What's New: A Zoho WorkDrive Timeline

Team users can now share files and folders directly with external users using email addresses. This includes:

• Users of other teams or organizations in WorkDrive
• Individual plan users in WorkDrive
• External users (who do not have a WorkDrive or Zoho account)

WorkDrive Individual users can also share files and folders directly with team users using email addresses.

Access levels for files and folders: View, View and comment, and Edit

Create collection links to easily request any number of users to upload files to a particular folder. Once users upload their files, you will be able to view their submissions and manage their files effortlessly.

You can create separate collection links for internal (team users) and external users (anyone on the internet) with a custom link settings, such as expiration date, file count limit, and file size limit.

Note:

• Users don't need to sign up for a WorkDrive account to upload files.
• Users uploading files cannot view files uploaded by others

Available in: WorkDrive's Team and Business plans

Zoho WorkDrive offers a single shared storage for your entire organization. This means no separate storage for My Folders, Team Folders, or users. If you wish to restrict your team users from using a large storage space in their My Folders, you can now set a storage limit.

You can set a storage limit in My Folders at both team level and user level.

Team admins can now restrict individual users in their team from sharing files from My Folders with external users. When external sharing is disabled in My Folders for a user, they will not be able to set the permalink visibility to anyone on the internet. They will not be able to create external share links, download links, and embed codes. Any previously created share links will no longer work.

The WorkDrive Genie app helps you open and edit any of your WorkDrive files on the web with your default desktop applications. For example, you can open and edit files such as documents, images, and videos with Microsoft Word, CorelDRAW, and Adobe Premiere Pro, respectively, on your desktop.

Download WorkDrive Genie (Download link)

Note: WorkDrive Genie is currently only supported for Windows OS. 

Learn more about the WorkDrive Genie app

Using a custom domain name will allow your team members to access WorkDrive via a URL relevant to your organization or team. This will also help promote your brand when you share files with external users using your company's custom domain name.

For example, let's say you are from the organization Zylker. Instead of the typical WorkDrive domain, which is https://workdrive.zoho.com, you can log in to your WorkDrive account via a custom URL like https://workdrive.zylker.com or https://documents.zylker.com.

Support for custom domain is only available in WorkDrive's Business plan. Check the details of all plans of WorkDrive here.

Learn how to set up a custom domain for your WorkDrive account

If you work with external users for a long period (say, 6-12 months), you can now add them as client users to your WorkDrive Team with limited roles and permissions. Team admins can add client users to the required Team Folders from the Admin Console.

• Client users can access WorkDrive using web and mobile applications.
• You will need to buy licenses for client users separately as an add-on. Member licenses cannot be used to purchase client user licenses.

Learn more about client users

Templates are preset layouts that help you create files with consistent file settings, such as style, design, and formatting, including the default or primary content. Zoho WorkDrive allows you to create and use templates for documents and spreadsheets via Zoho Writer and Sheet, respectively.

Save files as Templates
Anyone on the team can save files as a template to their My Templates, but only Team, Enterprise, and Template Admins can save files as a template to Org Templates.

Create files using Templates
You can create new Writer (document), and Sheet (spreadsheet) files using templates from My Templates, Org Templates, and Public Templates.

Learn more on Templates

Share files and folders with the WorkDrive support team to analyze, debug, or understand issues related to preview, formatting, and editing.

• Download and comment permissions are restricted for WorkDrive Support by default.
• File or folder access will be automatically removed after 7 days.
• Activity and access stats of WorkDrive support will be logged in each file or folder for auditing.

Learn more about sharing to WorkDrive Support

Follow important files and folders to stay up-to-date on all changes made by your collaborators. For files, you will get instant notifications for version update, rename, and comment actions. For folders, you will get notifications for create, upload, add, or remove actions.

You can choose a preferred notification setting to receive bell notifications, email notifications, or both.

Learn more about following files and folders

Team Admins can now view and manage all of their team members' connected devices from the Admin Console. They can do the following:

• View all connected devices

• Set permissions for desktop and mobile apps

• Disconnect, or wipe and disconnect, devices remotely

Support for managing user devices is only available in WorkDrive's Business plan.

Learn more about managing team devices

Admins can centrally manage access to WorkDrive's desktop and mobile apps at the team level from the Admin Console. If disabled, team members will not be able to use WorkDrive apps to access files.

Support for managing permission for WorkDrive apps is only available in WorkDrive's Business plan.

Learn more about team-level access settings

WorkDrive's Data Retention Policy allows you to retain files and folders for up to a certain period (such as 30 days), then automatically delete them afterwards.

• For Trash in My Folders and Team Folders, Team Admins can choose whether they want to keep those files indefinitely or set them to be deleted after 7, 15, or 30 days.
• For Deleted Items in the Admin Console, Team Admins can choose whether they want to permanently delete them after 7, 30, 90, or 120 days.

The Data Retention Policy is only available for the WorkDriveBusiness plan, and Zoho One users.

You can now preview different versions of a file in WorkDrive.

To preview file versions:

1. Right-click a file and select Preview.
2. Click the Details icon on the right sidebar.
3. Select View versions under Modified by. You can view the list of versions made to the file under the Versions tab.
4. Click the vertical dots icon next to a file version, then select Preview.

Note:

• Zoho WorkDrive supports previews for 160+ file formats. You can view the complete list of supported files here. 

• Versions of Writer, Sheet, and Show files are maintained in their respective Zoho editors.

If you want to migrate your data from OneDrive (Microsoft 365 Business Standard plan) to Zoho WorkDrive, you can make use of our built-in migration tool.

The Super Admin or Admin of the WorkDrive account should first raise a request for migration. Once we have the requirements, we will enable the migration tool in their WorkDrive account. The Super Admin or Admins can then find the migration tool in their Admin Console and start the migration from there.

Please read these migration prerequisites and limitations first, and then follow the migration steps given on the help page to migrate your data.

The WorkDrive TrueSync app gives you a virtual drive of your WorkDrive account on your computer to access all your files without actually downloading any of them. This saves you storage space on the desktop.

TrueSync also lets you sync files in Zoho WorkDrive's web version to your computer and vice versa. With WorkDrive TrueSync, you can make the data on your computer to be available either online only or offline.

Download TrueSync app for Mac (download link)

Labels help you to easily identify and access files and folders across different locations in WorkDrive. You can add labels based on priority, status, task, and much more. Once you add a label to files and folders, you can view all those items under each label.

User Preferences in WorkDrive helps you to choose the default settings for your account, such as theme, view, sorting, and landing location.

The WorkDrive TrueSync app gives you a virtual drive of your WorkDrive account on your computer to access all your files without actually downloading any of them. This saves you storage space on the desktop.

Let's say you've got 250 GB of hard drive space. With the TrueSync virtual drive, you can still access and work with over 1 TB of your data in WorkDrive.

TrueSync also lets you sync files in Zoho WorkDrive's web version to your computer and vice versa. With WorkDrive TrueSync, you can make the data on your computer to be available either online only or offline.

Download TrueSync app for Windows (download link)

In WorkDrive, you can now create Data Templates to classify files and folders and add custom information or properties as metadata to organize them. Once you associate files and folders with custom values, you can easily search for and manage data using the Data Templates filter.

Data Templates are ideal for any company that stores data in files and folders and manages them daily or at regular intervals.

Note: This feature is only available in the WorkDrive's Business edition.

A team member can now share a file or folder with Groups (including both WorkDrive Groups and Org Groups).

Note: This Groups feature is only available in Team, Business, and Enterprise editions of WorkDrive.

WorkDrive's new Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature extracts text from all your images, as well as from documents where images have been added. Extracted text will be converted into searchable metadata, making it even easier to search for your saved files.

For example, if you use the search term "car," the OCR feature will fetch all images and documents where the word "car" occurs in images.

• Supported languages for text extraction: 70 (check out all the supported languages here)
• Supported image formats - JPEG, JPG, PNG, TIF, TIFF, BMP
• Supported document formats - PDF, DOCX, DOC, PPT, PPTX

With WorkDrive's Object Detection feature, you can search for image files based on the actual objects they depict.

For example, if you use the search term "car," the Object Detection feature will fetch all images that have a car in them.

Here's the list of supported object categories in Object Detection Search.

Quickly scan and upload documents as images or PDFs with the WorkDrive iOS mobile app. You can choose your preferred location to save (e.g., My Folders, Shared with Me, or a Team Folder) and rename the files if needed before saving them to WorkDrive.

You can now share files and folders individually with Group members using the WorkDrive iOS and Android mobile apps. This is similar to sharing files and folders with team members—just add the Group name instead of team members in the Share dialog, give an appropriate access level, and share.

You can learn how to create Groups in WorkDrive here. The Groups feature is only available in the Team and Business editions of WorkDrive.

Groups created in Zoho One (Collaboration Groups), Zoho Workplace, and Zoho Directory are said to be Org Groups. You can share a file or folder with these Org Groups as well.

WorkDrive's iOS mobile app will now support the iOS 13 dark mode feature.

iPad users can now drag and drop files from other apps such as Files and Photos to WorkDrive with the Multitasking feature.

When there are no search results found in WorkDrive, you can now search across Zoho apps using Zia Search. You must have installed the Zia Search app to use this feature.

Easily create embed codes for files and folders stored in Team Folders or My Folders and add them to your website or blog. For embed codes, you can set a password, allow or restrict downloads, and request user data from external users. 

You can create multiple custom embed codes for the same file or folder to add them to different websites or blogs with different sharing specifications.

WorkDrive's reports for each embed code shows you the number of views and downloads made by external users, as well as any requested user details, such as name, phone number, and email address.

Create download links for your files to send to your stakeholders. Similar to embed links, you can also apply usual external sharing settings to these download links. Also, you can restrict the number of downloads for a file. Once it reaches the threshold, no more downloads will be allowed via the link. 

Team Folder admins can allow team members and external users to upload files to their Team Folders via email. If Allow file uploads via email is enabled, WorkDrive will generate a unique email address for that Team Folder. Any attachments sent to that email address will be uploaded to the specified location in the Team Folder.

It's now even easier to migrate your data to Zoho WorkDrive from G Suite Drive or Dropbox Business with our built-in migration tool.

To do so, the Super Admin or an Admin of the WorkDrive account should first raise a request for migration. Once we have the requirements, we will enable the migration tool in their WorkDrive account. The Super Admin or Admins can then find the Migration tool in their Admin Console and start the migration from there.

Refer the help documents for G Suite and Dropbox migrations.

Create Groups based on member roles or profiles, and easily add the entire Group to Team Folders. This reduces the need for adding members individually to a Team Folder.

The Groups feature is only available in the Team and Business editions of WorkDrive.

Create and manage Groups in your Team

Add Groups to a Team Folder

If your team needs additional space in WorkDrive, you can easily buy more storage, available in increments of 10 GB, 100 GB, and 1 TB. 

The additional amount will be automatically added to your WorkDrive subscription for both monthly and yearly plans. Refer pricing page for more details.

With the cloud picker option in Zoho WorkDrive, you can now import files from third-party cloud storage services like Google Drive, Box, Dropbox, OneDrive, and Evernote.

Create groups in Zoho One and view them in your Zoho WorkDrive account. Groups can be added to Team Folders in the same way that you add members to them. All group members will have the same role (Admin, Organizer, Editor, or Viewer) in the Team Folder.

With groups, you don't have to manually invite or remove members with the same role to a Team Folder. Any changes that you make in a group (in Zoho One), like adding or removing members, will be reflected everywhere the group has been used.

Zoho WorkDrive, a file management app for teams and businesses, will soon replace Zoho Docs. Use the migration tool to effortlessly migrate all your data from Docs to WorkDrive.

This migration is only applicable for teams and businesses with more than one user. Note that individual users can continue to use Docs until the WorkDrive app for individual users is available.