The cloud storage company Dropbox has introduced a new AI-powered universal search tool called Dash. It offers a single search bar that can be used to find files stored across different connected services like Google Workspace, Slack, Asana, Trello, Outlook, Salesforce, Airtable, JIRA, etc.
This comes a couple of months after the company announced that it will lay off 16% of its workforce as it pivots towards AI projects.
Dropbox says that the tool is designed to save valuable time that users spend every day while switching between apps to share content, join a meeting, or find a document their teammate shared a few days back. According to one study, around 69% of workers waste up to an hour every day navigating between apps and around 68% of workers toggle between apps up to 10 times per hour.
Dash came to fruition after Dropbox acquired a company called Command+E, whose app offered a single shortcut to launch apps, message contacts, and find documents locally as well on the cloud.
Dropbox CEO Drew Houston said, "We all need a search box for our private information, just like Google gave us a search box for public information. And it needs to just work, not only with your Dropbox files but with everything."
You can search for files even by typing a part of its file name. However, a tedious job is required during the setup where you need to manually connect all the apps and services.
In addition to a desktop app, there is a Dash browser extension that offers additional features such as Stacks which saves and organizes important URLs and files into smart collections. It also has a single dashboard that offers access to the universal search tool, view saved stacks, start meetings, and get shortcuts to recent work.
Dropbox Dash is currently in beta and you need to join a waitlist to get your hands on it. The company also said that future updates to Dash will introduce the ability to answer questions and show relevant content. For instance, you can ask when the next company holiday is and the universal search tool will answer that by going through your organization's internal links.
Apart from that, the company has launched another tool called Dropbox AI that can summarize large documents. You can also pull specific information from lengthy documents by typing questions in natural language.
It works for individual files as of now but will be expanded to folders and the entire Dropbox account in the future. Dropbox AI is available to all Pro customers in the US and to select Dropbox Teams for testing.
