Saturday, September 5, 2015

CloudHQ: My new favorite cloud integration tool

So it's been a while, and the reviews here are getting kind of stale, but I've been prompted to write again and I hope you'll appreciate the effort!

Improvizations uses Box.com for file storage for a number of reasons; easy management, commenting and tasks on files, great searching, etc. We also don't like it because of it's lack of (or weak) integration with several of our other tools; Bamboo HR, LiquidPlanner, iCims and others. Heck, it doesn't even have a link to gmail for file sharing. We also use Google Apps and it includes 1TB of drive space we don't use. We'd like to because it hooks into gmail and other tools that box doesn't.

We've considered dropping box and moving to drive several times but the security and management tools just don't cut it. Well a solution is on the horizon. I'm testing CloudHQ, a sync tool that works with dropbox, google, box and a million other cloud storage locations (even evernote!). From now on we can save files sent to us via email directly to drive and it will sync to box. We can link up Hubspot CRM which ties to Drive now and have prospect background and other documents available to sales because it links to Drive. And we can still use box to manage client access, although when an IT dept won't allow Box, it might allow Drive, increasing collaboration potential with clients and vendors. And get this. Even the sharing controls follow the file from one cloud storage to another. That's on my list to test because if I can keep all my management activities in Box I'll be really happy!