I'm very sorry to do this but

Can someone point me to the best SINGLE place to get advice on how to set up DT using cloud databases, or accessing local DT databases remotely? I KNOW this subject has been beaten to the death of all nine of its lives, but there is so much on the subject–and so much that conflicts–that it’s difficult to figure out any single authoritative source.

My use is simple: I am in a small company, and all of our files are on Dropbox. I am the ONLY person who uses DT, but I need it to stay current with what is on Dropbox, which changes every day. I have been keeping mirrored folders on my HDD, and using DT to access those, but that is a complete pain in the neck, with all sorts of opportunities for mischief and error if my local files don’t stay synced. It also doesn’t do much for me when I’m traveling and tuning in on my laptop.

That’s it.

Thanks. I guess. :frowning: I really cannot believe that this use is so unusual.

Maybe I’ve asked the wrong question: What is the best way to set up DT3 for a company that does NOT have its own servers but uses Dropbox for group access to common files, so that multiple users can access it from multiple locations?

Is that better?

Actually that is not what I said. Let me try it again.

  1. This subject has been the subject of a lot of discussion on this forum.
  2. Much of it is contradictory, or, at best, inconsistent.
  3. I have reviewed a lot of that contradictory and inconsistent information, but I have yet to locate a single source of information that addresses my use case that is NOT inconsistent or contradictory.

Now for my question. Is there a developer-produced or developer-endorsed guide that addresses what should be a very basic and frequently encountered use case?

And thanks for the personal suggestion, but I have attempted that and it has not worked. That was the subject of another discussion a few months ago that also went no where.

I have been attempting to make this product work for my needs for probably 6 years, and every so often I come back to it and try again. This is another one of those attempts. I don’t know why I keep trying, except that I’m stubborn and optimistic.

But thank you for your input. You can probably let this conversation go now, and maybe someone with some other ideas will join in.

I have files on one computer’s hard drive (confidential / sensitive) and the rest of my files in Dropbox all indexed through a couple databases. The problem I see is that any syncing solution (short of Google docs, which is truly an amazing feat of engineering) opens up the possibility for sunc conflicts that will cause lots of headaches. Even on my own, I have to wait minutes, sometimes hours or days for the sync deities to line up properly. I’m very careful, so no worries, but I wouldn’t want to do this with a bunch of other people / variables.

I’ve reported my sync lags before, and my impression is that Dropbox is oit of DT’s hands. When it’s fast, it’s fast. When it’s not, it’s not. iCloud, in my experience, is quite unreliable and irritating.

Long story short, your mileage may vary. The guides and so forth offer scenarios that “work,” but in the messy real world, the more you rely on fast / instant sync, the more friction you’ll encounter, so assume a bit of a lag and work around it.

Perhaps a combination of Google Docs and DT (with indexing) would do the trick. Offline while traveling, though, means no sync, so there isn’t a solution there (assuming other folks are working on the files). If they save versions of each file each update instead of overwriting, that may mitigate the potential conflicts.

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You can start a support ticket to discuss this, if you’d like. Hold the Option key and choose Help > Report Bug.

When the use case is very basic and frequently encountered, I might have to wonder why you are finding that information about it is entirely contradictory and inconsistent. These two statements seems themselves to be contradictory and inconsistent.

I won’t claim that the combination of DT + Dropbox is not a basic and frequently encountered use case. I have no clue on whether it is this or is instead an esoteric or extreme use case. Independently, I will say that, based on my experiences elsewhere and armed with the little (dangerous) understanding that I have about how DT works, one should not expect Dropbox to be the most consistently reliable of cloud services to use as a repository for DT, especially AFAIK by comparison to setting up ones own (NAS) server.

Sadly, from the outside looking in, I read this as saying that you traded off what might have been by comparison a more limited set of short-term headaches and investments to set up your own (NAS) server, learn how to administer it, and train your team to use it for six years of trying to get the DT + Dropbox links to work reliably the way that you want on a cloud system that you do not control.

OTOH, I think it is entirely fair that you get an un-contradictory and consistent answer as to whether a) the use DT + Dropbox is truly a very basic and frequently encountered use case and b) no one else who is following the path that you are taking has the same level of issues that you have.


JJW

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