is available in search results.
• View your email address: This permission helps Protect verify your identity and associate your Google Drive data with your Protect account.
• View your basic profile info: This permission allows Protect to display your name and profile image for a more personalized experience, helping identify you across search and sharing features.
• View your domain information: This permission allows Protect to identify your Google Workspace domain, which is used for organization-wide search and security controls.
• View Google Groups in your domain: This permission allows Protect to access group memberships for sharing and to respect group-based access in search results.
• View members of Google Groups: This permission enables Protect to recognize which users are part of which groups, ensuring proper permissions are reflected in search and sharing.
• View your organizational units: This permission allows Protect to respect organization structure and apply correct permissions and filters based on your org unit in search results.
• View users in your organization: This permission allows Protect to support searching, sharing, and filtering by user, improving collaboration features across your domain.
• View audit reports for your domain: This permission grants Protect access to audit logs, helping support advanced analytics, security, and troubleshooting within the organization.

How content syncing works

• Content sync starts as soon as the connection is made, allowing you to quickly view your data. This may take a few hours to several days based on the amount of content in your account. You’ll receive an email when syncing is complete.
• Protect performs a sync of your Google Drive content and permissions every 60 minutes.

How to connect Google Drive to Dropbox Protect

To connect Google Drive to Dropbox Protect:

1. Log in to dropbox.com using your admin credentials.
2. Click Admin console in the left sidebar.
3. Click Protect under Products, then click Apps.
4. If you’re connecting apps for the first time, click See all apps.
   • Note: If you’ve already connected apps, click More apps.
5. Click ① Add next to Google Drive.
6. Click Start.
7. Click Open. 
   • You’ll be taken to admin settings in Google Drive, where the Protect app information will pre-fill in the required fields.
8. Click Authorize in the Google Drive screen.
9. Return to the admin console page on dropbox.com where you’ll see the Ready to sync prompt.
10. If you’d like to exclude specific drives from syncing to Dropbox Protect, click Select under Exclude content, then follow the steps in the section “How to exclude drives when connecting Google Drive to Dropbox Protect”. Otherwise, proceed to step 12.
11. Click Start syncing in the Ready to sync prompt. 
12. Your Google Drive content will start syncing immediately. This can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days, depending on how much content is in your account. Protect admins will receive an email when all content has been synced.

How to exclude drives when connecting Google Drive to Dropbox Protect

To exclude specific drives from syncing during setup:

1. After you’ve authorized Google Drive in Protect, click Select under Exclude Content in the Ready to sync prompt.
2. Enter the identifier for the drive you want to exclude.
   • For personal drives, use the user's email address linked to the drive.
   • For shared drives, open the shared drive in a new window and copy the text after "folders/" in the URL. For example, in the URL "https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/123456789", the identifier is 123456789.
3. Click Done.
4. Click Start syncing in the Ready to sync prompt.

To manage excluded drives:

1. Log in to dropbox.com using your admin credentials.
2. Click Admin console in the left sidebar.
3. Click Protect under Products, then click Apps.
4. Click Google Drive in the Your apps tab.
5. Click ① (edit) next to Excluded content.
6. Connect or remove drives: 
   • • To connect a drive, enter the identifier for the drive you want to exclude.
       • For personal drives, use the user's email address linked to the drive.
       • For shared drives, open the shared drive in a new window and copy the text after "folders/" in the URL. For example, in the URL “https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/123456789”, the identifier is “123456789”.
     • To remove and sync a drive, click  (delete) next to the identifier.
7. Click Done.