Dropbox relaunches as an enterprise collaboration workspace & portal

Dropbox is evolving from a file storage system to an enterprise software portal and collaboration workspace. Today the company launches a new version of Dropbox that lets you launch apps with shortcuts for Slack and G Suite, search across all your files inside your other enterprise tools, and communicate and comment on your team’s work. Dropbox is also becoming a task manager, with the ability to add notes and tag co-workers in to-do lists attached to files. The new Dropbox launches today for all of its 13 million business users across 400,000 teams.

Dropbox is launching a new desktop app for all users so it wont have to live inside your Mac or Windows file system. When you click a file, you can see a preview, activity on that file from co-workers, and presence data about who has viewed it, who is currently, and who has access. The new desktop app will be available as an opt-in early access program before becoming the default.

The launch includes deep integrations with Slack so you can comment on files from within Dropbox, and Zoom so you can video chat without leaving the workspace. Web and enterprise app shortcuts relieve you from keeping all your other tools constantly open in other tabs. Dropbox’s revamped search tool lets you crawl across both your computer’s file system and all your cloud storage across other productivity apps.

CEO Drew Houston described how people spend 60% of our office time on work about work like organization and communication instead of actually working — a marketing angle frequently used by task management startup Asana that Dropbox is now competiting with more directly. He pointed out that it’s easier to find info from the public than our own company’s knowledge that’s scattered across our computers and the cloud. The “Finder” on our computers hasn’t evolved to embrace a post-download era. Now Dropbox wants to be both your file tree, your finder, and your desktop for the cloud.