Dropbox Spaces and Dropbox Paper: Not Totally Integrated, Yet

Things That Are in the Works and Things That Should Be

The new Dropbox Spaces is — in my estimation — a revolutionary breakthrough in work management. As I recently wrote, the fundamental step forward is this:

taking the skeletal notions of a shared folder and fleshing it out into a shared space, enriched by an overview description at the top of the folder and other capabilities.

However, Spaces and Paper have a way to go to work together well. So let me start out by apologizing for a wonkish post that delves into details that many may not wish to get under their fingernails. And some of these recommendations may be resolved in just the next few weeks, at which point I will update this post. Forgive me.

Paper Features Reused In Spaces, But Not All

Many of Dropbox Spaces’ description capabilities are derived from similar features in Dropbox Paper, the company’s cloud document tool. This includes the styling of text, links, ‘@’-mentions, and tasks in the Spaces description area, as shown below:

That’s good as far as it goes, but it falls short in practice.