Add separate "status" column to Box Drive application
Box Drive has a known issue of overlay iconography sometimes not displaying after installed. This is affecting about 10% of our client installs and is an absolute headache and nightmare to resolve without registry updates.
This is caused due to the Box Drive apps's reliance on the "ImageList_SetOverlayImage" function in Windows which has a hard limit of 15 values. Thus Box Drive's icons "compete" with other cloud providers' icons on priority and is totally unsustainable as you are at the mercy of how other cloud providers code their software to take precedence over others in this list (by playing the game of naming their registry key values to sort above others).
As per this Microsoft article, this limitation is here to stay: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20190313-00/?p=101094
A way to get around this is to simply use a separate "Status" column (as noted in the article above).
This change will help to resolve this known issue for with Box Drive.
Anonymous
shared this idea
This change would require a shift to a completely new architecture, which is not planned at this time.
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Sotaro Fukami_深見宗太郎
commented
This is due to Windows specifications, which only allow a maximum of 15 overlay icons to be set (4 of these are occupied by the system, so there are actually only 11).
Therefore, BoxDrive requires a maximum of 6 of the 15, and this problem can be solved by deleting or changing the subkey in the registry.Many users rename the following Box-related subkeys (for example, by inserting a space or a number such as 0000 at the beginning) so that they exist above other subkeys.
・BoxAvailableOffline
・BoxLocked
・BoxLockedByOther
・BoxProblem
・BoxSynced
・BoxSyncingHowever, despite the above settings, when Microsoft's One Drive update is performed, the overlay icon display on the Windows OS side is also updated and changed,
Many users have confirmed that the status icon on the Box Drive side is hidden again.To resolve this issue, please consider an alternative way of displaying the status icon.
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Anonymous
commented
So lets continue to use software that's always going to be broken because Microsoft Fresh load of windows already has 7 entries... Box requires 6 entries... Install a commonly used software like Adobe Creative cloud, and this is now broken....
If Microsoft can figure it out... Box should be able to figure it out.
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Anonymous
commented
Has this been revisited recently? Would be very helpful to have as it will enable us to better project manage documents within your system. I know this is a functionality in SharePoint and google drive.
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John Nickell
commented
OneDrive is leveraging this "new architecture", please consider investing the time in 'modernizing' the application. Not only could it improve the issue with Overlay limit, I'm guessing it might also address issues where a user pinning a folder/item to their Quick access loses visibility of Box ovelay status.
Additionally a BIG win of this might be conveying to Box Drive users if a file/folder they are looking at is shared with others.
Don't know how much the two are related, but OneDrive also allows shorcuts/bookmarks to be visible on the Desktop client. Another win!