Dropbox expands Paper to planning tool with timelines

Dropbox has expanded Paper with a timeline function called Timelines, which makes the service a planning tool as well. Paper was initially a service in which users could work together.

Users have been asking for some time for a way to plan with Paper. “That pain, the pain of coordinating all those moving parts, is something we are addressing today with our new timeline feature in Dropbox Paper,” says the company. With this function it is possible to create a timeline with milestones. It is also possible to add team members to each milestone and add notes with additional information, such as links to related documents.

It is also possible to embed a to do list in the timeline for the person who has been assigned a task. This should make it a single access point for everyone working on a project. “Functions such as to do’s, @mentions and deadlines give team members an easy way to coordinate projects with each other,” says Dropbox.

“Timelines takes these possibilities one step further, where each team member can make a neat visual representation of what happens when and who is responsible.”

Paper

Dropbox Paper was created because the company could not continue to exist as a tool to store content in. It had to extend to collaborations and coordination around that content. By adding timelines, this possibility is extended even further.

According to Alan Lepofsky, who follows the future of work for Constellation Research, Paper is part of the changing world of tools to work with. He puts that against TechCrunch. “I call the new form of tools for content creation digital canvases. The apps simplify the user experience to integrate content from multiple sources. They improve the paradigm of the Word processor,” says Lepofsky.