Syncing changes from Personal to Shared vaults

chrisfay
chrisfay
Community Member

Hi,

I recently switched to the Family subscription model. Previously my wife and I simply shared the same vault syncing via Dropbox, and updates to logins were reflected across each of our apps appropriately. Now, I see we each have our own 'Personal' vault, and a 'Shared' vault, the latter being where we overlap. All clear and works fine. I've added my wife as a family member, moved my logins into 'Shared', and that's all good.

However, how should I go about propagating changes from my Personal vault to Shared. For example, if I change the Netflix password (which is done in my Personal vault) should I expect the platform to sync that update to the Netflix login in the Shared vault so my wife gets the update? If I manually re-share it via copy it just creates a second Netflix login. Not only is it manual and prone to error, now I end up with duplicates.

I must be going about this wrong. How should I be keeping everything in sync between Personal and Shared?

Thanks,
Chris


1Password Version: 6.3.2
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: OSX 10.11.6
Sync Type: Family Subscription

Comments

  • Hi @chrisfay! Glad to hear you got things set up in your family account. :) I'd be happy to help with the long-term details.

    For example, if I change the Netflix password (which is done in my Personal vault) should I expect the platform to sync that update to the Netflix login in the Shared vault so my wife gets the update?

    I'd just recommend using the Shared vault for everything you want to share with your wife. That will simplify things a lot. She's on the family account and has access to it, so for things like Netflix it'd be best to just put them in your Shared vault where the changes will sync and be shared between both of you.

    I suppose the more specific question here would be "What is the Personal vault for in a family of two?" My parents, for example, share everything between the two of them in a "Parents" vault we have for the family. My sister and I don't see it, but we do have the Amazon and Netflix passwords so we can do the things we love. ;) Those are in the Shared vault that is available for the whole family. Perhaps this kind of setup would work better for you as well. There's no need to have two copies of data.

    What do you think?

  • chrisfay
    chrisfay
    Community Member

    Makes sense. So, in your case, if mom/dad update the Netflix password, are you dependent upon them to re-copy it to the 'Shared' vault manually?

  • chrisfay
    chrisfay
    Community Member

    I suppose I was expecting that each item in 1password was essentially a pointer. You share that pointer with the desired vaults, so that updates made to the e.g. Netflix login reflect across all vaults it's been added to automatically.

    Instead, it appears that I have to remember to manually re-copy a changed item to every other vault it's been added to. To further complicate things, when I do re-copy an item to another vault, it creates a duplicate. Which is why I feel as though I must be going about this wrong.

    Chris

  • @chrisfay Ah, I see what you mean. That isn't quite how sharing vaults works, actually. You don't have to remember to manually copy items over when they change, you just need to make sure those items are in the vault shared with someone. There's no need to have two copies of the item. I'm curious, though, why you're looking for that?

  • chrisfay
    chrisfay
    Community Member

    You don't have to remember to manually copy items over when they change, you just need to make sure those items are in the vault shared with someone. There's no need to have two copies of the item.

    I don't think you're quite understanding the issue here. Yes, items I've added to the 'Shared' vault are available to members I've added to that vault. Updates to any item in that vault propagate to everyone correctly.

    The issue I have is managing shared items between separate vaults. I don't want to expose every login to my wife in the Shared vault. So, I maintain the master list of ALL logins in my Personal vault, and then expose those I want to share with my wife in Shared vault. Now, if I update the Netflix login in Personal, I would expect that change to automatically push to my wife in the Shared vault. That doesn't happen. I have to manually re-copy from Personal to Shared, and it creates a duplicate

    1. Add new Netflix login to Personal (where I manage my logins)
    2. Copy (share) to Shared vault for my wife
    3. Update Netflix login in Personal (does not push change to Shared)
    4. Have to re-copy from Personal --> Shared
    5. Creates two Netflix entries in Shared
    6. Fail

    This is compounded with each new vault, e.g. I also have a kids vault. Now each change to an item in Personal must be manually copied to both Shared and to Kids, which creates duplicates with each change.

    Chris

  • chrisfay
    chrisfay
    Community Member

    Ultimately, I'm looking for automatic sharing between vaults. Since I don't have granular control over the logins a person can see within a specific shared vault (just whether they are a member or not) I have to maintain the full list in another vault and copy stuff around manually. In theory, I have to create a new vault for each subset of logins I want to expose to a group (wife, kids, etc...), and changes in the master list don't get pushed to the other vaults I've setup. Even though I might copy the Netflix login to my kids, it could be updated in my Personal vault, in the Shared vault, or by the kids in the Kids vault, and I don't see a way these get reconciled by the platform.

    The alternative it would seem is to just dump every login into Shared and add everyone to that vault. But then EVERYONE gets access to EVERYTHING, which is precisely what I'm trying to avoid (well that and having to manually copy around changes).

  • jshutter
    jshutter
    Community Member

    I have to admit that this is the same expectation I had for the ability to 'share' logins. Rather than have to switch to and maintain multiple vaults, it would be much easier to maintain my personal vault and any changes I make to logins in that vault propagate to vaults where I've shared them. Mentally keeping track of where specific logins are might be difficult.

    It sounds like AgileBits is saying that this is not the way they've built the sharing functions and that if you are sharing logins then you have duplicate data in your database. I guess if you simply go to 'all vaults' then you can update a login and it will be updated in whatever vault it is in. I guess that makes sense.

    It might be good for AgileBits to suggest when it makes sense to share a login rather than just move it? If sharing logins across vaults results in outdated logins due to non-syncing of changes, what is the point of sharing?

    Curious about what ya'll think.

    Jay

  • Hi @chrisfay! First off, I want to apologize on behalf of the forum team and myself. We're not sure why this thread didn't get a response, but we're going to look into it. I'm so sorry for leaving you hanging this long :(

    I don't want to expose every login to my wife in the Shared vault.

    Oh okay, that makes more sense now. :) I think there's an easier way to do it than you mentioned in your comment. I'd recommend just moving the items you want to share in and out of the Shared vault when you want to share them. If you decide you don't want to share an item with her, just move it back to your Personal vault. Then you both have access to it, and any changes made to it will sync between you both using the Shared vault.

    I can see how having items synced between vaults would help here, but that's not something we're looking to add to 1Password Families right now. We are looking into individual item sharing, which would allow you to send an item to someone and, potentially, sync any changes between both of you. We've not worked out all the details for it yet, so please keep an eye out for updates.

    Hope that helps for now, and if you have any other questions or feedback just let us know.

  • @jshutter Thanks for posting in this thread! It bumped it to the top and showed that we didn't respond before, so I really appreciate that. :+1:

    In regards to your question, I think my mention of item sharing in my last comment addresses this. In general, you're right — we haven't built sharing this way. We decided to use vaults because it gives you a chance to share a collection of items with your family easily. It's not perfect, so we're still working on making it better and listening to what folks have to say.

    Thanks for letting us know what's valuable to you. :) I'll be sure to pass that along to the team. For now, feel free to create multiple vaults for sharing specific items with your family. You can have unlimited ones, so you're welcome to use them until we add something better for your setup.

    ref: B5-1162

  • kerjsmit
    kerjsmit
    Community Member

    I, too, assumed syncing a shared item across relevant vaults to be a standard feature when I moved over to 1Password. When I update a password on a shared login and forget to reshare the item to the relevant vault, I find out only later when that person tells me the login isn't working anymore. This is cumbersome and prone to lots of error. I wonder how many logins in a shared vault don't work anymore because I forgot to reshare them with the updated credentials? Many, no doubt. I guess I could manually reshare everything periodically (again, and then later again, and then later again), but what an inefficient, antiquated, unnecessary method.

  • @kerjsmit I'm sorry for the confusion. 1Password Families and 1Password Teams have sharing with vaults, so to share items, you can put them in a vault and give someone access to that vault.

    How to create family and team vaults and share items

    You can use a vault for just one item if you'd like. Most of the time, people put a collection of items they would like to share with someone into a vault, then give that person access to that vault so they can use the passwords and items in it. :) All changes to a shared vault are synced with both members because it's a shared vault. If the vault is not shared, like your Personal vault, then those items are only available to you. Hope that helps clear things up.

This discussion has been closed.