Pushing new documents into devonthink from external machine

DEVONthink
1

Hello everyone,

my wife is running on a windows machine with all her paperwork stuff. She only has hardware from her business, so we are not thinking of buying new mac-based hardware soon.

I am looking for an easy way for her to send me her paperworks directly into my DevonThink, where I can arrange it into her personal database, she can then access via DT-server.
She is usually so busy, that she does not find time to collect documents and send them via email. So my idea was so automate this somehow via a dropfolder or something.

Does anyone has an idea of how I could accomplish this? The business hardware is usually pretty locked up, so their IT should need to approve automating issues. So I need to work around this somehow :wink:

Best and many thanks for some inspirations…

2

You should start the question with the IT department, e.g., asking if Dropbox or connected USB devices are allowed. Having worked corporate IT more than once, you should always start this kind of discussion with people who control the data security of the company.

Also, is there an actual need to sort things before she gets home from work? If not, and connected externals are allowable, why not have her drop stuff to a thumb drive to be sorted at home?

3

I figured that this might be the answer …
Well, I do know my wife, especially in the evenings. There is usually no time to share some documents on a regular basis, because there is always more important stuff to do. So I am looking for a more or less automatic version so get those data.

4

If Dropbox is allowed by the IT team, she may be able to drop files into it and you could potentially receive them at home.

5

I’ve wrestled with this as I frequently (pre-pandemic) use video and audio editing systems that I don’t have admin access to at a wide range of facilities. They could be a mix of OS (Mac, Windows, Linux) and a range of vintages as, for example, audio editing systems are sometimes frozen at an old OS to keep a treasured and now unsupported plug-in or piece of hardware alive.

My most successful method was this:

  • Create a folder in my Dropbox account.
  • Index that DB folder to DT database. Set to import into Database and do any other Smart Rule processing based on type or name/content.
  • In Dropbox, create an “Invite to upload” link. In the past I’ve used URL shorteners to make this a more memorable and type-able link or just emailed it to myself or the admin of the system I was using. Doing that last part helps with any IT department issues if there are any. Someone will tell you if they allow uploads from that system. My experience is that uploads are generally not what they’re worried about, even to Dropbox. This is all in a browser and requires no installation of any app on the restricted machine.
  • bookmark the link on the “away” system.
  • end of the day whenever, click the link, upload the day’s docs, wait, shut down, pack up your Worlds Greatest Mom/Dad/Aunt/Uncle coffee mug and get the heck out of there.
  • the uploads land in that folder, get ingested in DT and it’s done.

I don’t do this so much anymore as I can always Airdrop a file to my phone/DTTG from most Mac systems and I carry a pretty powerful editing system with me as a M2 Max MBPro that also has DevonThink on it and everyone is working from home now so why leave the house.

1 Like
6

and everyone is working from home now so why leave the house.

Because there’s a big, beautiful world out there to see :wink: :heart:

3 Likes
7

Use the Dropbox File Request feature to let her send the files that way. No need to install Dropbox on her PC. How to create a Dropbox file request - Dropbox Help