Achieving seamless and open collaboration

Dropbox thinks outside the box with Confluence

Dropbox wanted to complement its internal ecosystem with an enterprise-grade collaboration tool that doesn’t disrupt the existing workflows of its employees. Modus Create’s Atlassian Certified Experts helped transform Confluence Cloud into a flexible workspace for Dropbox, enhancing collaboration across the organization.

Our work involved

• Employee training
• 3rd-party integration support
• Documentation and resource management
• Atlassian licensing and strategic support

When an organization introduces a new collaboration tool, the biggest roadblock is often pushback from employees. Each team has its own workflow, so any disruption is bound to create friction.

Dropbox understands this well. After all, the company’s mission is to design a more enlightened way of working for both its customers and employees. This mission has enabled Dropbox to acquire over 700 million users and become one of the world’s biggest file-hosting service providers.

So, when Dropbox decided to introduce a new collaboration solution, it had to ensure the tool would work well for its 2000+ employees.

Challenge

Creating an enterprise-grade workspace without limiting options for employees

Previously, Dropbox used an existing tool to collaborate and document internal information.

In the spirit of designing enlightened ways of working, they wanted to complement that tool and offer more options to its employees. “We wanted a tool that would enable our teams to easily collaborate, share information, implement security where necessary, and make sure documentation is up to date,” says Damien Davis, Lead Atlassian Administrator at Dropbox.

Dropbox partnered with Modus Create, a three-time Atlassian Partner of the Year award winner, to adopt Confluence Cloud for secure documentation and collaboration.

Selecting the right plan

As Dropbox evaluated which Confluence Cloud plan to choose, our experts suggested that Enterprise made the most sense due to the plan’s additional features, like Atlassian Analytics. Atlassian Analytics turned out to be extremely valuable for Dropbox as it helped Dropbox’s admins see how engaged their Confluence users are, which pages have been created, which teams have templates set up, and more.

Atlassian Analytics: Sample

Another reason behind selecting Confluence Cloud Enterprise was the availability of additional support features. This ensured that when dealing with complex use cases, Dropbox could reach out to Atlassian support for assistance right away.

Optimizing Confluence Cloud for Dropbox

You know you have a successful collaboration tool when it works for you, not the other way around. Modus Create’s Atlassian experts worked closely with Dropbox throughout the engagement to fine-tune the Confluence implementation. Damien says, “Modus Create has been instrumental in making sure that we have sized our rollout appropriately, addressed any technical hurdles before and during the pilot phase, provided premium support, got us access to licenses, made sure our license count was accurate and contacted application vendors to help move through the third-party resource approval process.”

We love working with Modus Create because they help us understand the whole landscape of the various solutions that Atlassian can provide us. They help us think out of the box and develop solutions to complex issues. - Pinky Koshuwan, Jira Administrator at Dropbox

We also helped Dropbox integrate Confluence with Jira Software and several of the team’s other productivity solutions so they can work even faster and view data without switching tools. Dropbox’s team can now embed videos, media, and files and make them accessible to employees across the enterprise. Damien, Pinky, and their administrator team are just as excited as users about their new toolset. “My favorite Confluence Enterprise Cloud feature is Automation. We’re able to send emails to space owners when content is no longer up to date or irrelevant,” Pinky says.

Impact

Seamless and open collaboration

Today, Dropbox employees have even more options to work and collaborate however they want.

“I can now focus on solving customer problems and building content that will help our end users utilize Confluence and other Atlassian tools,” says Pinky. Dropbox continues to work closely with Modus Create to consolidate its instances and optimize its processes and tools even further. By providing Dropbox with reliable information and high-quality services, Modus has become a significant part of the Dropbox team, showing what the company’s “be worthy of trust” core value looks like in action. And by ensuring a secure collaboration platform for all its employees, Dropbox has shown that it lives this value inside and out.

The big win that we’ve seen through the implementation of Confluence Cloud is definitely collaboration. More teams can work together and collaborate within Confluence. It’s a very open way of working at Dropbox. - Damien Davis, Lead Atlassian Administrator at Dropbox

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