Making collaboration more powerful with updates to Box
Since last BoxWorks, we’ve been heavily focused on improving the Box experience, building new products and features to provide a faster, easier way to work on Box.
This started with the new Files experience, where we redesigned our user interface and entire technology stack to optimize for speed and simplicity. On mobile, we created a seamless integration with the new Apple iOS Files app and on desktop, we announced the public beta release of the highly anticipated Box Drive. Giving you instant access to ALL your files in Box, right from your desktop, while taking up very little hard drive space. Box Drive gets everyone in the cloud because it’s simple for teams to learn and use, while enabling businesses to save millions by replacing their legacy network file shares.
Our goal has always been to provide experiences that improve the quality of your work and help you work faster and smarter. And we’re continuing to build on that promise today, with three major updates that we’re incredibly excited about:
A new Files experience from the browser
Over the past year, we spent a lot of time with you, to better understand what you and your teams need to get your best work done. And what we noticed is that as work transitions over time from person to person, it becomes harder to keep track of ongoing projects and progress. So based on your feedback, we’ve updated our Files experience with four new features coming early next year:
An Enhanced Commenting experience. Now you can easily gather feedback and manage deadlines with coworkers while keeping those conversations tied together, and even tied to specific file versions. You can also mark comments as ‘resolved’ so you can quickly see what’s been addressed versus what still needs to be done.
A more powerful preview experience with Visual Versioning. Now you can preview any older file version, and easily see past versions without having to download the file first. No need to search through versions, trying to remember the date of that one edit. Add a version description to major version updates, so you have a quick view into what’s changed.
See who’s currently in a file or who’s recently viewed and edited with Presence. When you have dozens of people collaborating and creating content together, it can be difficult to keep track of who did what and when. Now you can see all those details at a glance — who jumped in for a quick review or who made significant changes — making it simple to keep track of progress in any file.
Shortcuts to help you find and access the files you work with most. When you’re working on a project, you’re often working in the same folder or on the same set of files for a period of time. Now you can drag any file or folder and pin it to the left sidebar to instantly create shortcuts to the content you work with most — and remove or change them around whenever you want.
New enhancements to Box Notes
We built Box Notes so that you can collaborate on ideas in real-time with anyone — like the brainstorms you have with coworkers, the meeting notes you share with partners, or the project plans you’re working on with customers. At its core, Box Notes has always been about making it fast and easy for teams to work together. And we’ve continued to build on that with some new features heading your way in the coming months:
First, we’ve made it easier for you to keep track of modified notes with Inbox. We think of Box Notes as a living view of people and ideas coming together, but sometimes it can be hard to keep track of changes in your notes. Now you can immediately see which notes have recent edits, including notes that have been shared with you. With clear indicators and updated notes pushed to the top, you can quickly catch up on all your notes, in one place.
We’ve also made it easier to see what’s specifically changed in the note itself with Differences. Rather than having to go back and forth between versions or rereading the entire note to figure out what’s different, you can now see all new updates highlighted inline.
Just like with Files, you can also quickly see who’s been active in a note with Presence.Whether it was for just a quick review or to add content to the note…making it simple to keep track of all changes and progress in your notes.
With pre-built Templates, organization and formatting is a breeze. With pre-built templates and the ability to create your own custom templates, you always have the right structure for the type of note you’re creating, like a product spec or a budgeting plan. Either way, you now have a more consistent and repeatable way for getting work done.
New integrations with Team Messaging Apps
The updates above aren’t just limited to our Box applications — it also extends to the other applications you work with. That’s why we have over 1,000 pre-built integrations that let you share, edit, manage, and collaborate with all types of data. This makes it easy to create presentations in Office 365, sign a document using Adobe Sign, and share proposals with customers in Salesforce, all from Box.
But another important element of working on content with teams is the communication that happens around those files, and connecting that content with the conversation in one centralized place.
That’s why over the past year we’ve announced a series of team messaging app integrations to make it easy for teams to work on content from anywhere they choose. This includes new integrations with Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Workplace by FB that we plan to continue to expand into the coming year. We also have upcoming integrations with Google Hangouts Chat, IBM Watson Workspace and Cisco Spark.
So no matter which app you work in, Box will be the place where it all comes together.
And this is only the beginning. Your feedback got us this far — as we continue to refine Box, we’d love to keep hearing from you. Together, we’re going to build more personalized, collaborative, and smarter experiences that will power the way we all work, today and tomorrow.
