Prevention of loss of unsynchronized content

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11386116-B2
Application number	US-201715857779-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 29, 2017
Priority date	Dec 28, 2017
Publication date	Jul 12, 2022
Grant date	Jul 12, 2022

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 computing device to:
detect an edit to a content item contained in a shared folder on a client device to which a user account of a content management system is logged in, wherein the edited content item is unsynchronized;
attempt to synchronize the edit to the content item to the content management system;
receive one or more synchronization events to reflect a current state at the content management system, wherein in the current state, the shared folder is no longer accessible to the user account and one of the synchronization events unmounts the shared folder; and
in response to the synchronization event for unmounting the shared folder, move the unsynchronized content item to a user account folder on the client device, where the user account folder is not the shared folder and is associated with the user account and the content management system.

2. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1 , comprising instructions to cause the computing device to:
determine that the shared folder is no longer accessible to the user account because the shared folder has been deleted at the content management system.

3. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the computing device determines that the shared folder is no longer accessible by executing instructions to cause the computing device to:
receive, in response to the attempt to synchronize, a notification from the content management system regarding unsynchronized revisions; and
synchronize server revisions, one of the revisions is to unmount the shared folder, and thereby bring the client device into a synchronized state with the content management system.

4. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 2 , comprising instructions to cause the computing device to:
in response to determining that the shared folder has been deleted at the content management system, move the shared folder to the user account folder at the client device.

5. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 4 , comprising instructions to cause the computing device to:
concurrent with the move of the shared folder to the user account folder, inform the content management system that shared folder has been unmounted without disclosing the move.

6. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 3 , comprising instructions to cause the computing device to:
in association with processing the revision to unmount the shared folder, process deletion events pertaining to one or more known content items contained within the shared folder based on the content management system notifying that each of the one or more known content items are to be deleted.

7. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 5 , comprising instructions to cause the computing device to:
in association with processing the unmounting of the shared folder, process deletion events pertaining to one or more known content items contained within the shared folder based on the content management system notifying that each of the one or more known content items are to be deleted, wherein one or more of the known content items are deleted from the user account folder.

8. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 5 , wherein the shared folder is a confidential folder shared with a limited set of user accounts of a larger set of user accounts sharing an organization directory that the user account is a member of.

9. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 7 , comprising instructions to cause the computing device to:
synchronize the edit to the content item now stored in the user account folder to the content management system.

10. A method comprising:
detecting an edit to a content item contained in a shared folder on a client device to which a user account of a content management system is logged in, wherein the edited content item is unsynchronized;
attempting to synchronize the edit to the content item to the content management system;
receiving one or more synchronization events to reflect a current state at the content management system, wherein in the current state, the shared folder is no longer accessible to the user account and one of the synchronization events unmounts the shared folder; and
in response to the synchronization event for unmounting the shared folder, moving the content item to a user account folder on the client device, where the user account folder is not the shared folder and is associated with the user account and the content management system.

11. The method of claim 10 , comprising:
determining that the shared folder is no longer accessible to the user account because the shared folder has been deleted at the content management system.

12. The method of claim 10 , comprising:
in response to determining that the shared folder has been deleted, moving the shared folder to the user account folder.

13. The method of claim 12 , comprising:
concurrent with moving the shared folder to the user account folder, informing the content management system that shared folder has been unmounted.

14. The method of claim 13 , comprising:
in association with processing the unmounting of th shared folder, processing deletion events pertaining to the known content items contained within the shared folder based on the content management system notifying that each of the one or more known content items are to be deleted.

15. The method of claim 14 , comprising:
synchronizing the edit to the content item now stored in the user account folder to the content management system.

16. A content management system comprising:
one or more processors; and
at least one memory having instructions stored thereon, that when executed the instructions are effective to cause the one or more processors to:
detect an edit to a content item contained in a shared folder on a client device to which a user account of a content management system is logged in, wherein the edited content item is unsynchronized;
attempt to synchronize the edit to the content item to the content management system;
receive one or more synchronization events to reflect a current state at the content management system, wherein in the current state, the shared folder is no longer accessible to the user account and one of the synchronization events unmounts the shared folder; and
in response to the synchronization event for unmounting the shared folder, move the content item to a user account folder on the client device, where the user account folder is not the shared folder and is associated with the user account and the content management system.

17. The content management system of claim 16 , comprising instructions to cause the one or more processors to:
determine that the shared folder is no longer accessible to the account because the shared folder has been deleted at the content management system.

18. The content management system of claim 17 , comprising instructions to cause the one or more processors to:
in response to determining that the shared folder has been deleted at the content management system, move the shared folder to the user account folder at the client device.

19. The content management system of claim 18 , comprising instructions to cause the one or more processors to:
concurrent with the move of the shared folder to the user account folder, inform the content management system that shared f

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

• H04L63/101

  Access control lists [ACL] · CPC title

• G06F16/156

  Query results presentation · CPC title

• G06F16/178 Primary

  Techniques for file synchronisation in file systems · CPC title