Product Feature 01: Dropzone Data Request - Request Data from Customers or External Partners

The Problem: Requesting external data ... again

Monday rolls around again and you sit preparing yourself to send emails to all your suppliers reminding them to send their weekly Point of Sales data to you. The data senders could be sourcing their data from flat files (Excels or csv's) or even from other apps like Shopify. In general, you're doing something like this:

1. Download the Excel/csv file from email that was sent over
2. Transform the data manually to fit your needs
3. Load it to a data warehouse, a BI tool, or something else
4. Rinse and repeat every month or week or (let's hope not) day

You can solve the problem of having to clean the same data repeatedly using Dropbase Pipelines but how can you automate data gathering from external sources?

The Solution: Dropzone

Introducing Dropzone. Dropzone allows you to request data from external users who can send it to a pipeline you've made previously in Dropbase. This pipeline automatically applies pre-made cleaning steps, and loads the data to your database. External users can send data to you without accessing your database, or paying for another account. As an added benefit, the data won't be lying in your email inbox.

The data senders have a wide variety of options for connecting their data: flat files or online apps like Shopify. Your data will be stored in Dropbase awaiting your one-click approval to run the pipeline.

How easy is requesting data with Dropzone?

1. Import your data, add some cleaning steps once, and don't worry about cleaning the same data twice
2. Click on the Create New Pipeline button under the Pipelines tab, enter the recipient's email under the Dropzone tab, and click Create Dropzone.
3. Once they send the data, click Approve.

Convinced already? Click here to sign up.

Check out the video below that gives an overview of Dropzone.

A Dropzone deep dive 🤿:

Let's see the entire Dropzone request workflow.

Here's what's happening in the above video:

The data receiver first sends a Dropzone request to the data sender that they get in their email.

If the data sender doesn't already have a Dropbase account, then they can make one for free. The data sender doesn't have to pay anything to upload data, or be a part of your Dropbase Team.

The data sender drops the file in at the 00:14 mark and they're done!

Meanwhile, we switch to the data receiver's view. They navigate to the pipeline that they started the Dropzone request from and click Approve. At this point, the data goes through any pre-made cleaning steps and is loaded to the database.

Note that in the above case, the data sender dragged and dropped a file in. They could've connected their data source directly to Dropbase without having to share credentials with anyone. Our growing list of accepted data connectors can be found in our documentation here.

Dropzone, in conclusion

Dropzone solves the issue of getting, cleaning, and uploading data from external sources regularly. You can use Dropzone if your old email workflow was struggling to handle files that were getting close to current email attachment limits. It adds a lot of convenience to the data receiver since all the steps we covered above only have to be done once. All subsequent data requests only require you to click Approve—saving you time and energy.

If you'd like to try out Dropzone or any of our other features, sign up for a trial here.

Go next to → Product Feature 02: Database Manager