FEATURE IDEA:
Provide ability to flag/classify files and folders in a way that allows Box to move them to a less-expensive storage offering on the back-end. This can be referred to as an "inactive" or "archive" flag.

BENEFITS & BACKGROUND

During the Box Higher Education Community Monthly Open Discussion on January 11th, an idea to submit to Box Pulse was formed, and seemed to have support from all in attendance (25-30 institutions).

Box acknowledges that there is a growing concern around constantly increasing storage, and the costs associated with it. The majority of files stored in Box are perceived (or actively reported) as being "inactive" and yet those files are costing Box and their customers the same amount. As a result, organizations are searching for alternative cost-effective solutions to move their data into. Implementing a separate solution for a subset of Box data requires significant technical, administrative, procedural, and support overhead.

Given a user or admin-driven active/inactive flag, Box could engineer their platform to use cheaper back-end storage for inactive data, and more permanent storage for active data, ultimately providing a more cost-effective service.

Administrators could be given the ability to set the parameters for what makes something an "inactive" file, and then allow end-users to tag their own content.

Allowing a view and controls around "active" vs "inactive" content, means Box could then provide X amount of "active" storage, and Y amount of "inactive" storage quota either included in the price, or for an additional fee (at better a less-expensive per TB rate). Organizations can then choose to deploy the associated quota controls and processes based on their own budget and needs for active and inactive storage.

Market opportunity -- other cloud  providers do not provide user-initiated controls for this kind of approach to data storage and management. If the providers are implementing anything like this, it is not transparent to the user. Box may have an opportunity to retain users and their data, by providing a more cost-effective glacier/cold-line/archive/inactive data storage offering, side-by-side with the rest of the Box platform.

Request to make classification application settings specific to the classification. Currently, the setting for who can apply/remove a classification is for all classifications, but there are cases where it would be helpful that a classification to be only applied by owners and other where co-owner, or even editor would be allowed to apply certain classifications.

Examples:
1. A classification tied to a Shield access control rule that only owners can apply or remove
2. A classification tied to a Shield access control rule that owner/co-owners can apply or remove
3. A classification identifying a type of content that owners/co-owner/editors can apply/remove

Currently there is one setting button that affects all classification. This proposal is for a setting option for each classification.

The ability to further customize our company login screen (SSO) to include a more prominent way for non-manged users, our clients, to login to Box.

The "Continue" button (continue to our organizations SSO) is prominently shown and many of our clients (non-managed users) who receive links that new files have been shared will follow the link to the login screen and click "continue."

In addition, the confusion is multiplied because many of our clients use the same SSO provider and thus they get an error message when they enter their enterprises SSO credentials.

Not having a clear differentiation between our organization SSO login and the client (non-manged user) login It is very confusing for our clients. The confusion causes much frustration. If the client or non-manged user is frustrated, then they will not use Box.