Collaborate on Microsoft Office documents with Dropbox’s Badge

By Jon Martindale March 17, 2015

Dropbox badge commenting — Dropbox

In a world where everyone stores something in the cloud, differentiating yourself as a file locker service is no mean feat. That’s why part of Dropbox’s plan has always been to go after enterprise users as well and it’s looking to continue that expansion, by making its Badge feature available to every one of them.

Dropbox for Business’ Badge has been in early access since December, where it’s been tested by some 13,000 customers – quite a beta test. It allows users to collaborate within Microsoft Office documents, as well as see who’s editing the file at any one time, look for more recent versions of it and quickly generate links to share the document with others.

Related: Dropbox finally launches app for Windows phones and tablets

Although Badge was pretty well received by those that trialled it, one overarching issue that kept cropping up was that discussing the documents wasn’t easy. It required the use of third party software and depending on the departments involved, sending messages back and forth was quite long winded.

With that in mind, Dropbox for Business is also introducing a new commenting system to early access, which allows anyone that has permission to view the document, to also read and write feedback directly to it. This appears alongside the file in question, in a manner similar to many apps or social networks, with the ability to tag other users with an @ mention, favorite certain comments and add a timestamp for everything, so you know who has said what and when.

The new badge and comment features are available through the Dropbox for Business website and its iOS app. While not quite yet ready for Android, Dropbox promises that it won’t be long.

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