Dropbox Business Review: Intelligent Working

Could Dropbox make you more productive?

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Published: March 24, 2020

Rebekah Carter - Writer

Rebekah Carter

Leading cloud storage solution, Dropbox, has helped individuals and companies around the world with safely storing and sharing content. Now, the company wants to start assisting with your collaborative experiences too. As part of the Dropbox Work in Progress conference, the company revealed its vision for the new “Smart Workspace”, a solution that simplifies the way that digital employees get work done.

Created for the new workplace, where employees are constantly interacting with intelligent phones, speakers, and other systems, Dropbox believes that its time to cut down on the “mental cost” of managing all the apps you use each day. According to Dropbox, users switch between apps every six minutes at work. Additionally, over a quarter of business leaders say that they’re spending 29% of their tasks on tasks that aren’t adding value to the business. We know that feeling.

As switching between apps continues to interrupt our focus, teams, and information end up scattered and distracted. Fortunately, Dropbox thinks it has the solution.

The Dropbox Smart Workspace is a brand new offering, unlike anything that we’ve seen on the market before. Here’s how we felt testing it out.

Dropbox Smart Workspace Review: Features

The first thing we noticed about the Dropbox Smart Workspace is how unique it is at pulling information together. This convenient digital environment brings all of the content for a team together with the tools that they prefer using.

The system connects all the content and tools used for work, so everything is easy to access. There’s no switching between platforms, content types, and apps because the smart workspace ensures that you can access everything in one place.

Everything we needed from various projects and environments was linked together in the same place, meaning we spent less time searching, and more time getting stuff done.

Dropbox’s smart workplace also uses machine intelligence to cut through the clutter, bringing to the surface the information that matters most. This suggests which content you’re going to need for a meeting, or what might be relevant to the document you’re editing. The system can even recognise images for you, so you don’t have to remember file names.

Features include:

  • Image search: This uses machine intelligent to let users find image files easily
  • File previews: Allowing users to see files like AutoCAD in high-fidelity with Dropbox
  • Paper integration: Create, store, and access paper documents within Dropbox
  • Search across overviews: For instant access to information
  • Dropbox binder (coming soon): A new way to document projects and processes with a single point of truth
  • File and folder suggestions: That help you find the content you need
  • Calendar integrations: That surface relevant and timely information
  • Team highlights: That show the most relevant activity highlights
  • People pages (coming soon): That allow people to stay up to date with information about team members
  • HelloSign extension: For easy ways to sign documents
  • Recent activity view: That shows the latest activity at a glance
  • Dropbox transfer (coming soon): Securely send large files up to 100GB
  • Trello integration: Add Dropbox content to a Trello card
  • Instant Zoom meetings feature: Start Zoom meetings from Dropbox
  • Slack channel mapping
  • Enterprise console: For wide visibility for IT
  • Quick Actions: For easy actions for admins

Dropbox has also announced strategic partnerships with BetterCloud that will help teams to manage and govern Dropbox at work. Additionally, Dropbox will soon be introducing new data governance features to let administrators retain file versions for up to 10 years.

Dropbox Smart Workspace Review: Benefits

The Smart Workspace is an environment brings all of the aspects of a team’s content together with he tools and systems that they love. Imagine logging onto your work computer and only having to open one application. That’s the kind of convenience we’re talking about here.

The solution includes access to Dropbox Spaces, which allows companies to turn shared folders into collaborative workspaces. Everything stays synced in your folders too, so you know you’ve always got the latest data.

The Dropbox solution will transform your folders into collaborative environments and use machine learning to ensure that your team members can stay focused on their most important work. Our favourite bits about the Smart Workspace from Dropbox include:

  • Connections to the tools you use every day: Tools like Slack channel mapping, instant Zoom meetings and Trello integrations mean that you can access all of the tools that you need in one convenient place, without having to jump between tabs
  • Simplified team management: An advanced enterprise console gives administrators high-level control and visibility over the collaborative landscape. Quick actions also give admins shortcuts to help them address activities quickly, like restoring items
  • Improved safeguarding of company data: Businesses can monitor activity, safeguard company data, and control usage with advanced security features and support for things like SOC 2 and GDPR
  • Improved workplace environment: With file and folder suggestions, team highlights, and calendar integrations, employees can access more of the information that they need when they need it most
  • Easy to find content: Image search, file previews, and the Dropbox binder will all ensure that your team members can track down the information and context required for projects. Paper integration in the Dropbox system means that you can even store paper documents within your Dropbox solution

Dropbox Smart Workspace Review: Verdict

The Dropbox Smart Workspace provides one of the most compelling connected experiences that we’ve seen online. Since this tool was quite unique for us, it was difficult to compare the Dropbox service to anything else we’ve seen before. Essentially, it’s the difference between having everything you need to stay productive in one environment or having to spend ages jumping between tabs and pages on your computer. Choosing the Dropbox option is pretty much a no-brainer in our opinion.

 

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