Dropbox is a cool and relatively new online service that’s rapidly increasing in popularity every day. It allows users to effortlessly host their files in the cloud for either personal/business use or to share with others, and it’s making quite an impact in the technology world in a big way. Most people use Dropbox for personal use, but it’s also quickly becoming a versatile tool in the business world. These are five ways that businesses can use Dropbox for increased productivity.
1. Backup Practically Anything
Not only does Dropbox serve a solid purpose for storing vital files in the cloud, but it can be used to backup practically anything so that it can be on hand anywhere. Any business could use Dropbox to back up company files, client details, employee records, and much more by sectioning off a separate folder for just that. You can even back up your company website with a few clicks so that its easily accessible from anywhere in the event of a problem. How’s that for accessibility?
2. Share Folders with Coworkers
With Dropbox’s “shared folders” feature, you can easily use it to strengthen projects and bring employees closer together for more streamlined productivity. Here’s some website information that will help your coworkers can access the internet. If you have a few employees working together on a project that requires constant communication and file-swapping, set up a shared folder between the project members so that they can all easily and privately access their files. Confidential files can also be shared between one employee and another in this sense.
3. Use Public Folders for Clients/Guests
Even if you want to use Dropbox in the business sense but the other party doesn’t have an account, you can share links from your Public folder that make it incredibly simple for someone without an account to download. Let’s say you’re working with a client that you want to share files with while on the go. Simply drop the files into your Public folder and generate a link for them to use so that they can easily download or view them. It’s that easy.
4. Use Dropbox as Your New “My Documents” Folder
If you use multiple work computers that you continually share files between, it might be a hassle to continually have to sift through files that aren’t synced between them all. This can be a thing of the past by making your Dropbox folder your default “My Documents” folder. Simply change the location of your My Documents folder in your Windows OS to your Dropbox location, and viola! You no longer have to worry about keeping your files synced up or transferred.
5. Recover Files Easily
Lastly, Dropbox allows the ease of recovering files that may have been damaged, corrupted, or deleted over the period of 30 days. Typically, in business computing, files come and go just like cars on the interstate, so this is quite a feature that you’d want around in the event of a problem with your company files.
Overall, Dropbox is a solid, cloud-based solution to keeping making life in the office a little bit more simple. If you find you or your employees constantly having to swap out USB drives or slowly transfer files over a slow network, it may be time to grab a copy of Dropbox and see what it can do for your business.
