Online Workspace Solution To Offer Full-Text Search

By Marisa Peacock | Published Mar 24, 2009

In February, Box.net (news,site) released a new interface that let users utilize activity streams and user profiles to view participants' file history. Then they added an online text editor so that users could create and edit documents directly on the Box.net website. Today, they have announced that Box business users can conduct full-text searches.

This online document storage service is becoming about much more than just storage.

Full-text search provides users with more relevant and complete search results, based on text within any text document including Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDFs, TXT and CSV files. Box.net begins delivering this search capability which includes user-defined file descriptions, including text on file, folder names and user-defined tags to select Box's business customers today. Over the next few weeks, full-text search will automatically be available to every Box business customer.

A Bigger Box

What started a few years ago as a consumer storage site has blossomed into an online collaboration and content management tool connecting employees from more than 50,000 companies. As Box.net grew, so did the needs of those companies, which helped to facilitate Box's newest capabilities, including full-text search.

Full-text search is offered as a complete solution for searching in-depth content and metadata across all files without the added cost, complexity and pre-set document limits of other enterprise search solutions.

box.net screenshot.jpg

Box.Net Full-text search

The Inspiration of Open Source

Box.net turned to open source for their inspiration but took it a step further and put together their own search algorithm, which creates relevant searches based on who's searching and with what groups they collaborate.

Eventually, Box.net hopes to expand their search capabilities so that files can be searched based on context, attributes, file size and other user behaviors. Such tools will inevitably enhance workflow as well as discovery capabilities.

Box Availability and Pricing 

Box is offered in a variety of packages and editions ranging from the free Lite version which offers basic functionality for people who have simple collaboration needs to the US$ 15/month per user in the Business version which offers better control, additional features, including full-text search and is scalable for any sized business.