Word processing app Quip gets an inbox, filters, and redesigned folders

Word processing app startup Quip is today announcing a redesign aimed at improving everyday usage. The team has cooked up an inbox to track updates to all of your documents, and it has new filters that can help you more quickly find what you’re looking for. Folders have also been revamped.

The new inbox has “all the features you’d see in a traditional email inbox — you can filter, you can star, and you can really build a workflow around all your documents,” Quip cofounder and CEO Bret Taylor told VentureBeat in an interview.

You can now quickly get different results in your inbox based on the new filters: “only starred documents,” “only unread updates,” “private files,” “direct messages,” “files you created,” and, of course, “all documents.” There’s also a new “mark all as read” button. (Before, there were only filters for “all files,” “unread files,” and “private files.”)

And the inbox has less clutter. It’s been centered. And unlike, say, Gmail, or the Recent mode in Google Drive, files in Quip are separated out based on the date they were last updated. The extra white space — light gray space, really, instead of the dark gray space before — is a welcome adjustment.

The updates could make Quip a better alternative to other cloud-based word processing services, including Google Docs and Office 365.

Once you’re working on a document, you’ll see a few new things. For one, you’ll see a star option at the top right, so you can give the document that special status.

Plus, at the top of the document you’re working on, you’ll see the folder it’s kept in and the folder in which that folder is located, and so on. And shared folders are now easy to find in the left column of Quip when you’re using the new inbox.

Quip started in 2012 and is based in San Francisco, with 37 employees. The startup announced a $30 million funding round in October.

Tens of thousands of teams and millions of individuals are now using Quip, Taylor said. Annual recurring revenue tripled in 2015, and some enterprises are now paying more than $1 million per year, he said.

A blog post has more detail on the launch.