TechStars Chicago company FindIt (formerly Peoplematics) publicly released its first app on the App Store today. The FindIt app gives users a way to search across Gmail, Dropbox and Google Drive for any of their files. The results come back organized by person, time or file type.
“It’s difficult enough as it is to manage an email inbox, let alone track down documents across Google Drive and cloud storage services like Dropbox,” said Levi Belnap, co-founder and CEO of FindIt. “We developed FindIt because we saw the very real need busy professionals have to access the right information when and where they need it.”
I got an early look at the app and have been testing it over the past week. Let me walk you through its best features.
Once I linked my Gmail, Dropbox and Google Drive accounts, I attempted my first search. I started with a term. “TechStars.” The results came back in reverse chronological order, and clicking Person, Time and Type gave me more control over what I found. The ability to distill results according to file type and person were particularly useful. For me, time was less relevant, but that may be different for others.
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I also tried searching by Person, which brought up my contacts list. This was my favorite feature by far. I coordinate with the rest of my team exclusively using Gmail and Google Drive, where I write and share my story drafts. Being able to see all my interactions with specific people helped me follow stories from assignment to publication. While the search results did not particularly differ from what I would find in my own mail or Drive app, seeing them all in one place sped the process up significantly.
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Once I located an email that interested me, I could read it in-app and click links and access Google Drive files without issue. The only snag I did run into, actually, was in trying to open an image. After trying to open the desired file, I was taken to Gmail rather than the image. Somewhat strange, but certainly easily fixable by the FindIt team.
One feature I wanted was support for multiple Gmail accounts, which the team says is in the works. Support for Android and Outlook is also on its way. Overall, FindIt is a powerful tool, particularly for referencing past work and drawing up all your content related to a specific term. As someone who covers different companies every day, this could prove helpful in tracking my past experience of them.
