What Dropbox Automator Do?

Use Dropbox Automator to Easily Process Synced Files

This app turns Dropbox into a cloud storage hub for batch photo processing, document editing and uploading data to other cloud services.

By design, Dropbox automates file management. It uploads our data to the cloud and send its right back down to all of our connected devices, dancing around the need for flash drives and USB syncing when it comes to small transfers. A one-man startup called Dropbox Automator adds a whole slew of functionality on top of that basic syncing using Dropbox's open API. It can resize photos, convert documents to PDFs, and upload data to Facebook, Twitter or Google Docs automatically.


After connecting the app to your Dropbox account, you choose an action. Then Dropbox Automator works its magic.

Dropbox Automator may be overwhelmed with new users because the automation process is currently taking several minutes.

Dropbox Automator runs on a system called Wappwolf that specializes in automating everyday computing tasks like rotating and resizing pictures. Automator adds a simple list of actions and will set up a folder to perform the same task over and over every time it receives a new file. Since the app and its list of features is brand new, some of the options are barebones or unexplained. For example, there's no information describing "Stamp a map on the image," but the more straightforward options like "Upload to Google Docs" make Dropbox an automated hub for handling files.
The Automator takes a few seconds to check a Dropbox folder for new files, then takes more time to process those files. It supports multiple actions per folder, so you could potentially use the same folder to downscale photographs, convert documents to PDFs and upload everything to an FTP server. Processed files will be split into two subfolders that the service automatically creates called "processed" and "results."

Dropbox Automator may currently be overwhelmed with new users--it launched at the very end of December--because the automation process is currently taking several minutes. It's definitely a service to keep your eye on, though; here's a full list of the actions Dropbox Automator can perform.

Documents

• Convert to PDF
• Summarize
• Translate
• PDF to TXT
• Upload to Google Docs
• Upload to Slideshare
• Sign PDF (electronic signature)

Pictures

• Upload to Facebook
• Upload to Flickr
• Downscale
• Rotate image
• Write text on image
• Photo effect
• Stamp a logo on the image
• Stamp a map on the image
• Stamp a "dislike" on the image

Any file

• e-mail
• Zip file
• Save it to another Dropbox-folder
• Rename
• Upload to FTP-Server
• Encrypt file
• Decrypt file

Send info

• Tweet
• Set Facebook status