Box unveils an overhauled Box Notes productivity platform

Box Notes, a productivity tool at Box, is announcing updated functionality and a new design.

The platform, which Box says is used by nearly 40% Fortune 500 companies, will now let users view and edit all notes within a single browser, without having to leave Box Notes to search folders. They will also be introducing desktop apps, to make it easier to access Box Notes on both Mac and PC, with offline access coming soon. And we’re told they are also working on building Box Notes smartphone apps.

With the new Box Notes, “you’ll have the ability to access and get all your notes in one place,” said Aaron Levie, CEO of Box. The experience makes it easy to “collaborate in real-time and share with anybody.”

He says banks, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and government agencies are amongst the many types of organizations that use Box Notes for making tables and checklists.  These are “capabilities that large enterprises need,” he says.

But there’s no question that there’s a lot of competition for productivity tools. Microsoft and wave of startups like Asana and Trello are all trying to maximize efficiency for the workforce.

Box’s value proposition is that this syncs organically with the rest of their cloud management services, which is used by 70,000 companies, for storage and file-sharing. Consumers can also access the free Box Notes service.

The company is nearing the end of its fiscal year, which wraps up on February 1st. It “has been a great year in terms of traction of our new products,” said Levie. He also emphasized that the security of their platforms will remain a core priority for Box. 

Box, which went public two years ago, has seen its shares soar almost 24% in the past month.