This year, we’re going BIG, with 2 jam-packed days of informative sessions, keynotes and workshops that’ll make you a collaboration pro. If that’s not enough, we’ll also announce top-secret product features and give you an opportunity to sign up to be a beta tester before anyone else. We’re confident that whether you’re an admin, user or just getting started with Box, you’ll leave our conference with a smile and lots of great ideas.

You can head over now the BoxWorks page to register and see an overview of all the great sessions we have planned for this year’s festivities. Tickets will go fast, so reserve spots for you and your team today.

We plan on making a ton of tantalizing announcements leading up to BoxWorks, so remember to keep checking the blog for session sneak peaks, customer interviews, the keynote speaker reveal and more. I’m especially excited to reveal the all-star rockers who will perform at our after party; you’ll have to be patient and check back later to learn who we have lined up. Trust me, it’ll be worth the wait .

We can’t wait to see you in San Francisco!

Our first stop was a city council meeting to formally present the grand prize to Robert Simms, the City’s IT Director.

The next day, we went to the City of Columbia offices to meet the rest of the staff, where we showed the City of Columbia how to share work plans, photos and other documents from the office to their teams out in the field; now they can pull up documents in seconds without carrying binders worth of information or clunky laptops. And since employees in the office can instantly see updates from people who are out in the field, the city’s mobile workers wont have to make time-consuming trips back to the home base.

Even though they just started using Box, the City of Columbia is already seeing major changes in how they do business. As IT Director Robert Simms put it, “In just a couple of weeks, we’ve seen a big change in our employees and it’s been impressive. Before this project, some of them had never even used a smartphone. Now they are in the field with some of the latest technology and picking it up very easily. The simplicity of Box makes that possible and that’s very exciting to us.”

We can’t wait to see how it all turns out. We’ll be updating their progress along the way and are heading back to check in on them in June, so stay tuned!

First, when you’re already at a file detail page inside a folder, you’ll be able to swipe left and right to navigate to other files inside that folder. If you have a lot of similar files in one folder, now you can dive in to one of them and start swiping to browse and find the one you’re looking for. Warning: this can get very fun and you may end up swiping through your documents and photos without thinking about it!

We also wanted to make it easier to use Box files while in other applications, so we implemented what is essentially a Box file picker. It’s a super simple way to choose files from Box when third-party applications need them. A good example of this is choosing an attachment while composing an email; now you can attach that file straight from your Box account. Pretty neat!

Finally, we added the ability to create shortcuts to files and folders right on your Android home screen. Our widget is already a useful addition to any home screen, but now you can pin your most frequently accessed files and folders as icons for one-tap access. You can do this right from your home screen by choosing to add a Shortcut (Widget) to a Box file or folder, or just use the menu option from inside the app. This particular feature came out of one of our Box Hackathons – we’re glad we could deliver this nifty time saver in this release so soon after the event.

To top it off, our app is now localized in 14 languages. Some of these wouldn’t have been possible without the help of some very talented and helpful volunteers. Thanks to Jan Matys for Czech, Leandro Sousa for Portuguese, Роман Rublevskiy for Russian, and Patrik Žec for Slovak. We’re also available in Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, and Colombian Spanish. If you’d like to help translate in your native language, reach out to us at android-support@box.com. Thanks!

Download the update now. We’ll be demoing all our mobile apps at our massive booth at CTIA in New Orleans, so please stop by and say hello. You can also let us know what you think of the latest release over on Twitter @BoxHQ or in the comments below. Enjoy!

Comment Mentions

If you use Twitter as much as I do, you already know how this new feature works. Just type “@” to access a down-down menu of people you’re collaborating with in that folder, then select the person you want to mention.

They’ll get an email notification with your comment, even if they’ve turned off other types of Box notifications. Some ideas: use it when you want clarification about someone else’s comment, a second pair of eyes on some content or final approval by your manager. Log in to your Box account now to give it a whirl.

Box Edit

You already know that Box lets you preview a ton of different file types right in your account. Now you can do even more with a beta product we recently introduced, Box Edit. With Box Edit, you can edit any type of file (images, videos, spreadsheets, word documents – you name it) directly from the file preview page. After installing the app, just hit “Edit” in the top right to open the file in whatever native application you have set for that file type. Make your changes, hit save and the new version is automatically updated in the cloud -  no uploading required!

Box Edit is available for both Mac and Windows. Install it now to get started.

We have more productivity tools and features coming up, so keep an eye out here or on Twitter @BoxHQ. Have questions or suggestions? Leave them below.

• The benefits of cloud collaboration and sharing vs. on-premise solutions
• How Cardinal Capital saved almost 400,000$ with Box
• Why switching to the cloud is a must for mobile-minded IT departments

Download it now to get all the information you need to make the jump.

 In Silicon Valley, we have an endless supply of everything you need to create a successful startup – VC money, mentorship, and talented workers – all of which are fundamental to the incredible environment that we have for cultivating new companies.

In comparison, New York obviously has less of those resources. What I found, though, is that rather than discouraging people from entrepreneurship, it makes them scrappy and agile. Starting a company isn’t “cool” like it has become in the Valley –  instead creating the next Pinterest just because they want to start a business, entrepreneurs are starting companies because they want to solve real problems. Not to say that doesn’t happen here, but the quality of companies is diluted by people who are becoming entrepreneurs just because everyone else is doing it.

Community abounds in New York

While all the individual companies I met with were incredibly impressive, what stood out to me the most was the pervasive sense of community.

There are fantastic meetups, coworking spaces, and incubators that I had a chance to visit while I was out there, all of which work not only to help their members, but also to improve the community as a whole. In a city driven by cutthroat businesses like finance, it was amazing to see the willingness of everyone to help one another – and to help me, despite the fact that to them I’m just some guy from Silicon Valley.

New York uniquely shapes its startups

 In Silicon Valley, we tend to see an endless flow of startups trying to solve the problems of tech companies, since those are the companies around them. As someone who works a tech company, I appreciate people trying to solve my problems, but also recognize that this focus is limiting in terms of the types of startups we see created.

While many of New York’s early startup successes were on the consumer front (Gilt and Etsy, to name two of my favorites), I was surprised to see how much the focus has shifted to b2b companies in the recent past. This presents itself not only in the form of disruptive companies like SecondMarket, but also in groups like the Enterprise Tech Innovation meetup, which consists of not only people from the tech industry, but investment bankers and lawyers as well.

Engaging with New York has been not only enlightening, but also a ton of fun. I’m really pleased that we were able to give something back to the community, and I’m looking forward to doing even more in the future. If you’re in NY and interested in technology or the enterprise, our team would love to chat – just tweet at us @Boxplatform.

If you tried to access your Box content recently from Box for iPhone or iPad, you may have noticed that something was up. Specifically, when you tried to access your content, you may have received an error page, or a page stating the file was “moved or deleted.” But don’t panic, your files are still safe and sound on Box, and none of your content was lost or deleted. We’ve just had a small blip in how our apps are pointing to those files.

The good news: We released a new version of the Box for iPhone and iPad that corrects this issue, so please download it now.  And don’t forget that all your content is still accessible in the normal ways through our website.

So what happened: Some of our apps (including our own iOS app) use an older version of our iOS SDK which, this morning, started to have trouble communicating properly with Box. For a more technical description, see our Developer blog.

We know you trust us with your business-critical content, so we always strive to let you know when you might experience something out of the ordinary. As always, we are working diligently to continue to earn that trust.

Sincerely,

The Box Team

To get started with shared links, simply log in and click “Share” next to a folder or file to see your sharing options in a convenient drop-down menu. Here’s a quick rundown of what the different settings mean:

Open:

Set the link to “open” if you want anyone with the shared link to have access to the file. To restrict access to the file, you can set an expiration date or even require a password – these restrictions will apply to anyone not already collaborating in the folder.

@Company:

Want to send out a link without worrying about company outsiders viewing the file? Just select the “@Company” option to make the file accessible to anyone in your domain. This option will only appear if you’re collaborating with people who are using your email domain.

 Collaborators Only:

Pick this option if you want to point a collaborator to a specific file or folder without compromising that item’s security. Even if a non-collaborator receives the link, they won’t be able to access the file.

Disable:

This feature disables the shared link for a file or folder. If a collaborator wants to access this content, they’ll have to log in to Box and locate it in their account.

In addition to these features, you can do a couple nifty things with your content, like:

Set download permissions

Want the recipient of a shared link to be able to view a file but not download it? If you’re the file owner or editor, just open up the shared link menu, click on “Restrict permissions” under the “Open Access” description and select the setting of your choice. By default, both preview and downloads are enabled, but you can turn off either one with just a click.

See download and view stats

Click on the bar graph next to “Open Access” to see insightful stats about who’s accessing your file – and when. If a collaborator has accessed it, you’ll see their name; if you’ve shared the file with someone outside your Box account, you’ll see an IP address. You can also see a timestamp of when your content was accessed, along with whether your content was previewed, downloaded or both.

Share or send files – right from Box

Just click “Share” next to your file, then “Send” to see all the different ways you can share your file. You can post it to social networks like Yammer, Twitter and Facebook, send it via email or even embed it on your website or blog. Of course, you can always just copy the shared link and send it directly to a colleague.

Check out these all features in action below:

If you have a Business or Enterprise account, the administrator can even change the shared link settings for everyone in your entire deployment. Your IT department will rest easy knowing that your company is in complete control of who has access to what.

Something else cool: Even if you change the name of the original file or folder, your shared link will remain intact with the settings you’ve chosen. All the metadata associated with your content (like tasks, comments, version history, etc.) will remain intact as well.

Have any tips or tricks for using shared links? Leave them in the comments below.

All of this falls into an area that we call Box Platform. The Box Platform is a set of technologies that allow us to create secure integrations between your Box content and a broad, quickly growing list of third party products and technologies. We think this is critically important for you and for us; because whether you’re an individual user or a large enterprise customer, every product and new technology that works with Box adds real value to your investment.

And that’s why we’re excited to share with you some major platform updates today.

Box Platform: Major Enhancements

Today we’re proud to announce a new generation of Box Platform products. First, we’ve released an entirely new version of our application programming interface (API). The new API makes it even easier for partners and developers to build products and services that integrate with Box. Check out our developer blog for more details on the new API and links to documentation.

Second, we have created a seamless way for developers to instantly create Box accounts that are connected to their apps. We call it Instant Mode. Instant Mode makes it far easier for Box customers and partners to instantly deploy Box for cloud content and collaboration as part of the services they offer to their users.

Third, we have launched a new version of the Box OneCloud App to App Framework, a set of tools that makes it much easier for mobile app developers to tie their app into Box OneCloud. This new framework will help us to add new OneCloud apps more quickly.

Want to learn more about our approach to building these platform products? Here’s an overview from the team:

New Box OneCloud Apps

When we launched Box OneCloud in March, many of our customers asked us when we were going to add more apps. Today, we’re announcing 15 new Box OneCloud apps, including a tool that brings Microsoft Office to your iPad (CloudOn), a print-from-any-device-to-any-printer solution (Breezy), one of the world’s most popular PDF annotation products (iAnnotate) and an innovative sales catalog and order fulfillment app (Handshake).

You can find all of these new apps today in the Box OneCloud gallery in Box for iPhone and iPad.

Box Platform Partnerships: General Assembly and TechStars

As you can see, here at Box, we want to build the world’s best cloud content and collaboration platform. While the technology is important, identifying and working with the right partners is just as important. That’s why we’re constantly reaching out to companies and people with whom we want to work. And it’s also why when partners reach out to us, we’re happy to connect with them over email, on the phone or even face to face.

Today, many entrepreneurs are starting their companies in shared physical workspaces and getting seed funding and mentoring from tech incubators. As part of our platform efforts at Box, we’re partnering with two such organizations in New York City, General Assembly and TechStars. Box will be working with each organization to provide mentorship and assistance to early stage tech companies in New York.

Why New York? As a Silicon Valley-based company, we have lots of great relationships in our neck of the woods, but we’re expanding into new communities. New York represents a great opportunity to join a new community of technologists, startups and enterprise customers. We’re excited to be part of it.

Summing it Up

As a Box customer and user, you’ve got content in our cloud. And you need to be productive with that content. At Box, we’re building the best products we can to meet your needs, but we’ll never build all of the products you need to be successful.

That’s where the Box Platform fits in. We build the glue that ties Box to your favorite third party products and technologies. We reach out and talk to as many partners as possible. Together, we deliver solutions that we hope will make you a happy Box customer for a long, long time.

If you’re in New York, there are still a few tickets left – to get yours, just RSVP at binnyc.eventbrite.com. If you’re in Silicon Valley (or anywhere else), fear not – we’ll be livestreaming the event. Just go to box.com/binnyc at 7pm Eastern (4pm Pacific). It’ll be a great event, and we’re excited to have you with us.