If you’ve been noticing some cool, subtle changes in Box lately, your eyes aren’t fooling you. Web Documents, our feature for creating wiki-like online documents in Box, makes it even easier to collaborate on these documents with others in real-time. We have also improved tagging to help you keep content organized and within easy reach. I asked one of our engineers, Jeff Seibert - one of the newest members of our team, via Increo Solutions - to give you the full scoop on our updates for Web Documents. We think it’s going to be a welcome set of improvements for everyone.

Web Documents: It’s easier for others to join the party
Box’s built-in web documents offer a quick and convenient way to take meeting notes, track new ideas, and manage projects. Easy to share, web documents are a great way to keep your whole team on the same page. You’ll notice quite a few improvements:

Fluid collaboration
It’s now easier than ever to work on a Web Document with multiple collaborators: when you are finished editing, or wish to pass control of the document on to someone else, simply switch to the Preview pane. When someone else takes control of the web document and starts making changes, you will be able to watch their edits in real-time.

Activity tracking
You can now leave Web Documents open in your browser without worrying about locking everyone else out. If you remain idle for a period of 10 minutes or more, the document will be automatically unlocked so that others can edit it. (Don’t worry, you will be warned that the document is unlocked, and you can always return to editing by switching back to the Edit pane.)

Spell-check this…
The spell-checking feature is now much more reliable, particularly when it comes to checking text that you pasted in from Microsoft Word or other programs.

Never lose work
If you try to close a Web Document with unsaved changes, you will now be prompted to save or discard them before continuing.

Your direct line to Box.net
We’d love to hear from you - next time you are working on a web document, click Feedback in the top-right corner and let us know what else we can improve!

Improved tagging: Making files even easier to find
Box has long offered the ability to tag files. With this update, we have simplified how you add tags to files and folders and made tags even more visible as you browse through all your content. To tag any file, simply click on the tag icon and enter a new tag, or select from existing ones. You also have the option to display tags while you’re in List View, providing quick links to other files tagged with the same phrase.

And there you have it. Stay tuned to the blog for updates, big and small. Post comments here or tweet your thoughts to @boxdotnet - we want your feedback, both positive and constructive!

Post by Sean Lindo, Community Manager and Jeff Seibert, Software Engineer

Since we launched an all-new, more business-focused Box this year, we have concentrated our efforts on making it easy for you to share content with anyone, from anywhere. Of course, a fair amount of that is on the product side, but another key component in realizing this vision are meaningful integrations with other business platforms. Businesses are turning to cloud-based services more than ever and we want to make it easy for them to centralize their files one place, while also providing the flexibility to work with them from the other applications that are core to their infrastructure, whether it be HR, finance, ERP or other department-specific software.

Our first step in this direction is an integration with Salesforce.com, the leading CRM on the web and one of the pioneers in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) space.

Unlimited storage for Salesforce CRM customers
Today, we have launched Box.net on Salesforce’s Force.com AppExchange and are offering unlimited storage exclusively to Box Enterprise customers that use Salesforce CRM, so you can easily share, access and work with presentations, product datasheets, how-to videos, agreements, contracts and all your Box files, right inside Salesforce. In offering unlimited storage to Salesforce CRM customers, we think it’s a big step in giving people complete freedom to share content through the services they use the most with the people they interact with the most.

How does it work?
Once it’s installed, you’ll be able to access Box when viewing a Lead, Account, Contact or Opportunity in Salesforce. Here you can upload, download and share files or use OpenBox actions, like sending a file through Outlook, editing documents with Zoho or EditGrid, faxing with eFax, printing and shipping using FedEx and more. There’s also a special Box.net tab that provides the full Box interface.

Getting started
If you’re a Box Enterprise customer and want to install Box.net for Salesforce CRM, your Box sales rep and account manager can work with your Box admin to get everything set up. If you are not a Box customer and are interested in using Box and Salesforce CRM together, you can learn more at http://www.box.net/salesforce or just give us a call at 866-495-0635.

It goes without saying that we’re big believers in what the cloud can do - and what an open platform can do. Connecting cloud services like Box and Salesforce is all about connecting people to their content in more productive ways. This is just the beginning - we are absolutely committed to providing a platform that connects businesses and their content to all the clouds and applications that help them do what they do best.

Post by Aaron Levie, CEO/Co-founder

Box’s built-in toolbox of OpenBox services just got a little bigger today. We’re happy to highlight two new services from Drawloop, which let you convert files to PDF right inside Box. You can convert individual files to PDF one at a time or combine multiple files into a single PDF file. These services are:

Convert to PDF
As a free service, it’s a quick and easy way to convert individual files, including Microsoft Office, image and other file types to PDF.

Combine to PDF
A more advanced service, “Combine to PDF” lets you select multiple files (even a combination of different file formats) and convert them all into a single PDF. If you’re a sales rep, for example, and want to share a proposal that consists of a cover letter created in Word, a quote in Excel and a product data sheet in PDF, you can easily combine them into one easy-to-send PDF. This is available as a subscription service from Drawloop ($1 per user/month), which you can check out with their 30-day free trial.

Best of all, Drawloop’s services support a broad range of file types:

- Microsoft Office, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint
- Microsoft Visio
- Microsoft Publisher
- Image files like JPG, GIF, PNG, bitmap
- Rich and plain text
- XML
- MHT
- WPD

Now you can easily convert all your files on Box into polished PDFs that you can share with anyone. As always, you can easily add these services and browse all our integrated third-party OpenBox services.

Post by Sean Lindo, Community Manager

We’re doing a little dance right now and hope you’ll join us. Last night, Box.net was named the #2 Fastest Growing Private Company in Silicon Valley by the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal for 2009. The award is based on revenue growth from 2006 through 2008. To make the rankings, companies had to have grown revenue by at least 30% in this time period.

How much did Box.net grow exactly? We’re thrilled to say that our revenue grew 869.51% from 2006 to 2008. That’s right. It hits you even more when you spell it out - eight hundred and sixty-nine percent growth. Needless to say, we’re ecstatic - and when you consider the fact that this was open to companies across all industries in Silicon Valley, we’re proud to say that Box.net was the #1 fastest growing private tech company in Silicon Valley.

While we found out in the last few weeks that we made the list and that we were in the top 10, we didn’t know where we’d finally rank. At an awards ceremony at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, they honored the 70 companies that made this year’s rankings. When they started announcing the top 10 companies one by one, we were on the edge of our seats as they moved up the list. We took friendly predictions around the company and our ranking blew most everyone’s expectations. It was a great night and all the companies had a good time celebrating together. We tip our hats to everyone who made the list. It’s gratifying to see the excitement and optimism of all these entrepreneurs during these times.

Most of all, we want to thank our customers. We couldn’t have done this without you and we will never forget what got us here. Keep telling us what you think and we’ll keep making Box the best and easiest way for you to collaborate online.

We dedicate this award to you!

Post by Sean Lindo, Community Manager

We are thrilled to welcome some new members to the Box.net family. While we are expanding teams across Box as we speak, our family also got a little bigger with the recent acquisition of Increo Solutions. Based just down the road in Mountain View, CA, Increo is the developer behind solutions like Backboard and Embedit.in.

So why did we do this? Well, we are always looking for ways to improve how you can view, share and collaborate on documents in Box and have long admired Increo’s approach to how people view, annotate and embed documents online. We saw it as a natural fit - Box lets you easily access, manage and share content, while Increo’s core technologies focus on all the ways you can interact with documents and media online. Ultimately, we think it’s going to provide you with really cool and productive ways to view content and collaborate on them with others.

If you’re a Backboard or Embedit.in user, I’m sure you’re wondering how this might affect you. In short, you can continue to use these services and support as you always have. We put together some FAQs to help fill you in.

With that said, we’re excited to have two of Increo’s co-founders, Kimber Lockhart and Jeff Seibert Jr. join the Box.net team. They’re already hard at work, helping us bolster Box’s document and media viewing capabilities and are working on some really cool things for you down the road.  We can’t wait to share what we’re working on, so stay tuned to the blog.

Help us welcome Increo Solutions!

Post by Sean Lindo, Community Manager