How to store ONLYOFFICE DocSpace public rooms in your Dropbox: a detailed guide

One of the most important improvements brought by the ONLYOFFICE DocSpace v2.5 release is the ability to use third-party services as data storage for public rooms, which makes the file-sharing process more effortless and convenient. Read this post to learn how to store DocSpace public rooms in your Dropbox storage or any other supported service.

What are public rooms in ONLYOFFICE DocSpace?

ONLYOFFICE DocSpace is a room-based collaborative environment where you can choose from various room types to streamline document collaboration with your teammates and external users. For example, collaboration rooms work best for real-time document co-authoring, and custom rooms are ideal for more specific tasks, like document reviewing or form filling, due to their sophisticated access settings.

Public rooms are designed to simplify file sharing with external users, i.e. people who don’t belong to your DocSpace. Using this room type, you can invite whoever you need (for example, partners, sponsors, subcontractors, customers, etc.) via external links to allow them to view office files without having to create a DocSpace account.

When invited to your public room, external users have view-only access to all the documents and content stored there. For additional protection, it’s possible to set a password and establish a time limit for the external link. You can also prevent external users from copying, downloading and printing your files, which makes file sharing secure.

How to store public rooms in Dropbox

Starting from ONLYOFFICE DocSpace v2.5, you can connect various third-party file storage platforms to your public rooms. The supported options include Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, Dropbox, kDrive, Nextcloud, ownCloud and any other service working via the WebDAV protocol. Please note this feature works with new public rooms. If you already have some public rooms in your DocSpace, you can’t connect them to the platforms mentioned above.

Let’s learn how to store a public room on a third-party platform through the example of Dropbox, a popular file-hosting service. If you prefer another storage platform, the procedure will be pretty much the same.

It all starts with creating a new public room. Follow the steps below:

Step 1. Log into your DocSpace, go to the Rooms section and click the “+” button in the upper right corner.

Step 2. Now choose Public room from the list of all available room types.

Step 3. Enter the room’s name, add a tag if necessary, activate the Third-party storage option, and select Dropbox from the drop-down list. When ready, click the Connect button.

Step 4. You will be redirected to a new page where you will be able to link your DocSpace with Dropbox using your Google or Apple account, or your email address. Choose the preferred option and click Continue.

Step 5. After that, you will need to grant some permissions to ONLYOFFICE DocSpace so that it can work correctly with Dropbox. Click Allow.

Step 6. After that, you will be redirected back to the public room creation page. On this page, choose one of the already existing folders in your Dropbox storage to store the new public room or create a new one by ticking the corresponding field. Finally, click Create.

That’s it. Now your public room is ready for secure file sharing. You can upload or create new office files, and invite other people via external links.

When you log into your Dropbox account, you will see a new folder. It contains all the files from your DocSpace public room. Now you can share content with other people directly from both DocSpace and Dropbox.

If you edit something in your Dropbox folder (for example, using the ONLYOFFICE Docs app for Dropbox) or create a new office file, the corresponding changes will apply to your DocSpace public room. The same happens if you change something in the public room — you will see the changes in your Dropbox folder.

Get started with ONLYOFFICE DocSpace

Don’t have DocSpace yet? Register a free account, create public rooms, connect your Dropbox storage and collaborate with other people on your terms:

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Want to know what other useful features were brought by ONLYOFFICE DocSpace v2.5? Read this article or watch the video below: