Dropbox has announced some new features to help teams in businesses collaborate better, include a new viewer info feature and Smart Sync for business customers. The company is also bringing Dropbox Paper, a tool that is like a stripped down version of Google Docs, out of beta and making it available worldwide. Here’s what you need to know.
No longer content with being just a cloud storage provider, Dropbox has gradually been fleshing out its business offerings for those who work in teams. Now the company has added more collaboration and productivity features to its cloud service:
Viewer info
Pictured above, the feature lets you easily see who in your team has viewed your shared files and when. This feature will be gradually rolled out to all users and Dropbox Business teams can get it through an early access program.
Smart Sync
Only available to Dropbox Business subscribers. This feature lets you access all your Dropbox files and folders from your desktop, regardless of whether they’re on your hard drive or in the cloud. The latter is important since this means you can access a file stored in Dropbox without having to store it locally, which means you save storage space on your PC. It goes without saying that you’ll need to be connected to the internet to use this feature.
Dropbox Paper
It’s been in beta since 2015. Now this service lets teams create documents and work on them together remotely. You can create projects folders in Paper and assign due dates to them when you make task lists.
While it shares similarities with Google’s own productivity suite which includes Docs, because the document editing features are so stripped down it’s unlikely to be a viable replacement. Instead, Dropbox is hoping Paper will complement full blown productivity suites offered by Microsoft and Google.
There is a standalone app for Paper. For Android, the app is available globally through the Play Store. The iOS app will be coming soon.
An early preview of Paper will be rolled out to select teams from today. Dropbox is looking to add more features to Paper in the near future.
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