It’s been a great year here at Zoho WorkDrive, full of 365 days of product development, resolved queries, new updates, and more. We'd like to take this opportunity to thank our users and wrap things up with a bow.
Our goal for the year 2023 was to expand our feature releases and updates to cater to the content collaboration needs of hybrid and distributed teams. We, at WorkDrive, believe our features should bring content and people together and ensure they stay connected no matter where they are in the world.
Here's a recap of all the features we released this year.
Productivity
Reduce long meetings with WorkDrive Snap
In the beginning of 2023, we released WorkDrive Snap, our video-based asynchronous communication tool to reduce lengthy meetings. WorkDrive Snap combines the power of video calls with the flexibility of chat.
WorkDrive Snap offers multiple recording options (screen, video, and audio) coupled with the flexible sharing options characteristic of WorkDrive. Easily record, replay, and share information while working, without slowing down productivity.
Want to brief your team on a new project? Just record your screen along with video and audio. Use video and audio recordings alone if you want to share official or personal news with your team. You can even record audio to quickly annotate files and share feedback.
We introduced a few enhancements in the second half of the year to enrich your recording experience.
Mute or unmute your microphone.
Set the camera on or off while recording screens or videos.
Adjust the video resolution: 1080p, 720p (default), and 480p.
Maximize and minimize your recording screen.
PIP (picture-in-picture) option.
Experience hassle-free file uploads
Low upload speed and latency, network failures, and timeout issues are common challenges you can face when uploading a document. In response, we have enhanced our upload capability to ensure a smoother file-uploading experience.
Introducing chunk uploads
Now, you can upload large files to your WorkDrive account in chunks. WorkDrive breaks files into smaller segments—or chunks—and uploads them individually. This enables you to upload large files efficiently where you can pause and resume uploads, and prevent failures even with an intermittent network. If the upload is paused, it resumes from the point where it was interrupted instead of from the beginning, allowing you to save time and data.
Upload large files seamlessly
We have increased the file upload limit 10 times across our plans! We've set the file upload limit to a whopping 250 GB, enabling users to upload large project files seamlessly. The upload limit varies based on the plan; check here for more information.
Accelerate creativity with generative AI
As the first step towards transforming WorkDrive as a content automation platform, WorkDrive now integrates with OpenAI via Zia AI. Now, you can create content, refine your comments in a document, and generate cover images for audio and video files from within WorkDrive.
Increase productivity with code snippets
We have introduced code snippets in WorkDrive to save you time and effort when coding. Now, you can copy and paste code snippets from an external source or upload and store them directly within the WorkDrive platform. Code snippets help developers with learning, skill development, fast prototyping, and development, increasing coding productivity, and strengthening collaboration among them.
Collaboration
Add more power to contextual commenting
Contextual commenting on a document helps you collaborate and share your ideas with your team. Sometimes, you may tag the wrong user or misspell a word when commenting on a document, but now, you can edit your comments, instead of deleting them, to correct those mistakes.
Enable OTP authentication for external share links
Whether you're sending an invoice to a client or an agreement to a partner, secure external sharing is essential. Data leaving an organization must be protected. With our new update, you can enable OTP authentication and add an extra layer of security to your externally-shared files.
Take external collaboration to the next level
Collaborate with your external clients, even if they don't have a WorkDrive account. Our new update enables your clients to securely access, comment, reply, @mention, and download your externally-shared files. They can also add and rename files in a shared folder. All changes will be visible to both of you. You can also respond to their comments and collaborate with them directly from your account.
Continuity
Create a file repository within your CRM
Are you a Bigin user? If so, we have exciting news for you. Your days of searching through a long list of emails to locate customer files and uploading them manually to your CRM are over. Our integration with Bigin enables you to create File Cabinets for each customer and store all their files in a single place.
With the File Cabinet powered by WorkDrive, you can generate unique links to collect customer files. The new feature also lets you configure workflows to automate the process of sending links, receive notifications when a file is uploaded, securely share files with customers using OTP authentication, and manage all your leads in a more organized manner.
Share WorkDrive files in a "Cliq"
As a next step towards building a unified file system for Zoho users, we bring you the Zoho WorkDrive-Cliq integration.
Gone are the days of sharing files and folders through links and separately giving access permission to Cliq users outside your team. Whether with an individual user or a channel, you can now share your WorkDrive files directly within Cliq and set necessary access permissions. Permission level options are different for individual users and channels.
Create a bridge between your apps
We have introduced custom apps through which you can connect WorkDrive with any other application using webhooks. You can create a custom app from the Admin console and configure corresponding webhooks within it. Webhooks allow you to receive real-time notifications for events (file, folder, team folder, and team based) directly in an external app (the URL you specify) as soon as these events occur in WorkDrive. It facilitates the exchange of real-time information by automatically delivering notifications from one application to others, eliminating the need to request or wait for information.
Here's a video of how a webhook is configured to automatically notify users through the Cliq app whenever a file is deleted from a Team Folder in WorkDrive.
Convenience
Classify Team Folders in new ways
Most organizations work with multiple Team Folders, each serving a different purpose. Whether your folders were created manually or through integration, classifying them can be time consuming.
If you have integrated Zoho Projects or Zoho Marketing Plus with WorkDrive, you can now list the Team Folders created in Projects and Marketing Plus in the left panel of your WorkDrive account so you can easily access the right files at the right time.
Navigate seamlessly
Searching through a long list of your company's files or folders is a tiresome process. The new tree-based navigation option in WorkDrive makes it easier to access folders in Team Folders or My Folders based on hierarchy, so you can quickly find the right file at the right time.
Make use of pagination
Tree navigation pagination makes it easy to view and access all of your folders and subfolders within the tree navigation UI, ensuring a seamless navigation experience.
Copy and move files with ease
We have made the experience of adding files to your WorkDrive account seamless with our new update. Now, you can use keyboard shortcuts (these change depending on the OS) and drag-and-drop to easily upload, move, and copy files to a folder of your choice. You just need the proper permissions in the folder where you'll be adding the file.
Use WorkDrive in your preferred Indian language
We, at WorkDrive, strive to cater to the needs of our users. Customers should be able to access and interact with WorkDrive in their preferred language and shouldn't be restricted. We believe in localization, too, which led us to expand our language support to include all 22 official Indian languages. This is just the beginning; we will support many more languages in the future.
Speed up data discovery
Recently, we introduced a few enhancements to our search capability to locate your desired files instantly.
Discover multiple search options
We've introduced a dedicated search bar in the Embedded folder view and External Share view, allowing users to quickly find and access files from these views. Additionally, we have enabled quick search options for users to find files inside their My Folder, Team Folder, Org Folder, and any other specific subfolders.
Improve visibility with highlighted keywords
Searched terms are now highlighted in the search suggestion UI and on the Searched File listing page, ensuring improved visibility and ease of use.
Narrow your search using filters
Multiple filter options have been added in the mobile app for quicker discovery of desired files and folders. We have also improved the data discovery experience by introducing search options at both the parent folder and the subfolder level.
Watch and hear more comfortably
We enhanced video and audio previews by adding sneak-forward and sneak-backward options. We have also introduced shortcut options for muting and unmuting (M), entering and exiting full screen mode (F), and playing and pausing (space bar). Additionally, we have introduced Picture-in-Picture (PIP) support for video files.
Control and security
Manage all shared items from a central location
Knowing who shared what and with whom is crucial in an organization. However, tracking this information across multiple shared files and folders can be challenging. With our new update, admins can easily view, share, and manage all shared items from a single place. They can filter files based on the method of sharing, recipient, file location, and document type.
We have enabled this functionality for individual Team Folders, too, which means you can easily view all shared items of a particular Team Folder. In this way, admins and organizers can quickly locate shared Team Folder documents.
We believe data administration is a collective process and everybody has a role to play. Now, every user can view and manage their shared items in their My Folders and keep track of what they have shared and with whom.
Transfer an active member's file and folder ownership
In an organization, there will be instances when a teammate transfers to another team or leaves the company. They may possess important files in their My Folders, such as content plans, marketing strategies, or client decks. Whether it's an active, inactive, or suspended user, you can now view all documents in their My Folders and transfer file ownership to yourself or any other active member of your team. In this way, you can ensure crucial documents are retained and protected.
Compliance
We are happy to inform you that we have added another feather to our security certifications. You can find the details below.
ISO 9001 - Quality Management System (QMS): This international standard validates our ability to consistently deliver quality products and services that adhere to customer and regulatory requirements.
ISO 22301 - Business Continuity Management System (BCMS): This international standard is designed to help organizations prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from unexpected and disruptive incidents.
Stay compliant
The data retention feature is now enabled for all paid plans. Previously, this feature was exclusively available in the WorkDrive Business plan, but we have extended it to all paid plans.
More recent updates
Enjoy a more detailed thumbnail view
We have enhanced the thumbnail view, making it easier to identify images, videos, and document thumbnails through the use of thumbnail images.
Add files instantly
We've added the [+ NEW] button in the Recent Files and Favorites tabs, allowing you to effortlessly create, upload, or import files directly from these tabs.
Leverage the Zoho Mail-WorkDrive integration
We have now introduced the "attach as a copy" option for Zoho-native files (Writer, Sheet, and Show). With this, collaborators can view and download the shared Zoho-native files within the Zoho Mail application.
And that’s a wrap!
We look forward to bringing you more exciting feature updates this year!
Note: We have listed only the most popular updates that we released this year. If you want to see all the updates, you can visit our What's New page.
For feedback and questions, please write to us at sales@zohocorp.com. You can also follow us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Quora for interesting WorkDrive news and product updates.
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