Synchronized organization directory with team member folders

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10997200-B2
Application number	US-201816026531-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jul 3, 2018
Priority date	Dec 28, 2017
Publication date	May 4, 2021
Grant date	May 4, 2021

Abstract

The present technology pertains to a organization directory hosted by a synchronized content management system. The corporate directory can provide access to user accounts for all members of the organization to all content items in the organization directory on the respective file systems of the members' client devices. Members can reach any content item at the same path as other members relative to the organization directory root on their respective client device. In some embodiments novel access permissions are granted to maintain path consistency.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising instructions stored thereon, when executed the instructions are effective to cause a content management system to:
maintain an organization directory as a root directory, where each of a plurality of user accounts have rights to at least read the organization directory;
maintain a member directory for each of the plurality of user accounts within the organization directory;
identify a portion of the organization directory to be visible from a first client device, wherein the first client device is associated with a first user account of the plurality of user accounts and the portion of the organization directory includes a member directory of the first user account; and
synchronize at least the member directory of the first user account with the first client device.

2. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1 , wherein a member directory of a second user account is not visible from the first client device.

3. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 2 , comprising instructions to cause the content management system to:
identify another portion of the organization directory to be visible from a second client device, wherein the second client device is associated with the second user account, wherein the other portion of the organization directory includes the member directory of the second user account and excludes the member directory of the first user account; and
synchronize at least the member directory of the second user account with the second client device.

4. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 2 , comprising instructions to cause the content management system to:
manage access rights within the organization directory to a team-shared directory mounted with the organization directory, wherein the team-shared directory is only accessible to a first group of user accounts from the plurality of user accounts, and wherein the team-shared directory is visible, but not accessible, by user accounts other than the first group of user accounts.

5. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 2 , comprising instructions to cause the content management system to:
manage access rights within the organization directory to a team-shared directory mounted within the organization directory, wherein the team-shared directory is only accessible to a first group of user accounts from the plurality of user accounts, and wherein the team-shared directory includes a plurality of content items including a first directory,
wherein a specific user account from the plurality of user accounts other than the first group of user accounts has at least read access to the first directory, and as a result of the at least read access to the first directory, the specific user account has traversal rights to any child directory of the first directory, whereby the specific user account can navigate through any child directory, but not see any content items within any directory other than the first directory to which the specific user account has at least read access.

6. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 2 , wherein the organization directory is synchronized such that a path to a content item within the organization directory, relative to the root directory, is consistent on the respective client devices for each of the plurality of user accounts.

7. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 2 , comprising instructions to cause the content management system to:
manage access rights within the organization directory to a team-shared directory mounted within the organization directory and at least one sub-directory within the team-shared directory, wherein the first user account from the plurality of user accounts has greater access permissions to the at least one sub-directory than the team-shared directory that contains it.

8. A method performed by a content management system comprising:
maintaining an organization directory as a root directory, where each of a plurality of user accounts have rights to at least read the organization directory;
maintaining a member directory for each of the plurality of user accounts, each member directory being mounted within the organization directory;
identifying a portion of the organization directory to be visible from a first client device, wherein the first client device is associated with a first user account of the plurality of user accounts and the portion of the organization directory includes a member directory of the first user account; and
synchronizing at least the member directory of the first user account with the first client device.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein a member directory of a second user account is not visible from the first client device.

10. The method of claim 9 , further comprising:
identify another portion of the organization directory to be visible from a second client device, wherein the second client device is associated with the second user account of the plurality of user accounts, wherein the other portion of the organization directory includes the member directory of the second user account and excludes the member directory of the first user account; and
synchronizing at least the member directory of the second user account with the second client device.

11. The method of claim 9 comprising:
managing access rights within the organization directory to a team-shared directory mounted with the organization directory, wherein the team-shared directory is only accessible to a first group of user accounts from the plurality of user accounts, and wherein the team-shared directory is visible, but not accessible, by user accounts other than the first group of user accounts.

12. The method of claim 9 comprising:
managing access rights within the organization directory to a team-shared directory mounted with the organization directory, wherein the team-shared directory is only accessible to a first group of user accounts from the plurality of user accounts, and wherein the team-shared directory includes a plurality of content items including a first directory,
wherein a specific user account from the plurality of user accounts other than the first group of user accounts has at least read access to the first directory, and as a result of the at least read access to the first directory the specific user account has traversal rights to any child directory of the first directory, whereby the specific user account can navigate through any child directory, but not see any content items within any directory other than the first directory to which the specific user account has at least read access.

13. The method of claim 9 , wherein the organization directory is synchronized such that a path to a content item with the organization directory, relative to the root directory, is consistent on the respective client devices for each of the plurality of user accounts.

14. The method of claim 9 comprising:
managing access rights within the organization directory to a team-shared directory mounted within the organization directory and at least one sub-directory within the team-shared directory, wherein the first user account from the plurality of user accounts has greater access permissions to the at least one sub-directory than the team-shared directory that contains it.

15. The method of claim 9 , wherein the portion of the organization directory include on-demand content items that are not synchronized with the first client device associated with the first user account and must be downloaded from the content manageme

Assignees

• Dropbox Inc

Inventors

• Kleinpeter Thomas
• Xu Tony
• Albert Akos
• Bunger Nils
• Jau Sam
• WOODS Conor
• Staley Aaron

Classifications

• G06F16/27 Primary

  Replication, distribution or synchronisation of data between databases or within a distributed database system; Distributed database system architectures therefor · CPC title

• G06F16/11 Primary

  File system administration, e.g. details of archiving or snapshots (error detection or correction of the data by redundancy in operations G06F11/14) · CPC title

• H04L67/01

  Protocols · CPC title

• G06F16/185

  Hierarchical storage management [HSM] systems, e.g. file migration or policies thereof (details of archiving G06F16/11) · CPC title

• H04L9/3213

  using tickets or tokens, e.g. Kerberos (network architectures or network communication protocols for entities authentication using tickets in a packet data network H04L63/0807) · CPC title