Dropbox is rolling out an update to Dropbox Dash, its AI-powered search and knowledge management tool. The enhanced version now supports advanced search across multimedia files and can also generate content to help move work forward. It also includes deeper integrations with third-party productivity apps.
“Knowledge workers waste more than a month a year just looking for information and switching between apps,” Drew Houston, Dropbox’s chief executive, says in a statement. “With the new Dash, we’re not just helping you find your content faster—we’re helping you put it to work.”
Launched in 2023, Dropbox Dash functions as a search tool to help organize files and folders scattered across multiple tabs and apps. Last October, it was formally extended to the enterprise, helping teams “search, organize, share, and protect content from across their connected apps.” The goal is to support knowledge workers who spend their days working across multiple SaaS applications like Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Airtable, Asana, Basecamp, Box, Confluence, Intercom, Crunchbase, Mixpanel, Okta, Zendesk, Slack, and Zoom.
“We built Dash for Business to help get rid of that cognitive load, get rid of that context switching, and make it easier to do the actual work that we’re here to do that’s the most engaging, creative, and try to take away some of that busy work and some of that context switching and lost time to free up more time for the stuff that matters,” Morgan Brown, Dropbox’s vice president of product and growth, tells me.
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No Files Left Unfound
Previously limited to document search, Dropbox Dash now supports all file types. With this update, users can find images, videos, and audio files alongside traditional documents in their search results.
“Dropbox has a deep legacy in media and creative, in imagery, videos, and audio, and so really bringing that to life in Dash where work isn’t just done in documents. It’s done across all sorts of different media these days. We want Dash to be able to help you find that instantly across your connected sources,” Brown explains.
Dropbox claims Dash is also capable of finding information hidden inside media, making it easier for users to find the assets they want without needing to remember specific search queries. According to the company, typing a prompt like “Spring campaign we shot in New York” will surface the files required.
“This is a very significant step forward for Dash. These are really meaningful new capabilities,” Brown attests. “Going from document search to media retrieval is a big step forward, and being able to do it across your connected apps is really kind of a leading capability.”
Discovering the People Behind the Work
Besides discovering files, Dropbox Dash can now identify collaborators and experts. If there comes a time when you’re looking for a person who worked on a particular campaign or product, wrote the brand messaging at a company, or signed up a large customer account, Dash will be able to find them. It could be a helpful feature when searching for subject matter experts.
From Find to Create
Another addition to Dash is an AI-powered writing feature that allows users to generate content based on information retrieved through search. For example, if asked to list the key takeaways from last month’s customer research, Dash would produce a detailed summary document after analyzing reports, meeting notes, Slack conversations, and other connected sources. It can also analyze marketing plans, past advertising efforts, and brand guideline documents to create a tailored proposal for a customer.
Brown contends tasks like these would typically take hours to do manually. With this new feature, Dropbox Dash aims to answer the question, “How do we turn all the collective intelligence you have across your cloud [and] organization into a way to generate work and move it forward?”
A New Way to Hide Sensitive Info
Dropbox shares that Dash comes with security controls, including one powered by the company’s Nira acquisition. Brown reveals Dropbox incorporated the cloud document security startup’s technology into its Protect and Control product. What it does is enable IT administrators to view all the files flowing into Dash from all connected sources, while also monitoring who has access to the content.
“If there’s a bunch of documents, and you search in Protect and Control for the word ‘confidential,’ and you see that those documents all have public to the web link sharing, usually how that is resolved today is a panicked call from a CEO to an IT admin at two in the morning to go into someone’s drive and change them,” he explains. Dropbox’s solution allows administrators to scan and remediate the situation quickly.
However, for today’s release, the company is enhancing Protect and Control with a new capability called Exclusions. With it, IT administrators can designate specific drives they don’t want to be touched by Dash. This reduces the chances of any accidental disclosure of financial data, HR documents, or other confidential information.
Oh, and Dropbox Dash is now GDPR-compliant.
“Work happens across borders,” Brown points out.
Dash’s Place in a Crowded Market
Dropbox’s search feature isn’t the only game in town. It’s competing against the likes of Atlassian’s Rovo, Dashworks, Glean, Moveworks, and Qatalog. That being said, Brown says Dropbox is targeting different use cases. “We’re really focused on how do we solve for key use cases around sales, marketing, [and] creative media, to really unlock those productivity gains versus a more general chatbot.”
He pushes back on the idea that Dropbox is competing with those companies. Instead, he suggests Dash’s biggest competitor is “the legacy way of working.”
“We’ve been working the same way since basically the SaaS explosion of 2008-2010 where, for the last 15 years, we’ve been working with the same cloud tools, the same SaaS tools,” Brown elaborates. “Helping people understand there’s now a better way to do this, that it’s not just managing 100 tabs in your browser or trying to remember which SaaS tool you’re in, but there actually is a new way to access it, is really kind of the ultimate competition.”
“Dropbox has a deep legacy among creatives, marketing, [and] small businesses. Dropbox wasn’t the first cloud provider either, but really, that focus on [user experience]…just works. That’s really what we’re trying to do with Dash here, and the ethos that we’re continuing. We think that we’re seeing some early resonance with it, and so we think that’s the path. [We] try not to get too caught up with the shiny object syndrome and really focus on work that matters for these companies,” he emphasizes.
When asked about Dash’s user numbers, Brown declined to share specifics, noting that as a publicly traded company, Dropbox doesn’t break out data for individual product lines.
All of these features for Dash are rolling out to customers starting today.
Featured Image: credit: Dropbox
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