You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Forum Discussion
Amy
Community Manager
Community ManagerDropbox Dash AMA: November 2023
Have you had a chance to try out Dropbox Dash, (our new AI-powered universal search tool) yet?
You can learn all about it here, and, if you have questions about it, you’re in the right place!
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Dash is fabulous. I love being able to search across platforms and get the answers in one place.
Two requests -- one small and one (I think) a bit larger.
When I click on a result, I'd like the Dash window to stay open. Often I have several similar documents and I need to decide which is best for my purpose. Having to re-open Dash each time slows me down a bit.
Also, is there any chance of adding OCR to read .pdfs which were scans or produced by a .pdf printer driver that creates images rather than actual text?
- Mark
Super User II
So, can I ask a few? Some may appear obvious but I suppose that's what I'm looking for here!
- Why do I need Dash? What does it do? Whats the advantages of it. I don't want 'rock star DJ movie director' rubbish. I want how it helps ME as a person/teacher that has all his docs within the Dropbox eco system
- Whats the safety and security on the system in an idiots guide? For example are you doing a Google on my data and selling it?
- How do I know that the fact its AI-driven is in my interests and most importantly safe? I get this is a commercial product for you, but, as a paying user what do I get out of it? How are you protecting MY data with it?
- Is it here to stay? Why should we, as users, invest time in this when you have pulled some of the best things I used before as they were 'beta' (RIP Carousel and Mailbox).
ghultenDropbox VP
Mark wrote:
So, can I ask a few? Some may appear obvious but I suppose that's what I'm looking for here!
- Why do I need Dash? What does it do? Whats the advantages of it. I don't want 'rock star DJ movie director' rubbish. I want how it helps ME as a person/teacher that has all his docs within the Dropbox eco system
- Whats the safety and security on the system in an idiots guide? For example are you doing a Google on my data and selling it?
- How do I know that the fact its AI-driven is in my interests and most importantly safe? I get this is a commercial product for you, but, as a paying user what do I get out of it? How are you protecting MY data with it?
- Is it here to stay? Why should we, as users, invest time in this when you have pulled some of the best things I used before as they were 'beta' (RIP Carousel and Mailbox).
Hello, Mark. If you have all your docs nicely organized in Dropbox you may find less value from the 'universal search and organization' in Dash. These features help people who have content scattered across many cloud services (like I do in my work).But that said, Dash will help you get access to helpful AI, even if all your data is organized.One example is 'semantic search' which allows you to express what you are looking for in natural language (as opposed to legacy search which requires a keyword). I personally struggle remembering exact names and phrases, so this help me a LOT.Another example is the ability to ask questions of your data. This has been demoed a lot with various modern ai tools (like chat gpt) but dash makes it easy to ask questions of your data. So if you need to, for example, find the name of a student's parent, you can ask dash and it will try to find the name directly (vs finding the file where all the names are listed).Another thing that dash is good at is organizing your work with stacks. You can create a stack related to a project you are working on, and dash will recommend other relevant content that may help you with that work. You can save the stack and come back to it any time. You can also share it with coworkers so you're all working on the same thing with the same context.Basically, we are trying to take the amazing advancements in modern AI and turn them into useful tools (vs tinker toys) over time we will connect more and more into Dash.WRT data safety - We have published our AI principles https://www.dropbox.com/ai-principles. And we treat your data in Dash with the same respect we treat your data in dropbox.I'm here to stay too. I was a dropbox user for a decade before I joined the company. I'm very committed to making Dash a success. I'll do my best! Please come check it out and let us know what you think.
- ghulten
KevinLeeC wrote:
Dash is fabulous. I love being able to search across platforms and get the answers in one place.
Two requests -- one small and one (I think) a bit larger.
When I click on a result, I'd like the Dash window to stay open. Often I have several similar documents and I need to decide which is best for my purpose. Having to re-open Dash each time slows me down a bit.
Also, is there any chance of adding OCR to read .pdfs which were scans or produced by a .pdf printer driver that creates images rather than actual text?
Thanks, KevinLeeC ! Great questions.I personally totally agree with the reopening dash slows me down sentiment. Working on it.
For the PDF and OCR comment that's something we're actively working on too. Don't know exactly how it will show up in the product, but keep an eye out.
Thanks again for the question,
Geoff
