We are using Box to collaborate and share files with many people and organisations outside our business. We need a report that will allow us to identify each Collaborator, Who invited the collaborator, which Folders and Files they have access to and the date of their last activities. Ideally we would like to be able to export this to Excel for further analysis, investigation and action.

It concerns me that we do not have the tools to effectively manage the sharing of data outside the organisation.

Hi,

We have been struggling to get Folder level Activity and Access reports for the last one year as we are not admins. For our team, we store reports in BOX which are viewed by my entire Organization. We need to know which reports are viewed the most out of thousands of reports and align our reports accordingly.

Now, without this feature, we are clueless and it is very difficult to get this kind of report where multiple folders exists. Doing it one file at a time is not a feasible solution.

Can we have an update on the request and by when we can expect this feature so that at least the the Owner of a Parent folder can run the report? Without this feature, the whole purpose of using Box is failing.

Hi there,

I have recently had a project where I needed stats regarding all files in my Box folder - something like a biog spreadsheet with each file in a row and date of creation, number of collaborators, number of versions etc - but found out that stats are only available for individual files. It would really help to have such functionality, even though I am not sure how easily this could be implemented. Indeed it would really help in many ways - although it is certainly a funny request - especially considering that we are living in a world where there is never enough data.

Any update on this? Nearly 2 years no update! This seems like a very basic and common report request. Why so long to consider it?

I’m looking to build a compiled report of access stats on all documents in a given set of nested folders. I want to see all content in a single view/report that I can sort and filter as needed. Right now I have to drill down into each individual file for access stats on that one file, and there's no way to easily see stats on all documents in a folder or set of folders.

why had this been here so long with no update .....

Essential function - please provide!

I feel this would be a key feature for collaborative teams.

Our use case: Enterprise deployment with no user capability to make top level folders or run admin reports. What we'd like is to have collaborator reports for each top-level folder (or even better, a subset of these as they aren't all daily drivers), as we particularly want to see where external collaborators have been added to files/folders down the tree to help with our access control. Importantly, we want that specific information to be available to the owner/co-owner of the respective folder (e.g. drop a copy of the report into the top-level folder somewhere; email/alert the co-owner). Automation critical here because we 1) have a really large number of top-level folders so ad hoc reporting is challenging and filtering the report by folder and sending to the co-owner is manual, and 2) co-owners of other folders shouldn't be seeing reports for other folders so one big report available to all co-owners for example, is no good to us.

Can currently export access stats for a file, but would suggest option to export for a folder.

IBM ABSOLUTELY NEEDS THIS

It would also be very beneficial if users could actually export the access stats in enterprise environments which limit changes at the top level All Files folder as well. As long as we are able to get a Box Reports folder created, they should still get the Export button option. Having the export option is a basic functionality so that teams can track usage of their Box content.

Today if you temporarily allow access at the All Files folder to generate the initial Reports folder then enable the restriction again, the Export option disappears.

I use Activity and Access Stats exports in infosec investigations. Being able to generate those for both a folder itself and for all the files in the folder in one report would be extremely helpful. Being able to do that via the Admin console would be even better. Right now, having to either ask end users to run the reports or to grant me access as a co-owner introduces some overhead to the investigation. In some cases, it would be better for the user to not know an investigation is going on.

As a user who utilizes Box to share files and folders with clients and colleagues it would be greatly beneficial to be able to readily obtain statistical reports regarding activity related to files and folders. I am specifically interested in activity metadata concerning who has accessed which file and further details concerning the type of access/action performed and the time of this action.

Currently, in the Box web interface I can obtain the desired information on a per file basis by exporting access statistics via a report. However, I am unable to scale this up to export a similar report for all files and/or folders in my Box instance/environment. Further, I have been told by "Box Customer Success" that this functionality is not available and that I should contribute my use case to this thread in order to communicate a specific need for this functionality.

I seek the functionality that will allow me as a user -- or an admin via the admin console -- to run a report that contains access stats regarding files and folders I have shared with other Box users or via links from the beginning of our use of Box to the present.

Metadata shall, at least, include the following (or similar) fields:
User Name
User Email
IP Address
Date/Time (in UTC)
Action (i.e., Preview, Edit, Comment, Download)
Affected (file or folder name)
Parent Folder (parent folder or folder hierarchy of the affected file or folder)

If, as a user, I am able to export an access stats report on a per file basis, then why is it not possible for me to export an access stats report for either, a list of specific files, or all files in my Box instance/environment? It would seem that such a report could be run recursively for the access stats report for each file identified in a list.

Failure to provide users and organizations with access to this information is cause for great concern because it doesn't allow for data audits regarding who is accessing which files and/or folders. This can easily result in information security issues such as data leaks whereas unintended parties are able to access data they should be locked out of. I think this feature is imperative in order to assure Box clients that data security is taken seriously and, further, to assure that Box clients can perform data audits as needed, with transparency and without any encumbrance.

I implore you to take action by adding this feature/functionality to Box ASAP.

Gaining insight of file previews and downloads at a holistic level is invaluable. Our research teams use Box to deliver reporting and other research guides to our sales teams. Without that high level of reporting, it is extremely difficult for us to see which files are being used and how often, so we can prioritize improvements and build out areas that our sales people need. This is a key feature that will greatly improve our workflow.

Use Case: Our F500 org has a corporate accounts group that among other things, uses Box to store important documents by customer (there are over a hundred customer-labeled folders.

Corp-based business users in this group are interested in gathering the traffic (i.e. the preview and download activity) in specific files in these folders on a monthly basis. This is currently a tedious effort of navigating to these files in the various (i.e. many dozens of) folders.

An export option would make this tedious effort go away.

Please consider this sooner vs. later! Someone believed enough in metrics to implement the file-based feature; it's a highly touted and possible feature for good reason, but the requirement to navigate to each individual file to see the metrics displayed for the file is a limiter. The value an organization derives from measuring file activity can be multiplied if file activity can be conveniently queried per a particular chosen folder structure and exported.

As mentioned, stats on both activity and collaborations are valuable.

Use Case: Customer asks me, the Box Admin, "Can you please provide me with a report of all file activity (uploads/downloads/deletions) in the 'Executive Oversight Committee' folder for the last 6 months?"

Right now, it is nearly impossible to create such a report. The only way is to export file activity for all users over the last 6 months and then try to filter it by folder, but this is too much data to parse easily in Excel and it often causes the Box reporting functions to fail.

Our users have been asking for this. Our Regional Operating Centers receive many files daily from the division offices and after processing them move them into Completed folders. They would love to be able to audit how many files have been moved in particular folder sets.

Our users would like this option to be available to analysis shared folders shared with external collaborators, see all access stats and be able to provide this as part of an audit if requested.

I have updated this as our users would like to have this ability on folders in which they are editors.