Dropbox Badge

In this session, we're going to be discussing the Dropbox badge. The Dropbox badge is an icon that appears whenever you have an office document saved in Dropbox and open on Office desktop applications. As you can see, the Dropbox badge appears over here as a little Dropbox icon. By default, it should appear on the right, but you can move it to any border on the open window.

So what does the Dropbox badge do? The Dropbox badge allows you to have control over this document in Dropbox without actually having to go to it in Dropbox on the web. This control, if you click in here, includes seeing who's viewing the file, who has viewed the file, gives you the ability to share this file directly from the screen. You can copy a link to the file to share out, comment on it (which will open up in the web), and also see the version history to restore back to previous versions here.

Another thing this allows you to do, which is probably the most common use case for it, is it allows you to prevent you and your coworkers from getting conflicting versions of this file. If there were someone else editing this document with me, I would see their avatar here, a little picture of that person, letting me know that someone else is also viewing this file currently. If they just see their face, that means they're just viewing the file and haven't taken any action yet.

Let's look at some other icons that you might see while you're working with the Dropbox badge. If they begin editing the file, you'll see this orange lock icon, indicating that you should wait on making those changes since someone else is editing it. If you do perhaps start editing the file while they're editing, you'll see this red exclamation mark, which signifies that you're creating a conflicting version. You'll need to save different versions and then choose one to continue working on if you want to stay on the same document.

Then there's a little blue arrow download icon that shows you they're done editing, and now you can download their version and work on the same copy together. After you download their version, it's safe to go ahead and start making edits. As long as they're done editing, they'll see the orange lock icon on their end, showing them that you're making edits now, and they need to wait for you to finish.

This is not considered co-authoring because only one person can make edits at a time. Co-authoring is available through Microsoft online with Dropbox. But on the desktop applications, you will need to use the Dropbox badge to work on the file together without creating conflicting versions. Alternatively, you can also use Dropbox's file locking feature to lock the file, make your changes, and then unlock it when you're done. This is how you use the Dropbox badge, and these are the icons available, along with the different actions you can take directly from this document.