Meet Dash for Business, AI-powered universal search for teams

Have you ever racked your brain trying to track down an important piece of information for work—like, “Where is that thing?” Was it an email? A doc in the cloud? A Dropbox folder? Your stuff probably lives across dozens of disconnected apps and browser tabs testing the limits of your laptop’s battery life—and your patience. This is the reality of modern work, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

Today, we’re introducing Dash for Business, our new AI-powered universal search tool, which makes it easy for teams to search, organize, share, and protect content from across their connected apps, all in one place. Dash for Business combines universal search and organization with in-depth content access control for businesses big and small, giving IT admins visibility and control over the content people share and access.

Productivity apps have revolutionized the way we work, and the AI boom has created even more platforms and products designed to streamline our processes. But these tools are often siloed from one another, contributing to the big, messy problem of information fragmentation. And having to track stuff down isn’t just a minor inconvenience—it’s a persistent and costly toll on your time and your attention.

Dash, which we launched last year, has already helped users save time they would’ve spent searching for documents like needles in a haystack. Dash for Business goes further by improving the search experience and helping businesses reduce security risks, both with in-depth content access controls and by ensuring sensitive company information isn’t surfaced unintentionally. It’s a product experience we’ve spent years developing and improving—our early partners like McLaren Racing already consider it a “game-changer”—and we’re excited to finally share it with you.

Search all of your stuff in one place

Dash for Business is AI-powered universal search that finds the answers your team needs, no matter where they’re stored in the cloud. And just like Dropbox, we designed Dash for Business to be intuitive and easy to use. Give Dash for Business a keyword, a question, a description, or a command, and it will not only understand what you mean, but, more importantly, find what you‘re looking for. With improvements to search within and beyond Dropbox, Dash uses machine intelligence to improve search results and provide real-time answers.

When you need an answer fast, you can ask Dash a question or have it summarize content, in some cases without ever having to open a file, tab, or doc. And the best part is that Dash for Business is platform agnostic, so it works not only with Dropbox but also with apps like Google Drive, OneDrive, Notion, Asana, and more. Add email, calendars, files, and more to search them all in one place. The more apps you connect, the more useful and time-saving Dash for Business becomes.

Dash for Business also updates many of the features Dash users already love while introducing some new ones. Stacks—smart collections that allow you to group, organize, and share content with all of your colleagues—can now be used at the company level and have in-depth sharing permissions for both internal and external viewers. Your stacks help you corral everything from the same project together, and your start page can surface when someone on your team has made edits to these files.

The start page is a dashboard that gives you access to universal search, stacks, shortcuts to recent work, and meetings, making it easier to navigate your day. You can also use it to access the activity feed, which consolidates your work streams. Lastly, answers is our new AI-powered feature that allows you to ask questions about your content, helps you uncover deeper insights by generating follow-up questions, and surfaces related content links based on your original search query.

Dash for Business can help you find one specific document just as easily as it can help you stay on top of the work that’s happening around you. It takes the thinking—and the wasted hours of distraction—out of finding what you need so that you can focus on the important stuff.

Advanced content access control

We developed Dash for Business with both employees and business admins in mind. We understand that manually moderating access permissions can be tedious and time-consuming, often requiring significant manpower to stay on top of potential security risks. And the more products and apps we introduce to our workplaces, the more daunting this problem becomes.

Dash for Business makes sure only the right people and right teams have access to certain company data while ensuring others don’t. Admins can view who has access at the individual document level or update permissions in bulk in just seconds.

We’re powering these features and protecting cloud files from unauthorized access using Nira, our recently acquired content governance platform. With Nira, we built a custom solution directly into Dash, allowing IT admins to easily protect confidential documents with just a few clicks. Nira’s capabilities let you decrease and close security gaps—and even shut them down altogether. Control which apps and services are connected to Dash, be alerted when files are shared with folks outside of your organization, and more.

We know privacy is top of mind for our customers. More than a trillion pieces of content are stored on Dropbox, and we are committed to being worthy of trust as we enter this next phase of our growth as a company. Dropbox Dash will use self-hosted AI by default, ensuring that customer data remains within Dropbox's trust boundary without reliance on third-party AI platforms.

Building for the future at Dropbox

Dash for Business is the natural progression of our product journey. Dropbox was founded because we needed a better way of storing and accessing our content. With Dash for Business, we’re harnessing AI to create a more streamlined and secure solution to the knowledge fragmentation problem. And we’ve heard great things from companies like McLaren Formula 1 Team, which has already seen meaningful results.

McLaren is a huge operation of strategists, marketers, designers, and more who work tirelessly behind the scenes to make every race a success—and they can’t be successful without pushing the boundary of where people and technology intersect. Dropbox collaborated closely with the McLaren team to begin testing Dash for Business earlier this summer, ensuring we were designing it in a way that really served the needs of teams and IT admins.

“Dash has been a game-changer for us because it doesn’t lock us into a single ecosystem. 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,” said Dan Keyworth, Director of Business Technology, McLaren Racing.

“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.”

Dash for Business* is available in the US in English only on web and desktop, with availability in additional markets in early 2025. Teams interested can visit https://dash.dropbox.com/ to learn more.

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