Do you remember the days when you had to open your desktop or laptop just to be able to send or view files that needed your attention at that moment? Or if you’re out of the office, good luck getting access to them. But with mobile devices getting easier to connect to your workflow, cloud storage letting you access files wherever you are, and people getting more impatient when you can’t get back to them, those days are long gone. Dropbox is one of the most popular tools (or also, culprit) that are available for the half of the workers in the US who are suited to working outside the office. The latest update to the app makes it even easier for you and your teammates to work together even while you’re on your commute or when you want to work in a different location.
You now get a file activity feature on your mobile device for file previews so you are up to date with the changes that you or your teammates have made to your work. You don’t have to open a file to see all of the activity around it. Just tap on it and tap on the activity lightning icon and you’ll see edits, shares, and if you’re using Dropbox Professional or Business Advanced, you’ll also see the viewer history. The teamwork version of the app also now lets you comment on your file preview and also see the comments that your teammates have made. Sharing buttons are also now more accessible all throughout the app so you don’t have to just copy-paste links or switch to an app and attach them.
If you’ve uploaded tons of files on Dropbox, finding what you need at the moment can be something of a challenge (especially if you can’t remember the file name). One of the solutions that they’re bringing is to have a new centralized home screen with easy access to your most recent work, starred files, etc. You can also switch to gallery view from list view if what you’re looking for are photos or videos. Android users can also expect better file organizing soon with a drag and drop feature now available for iOS (but not yet on Android, boo!). But when it does arrive, it should be pretty cool to be able to organize your files and folders just by dragging and dropping things.
Previous Dropbox updates have also made it much easier for people to work on their mobile devices. If you’re a premium user, you can already have mobile offline folders so you can continue working even if you lose connection. You can tag an entire folder so all the files there will be available for you offline. They have also made it easier for people to go paperless by adding the Document Scanner so you can digitize your receipts, papers, whiteboard notes, etc. You can even put them together as a PDF file and if you’re on Dropbox Business, you can even search the words within your scanned documents.
Dropbox has also come up with more products to offer consumers like the aforementioned Dropbox Professional which should appeal to creatives and freelancers. It gives you 1TB of storage and a feature called Dropbox Showcase so you can present your work to potential or existing clients. Paper is another product which is meant for collaboration on documents and projects and they’re constantly update it with tools and features to help you integrate it to the rest of your workflow, other apps and services, etc. There are still a lot of features that users want, especially if you look into the feature request thread in the forums, so we can expect even more updates over the next few months, especially in light of stiff competition from other services like OneDrive, Google Drive, etc.
SOURCE: Dropbox
