RentHQ Software Blog

New Feature - Dropbox Integration

Posted on January 23, 2015
RentHQ now has a new feature which links your RentHQ account to your own Dropbox account. Dropbox is an online file storage system.  It enables you to get a very large amount of disk space online for free, and even more for low costs.  You can visit Dropbox.com to set up your own Dropbox account if you dont already have one. The way this RentHQ integration works is any time you add an attachment, it is automatically uploaded to your own Dropbox account.  Dropbox then syncs it back down to your computer again as per normal Dropbox operations, so you always have a copy of those files.  You can add, open or delete files through RentHQ just the same as before. With Dropbox enabled, database backups are a lot easier with only a single button click, and are also automatically added to your Dropbox account. To enable Dropbox, go to Functions/Setup/options and then to the new Dropbox tab.  First you need to enable Dropbox by giving RentHQ permission to access your Dropbox account.  This gives RentHQ access to a new Dropbox folder called RentHQ Files.  RentHQ cant access anything outside of that new folder.  RentHQ then uploads all existing attachment files to Dropbox (we also keep a temporary copy on our server) and then all new attachments go to Dropbox after that. There are just a few things to be aware of.
  • You can not change Dropbox accounts later, so you might want to consider creating one specifically for the business rather than a personal one, especially for businesses which might have staff changes later.
  • You should not try to add/delete files directly through the RentHQ Files folder in Dropbox, as RentHQ will not be aware of those changes and will go out of sync.