I am now officially a "happy camper" – let me to explain. I had reached the conclusion (and been complaining) that I couldn’t really fully use my iPad for work until DropBox released its iPad app. As I discuss in one of my more popular seminars, my office workflow relies heavily on DropBox (along with Evernote and Rocket Matter) because I "run my law office in the cloud."
DropBox is one of the integral parts of the workflow system I have developed and implemented, as it serves three specific functions in my office:
- All paper that comes into my office is scanned into DropBox into an "Incoming Mail" folder;
- All documents that are drafted (whether by me or by my assistant) are placed into a "Docs to Review" folder; and
- Once documents in these two folders are reviewed, they are moved into the individual client’s folder stored inside our main "Clients" folder.
Because each of these folders is located inside DropBox, it is fully accessible by my assistant and by me – on my iMac, MacBook Pro, online at DropBox.com, iPhone, and now my iPad. As a result, I am able to access all of my client data all of the time – no matter where I am.
The DropBox iPad app is as visually beautiful as it is functional. I installed it tonight, and it appears to work seamlessly. I can view all of my documents inside DropBox in full screen on the iPad, both vertically and horizontally. What’s even better, I can open the documents inside my "Docs to Review" folder in the Pages app and work with them right on my iPad.
If you want to learn more about DropBox’s iPad app, you can read the review here. If you want to learn more about how to "run your law office in the cloud" come see one of my upcoming seminars.
Hey Ben!
Love hearing details about your workflow especially relating to the iPad. I’ve felt like my iPad hasn’t been quite complete either until this app was updated. Look forward to hearing more.
Josh
Ben,
You may have mentioned this before, but what are you using to review and annotate pdf docs? And do you now access them through Dropbox? Is that how you get them to your iPad? And do you use a stylus to annotate?
Thanks,
Larry
Hello Ben.
Thanks for the updates, love the site. I am using pretty much the same system (ipad has been ordered), but a common problem I have with the iphone app is the screen space. My file naming system tends to be a little longer (Name, Date, Description) and I cannot view the full file name on the iphone app. (the mobile dropbox site works so much better in this regard).
has this been resolved on the iPad app? Has anyone else run into this problem?
Ben,
Interesting work flow.
Do you have any security or confidentiality concerns about your confidential information being hosted in a third-party cloud?
Would like to hear your thoughts.
Thanks.
Gordon
Why do you need dropbox or evernote if you’re using rocket matter? I’d like to see a post about how your specific workflow works.
Thanks for the post. One question: can you restrict use of Dropbox to certain IP addresses? I’m concerned about employees accessing the system outside the office and would like to be able to set permissions by geographic location among other things.
Thanks!
Milo