Introducing Dropbox Dash for Business — AI-powered Universal Search That Finds Anything and Protects Everything at Work

October 15, 2024 at 09:00 AM EDT

Dash for Business makes it easy for teams to find, organize, share, and secure company information by combining universal search, organization and sharing capabilities, and in-depth content access control for businesses of all sizes

Today, Dropbox, Inc. (NASDAQ: DBX) announced Dropbox Dash for Business—the latest iteration of its AI-powered universal search product—which combines universal search, organization and sharing capabilities, and advanced content access control. Dash solves one of the biggest problems facing companies: teams often struggle to find the content they need at work. With Dash, teams can easily find, organize, share, and secure company information to save time and focus on the work that matters most.

Modern work is more distributed and virtual than ever, with information scattered and siloed across a sea of browser tabs, cloud apps, and AI tools. As a result, knowledge workers spend too much time painstakingly searching for content across email, team drives, and cloud apps. Dash addresses the constant friction teams feel at work by connecting with work apps to create a central hub to find anything in one place. And Dash comes with powerful content access and permission controls to guarantee company content is seen only by the right people.

“I first launched Dropbox because we all needed a better way to find and access our content, no matter what device or platform it lived on,” said Drew Houston, co-founder and CEO of Dropbox. “Today, we’re solving the 2024 version of that problem: our content is scattered everywhere and it’s hard to find the thing you need to get your work done. Dash solves that problem by helping teams find information quickly, remove friction from their day, and keep sensitive information protected. We can’t wait for customers to give it a try.”

Find anything with AI-powered universal search

Work isn’t just about files anymore. What used to be hundreds of files on your desktop is now hundreds of browser tabs and apps. In fact, data shows 69% of knowledge workers spend up to an hour a day switching between apps to complete a project. And with the rapid growth of generative AI tools, content is created even faster, making the problem of finding information even worse. As a result, we live in a world where it’s easier to search all of human knowledge on the web than your company knowledge.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Dropbox Dash is AI-powered universal search — one search box that helps companies find their content, no matter what it is or where it’s stored. With Dash for Business, customers can expect an improved search experience, and new admin onboarding to help teams get set up quickly with all their work apps. Dash integrates with all the essential tools teams use at work, like Google Drive, OneDrive, Notion, Asana, and more. And Dash uses machine intelligence to improve search results and provide real-time answers and summarization. Companies from across the globe, like the McLaren Formula 1 Team, are already seeing results from Dash.

“Dash has been a game-changer for us because it doesn’t lock us into a single ecosystem,” said Dan Keyworth, Director of Business Technology, McLaren Racing. “Instead, it seamlessly connects the various apps and tools our team relies on, centralizing all that information in one place. For a team always seeking improvements, the ability to bring everything together has been valuable.”

Protect everything with advanced content access control

With Dash for Business, universal search is just the beginning. As AI tools continue to grow in popularity, businesses are becoming increasingly concerned about security and content governance, with 78% planning to increase investments in security. Just like Dropbox, Dash is designed with security, privacy, and control in mind. It offers powerful content access controls to give admins visibility over sensitive information, so only the right people see the right things.

Dropbox recently acquired Nira, a content governance platform that provides a suite of in-depth functionality to protect cloud files from unauthorized access. With Nira, Dropbox designed a custom solution built directly into Dash, so businesses can easily protect confidential documents in just a few clicks. Admins can now see everything that’s been shared in their company, across every major content platform, in one place. Then, they can identify sensitive content, and manage bulk changes for any number of assets at once—eliminating a previously tedious and manual document-by-document process.

“Dash provides critical visibility into where outdated permissions may have access to sensitive data,” Keyworth added. “This insight is essential for safeguarding intellectual property, including data, creative campaigns, and commercial assets, allowing us to enhance our security and maintain tighter control over our most valuable information.”

Beyond visibility and permissions controls, business leaders are also looking for transparency about the ways their company content is being used with AI. Dash for Business will use self-hosted AI by default, ensuring that customer data remains within Dropbox's trust boundary, without reliance on third-party AI platforms.

More features in Dropbox Dash to help customers focus

Dash for Business also includes updates to features customers already know and love. The start page, which is a single dashboard to access universal search, get shortcuts to recent work, and start meetings, now features an activity feed that keeps track of work by consolidating document updates into one view. Stacks, which are smart collections that help organize all types of content, can now be made at the company level and have in-depth sharing permissions for both internal and external viewers. And answers, an AI-powered feature that allows customers to ask questions about their content, now uncovers deeper insights by generating follow-up questions, answers, and related content links based on their original search query.

Dash for Business* is available in the U.S. in English only on web and desktop, with availability in additional markets in early 2025. Teams interested can visit https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/company/dash-for-business-launch-2024 to learn more.

*Customers using previous versions of Dropbox Dash in Beta can visit https://dash.dropbox.com/ to learn more about trying Dash for Business.