How Dropbox can turn you into a project management pro

Millions of people have jobs that require them to balance the needs, priorities, and timelines of two or more teams. Are you one of them? Maybe you work in marketing, and have to coordinate efforts between technical, design, and PR teams. Or you’re a project manager, always striving to keep the client happy while keeping tabs on the team’s progress. Either way, it’s your job to make sure everything comes out perfectly, and on time. So here are a couple ways Dropbox has your back, and can make your tough job a little easier.

Juggle feedback that’s coming from… everywhere

Feedback isn’t just a thing to be dealt with—it’s an opportunity to create an outcome that reflects everyone’s needs and opinions. But managing edits and opinions coming from lots of people—both internally and externally—can be tricky. Dropbox can help you gather that feedback, and organize it in a manageable way. The people giving input can comment on specific parts of files, leaving their thoughts on images or parts of text. This makes it easier for vendors and designers team to gather, prioritize, and implement feedback. You can also get feedback using Dropbox Paper, or with co-authoring in Microsoft Office documents. To read about those features, as well as other ways to manage feedback, check out our blog post about embracing feedback and using it to create great work.

Share work with anyone, the smart way

To make all the stakeholders feel like part of the creative process, it’s important to let them see how things are progressing. You’ll build true collaboration—as well as better working relationships for the future—if you make clients and stakeholders feel less like “bosses,” and more like members of the team. But how can you do this without running the risk of accidental edits and deletions, or making people feel like they’re losing ownership over their work? You can start by sharing from Dropbox instead of email—you can show works in progress to stakeholders without worrying about mixed-up file versions or accidental edits. Share a folder right from the desktop, and set permissions to control who can and can’t make changes to the files. This shared folder can be the central location for the project, so you can direct people here once instead of having to always repost and relocate files every time you want to share an update. This is particularly useful for art files like photography and designs, which are often too large to send via email. And if you only want to share a single file, you can give view-only access to your files from the desktop, too.

Jump over roadblocks and get things done

There are all kinds of snags that can befall any project—but we have ways to help you sidestep them. Head disorganization off at the pass by using Paper to consolidate your project plans, including assets. You can share things in Paper that are tricky to organize otherwise, like code snippets, YouTube videos, and of course, Dropbox files. When you paste links to any of these things, a preview automatically appears in the document, so everyone can see what’s going on all in one place. Plus, it’s the perfect way to centralize feedback with comments, which can be seen by all team members and resolved as a group. You can also combat delays with file requests. If you’ve had problems in the past getting invoices, specs, assets, or deliverables from anyone you’re working with, this is the perfect feature for you. Just fire off a file request from the Dropbox website, and the person you’re requesting files from can upload them directly to your Dropbox. When you’re managing a project with lots of moving pieces, it can sometimes feel like a balancing act—and like you’re bound to drop something. But Dropbox is here to help, so you can get things done quickly, efficiently, and collaboratively. To see more features that can help you with your next project, click here: