Box launches point comments and text highlighting for Platform apps

Cloud syncing and sharing software company Box today announced that developers building custom apps using the Box Platform can now sign up for access to a new feature that can be incorporated into applications: adding comments at specific spots on a document and highlighting text.

Box said it’s allowing 50 developers to get beta access before it makes the feature generally available. For now the annotations can only be added to a limited set of file types, including image files.

“Whether you’re building apps for the attorneys who need to highlight sections of a contract for clients to review, financial advisors who need to add notes to an investment plan, or professors who need to grade homework assignments, annotations can help increase user engagement in apps built for nearly any industry,” Box Platform team product manager Diksha Gautham wrote in a blog post.

Box has previously allowed its end users to make comments on files stored in Box. Point comments, as Box calls them here, are an evolution of that standard comment on the right side of a file preview in Box. The ability to highlight is brand new. So Box is starting to give third-party developers capability that it has not even rolled out to its own users.

Box’s competitor Dropbox introduced the ability for its end users to add comments to specific points in an image last year. Other Box competitors include Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. If anything, this functionality may help developers make the case to managers that Box is the best cloud storage platform to build on. And that ultimately could bring more business for Box.

Publicly traded Box had more than 46 million registered users as of April 30. Other recent Box announcements include Box Zones and Box Shuttle.