Box Platform Basic Glossary
Let me introduce to Box, the leading Content Cloud, a platform empowering organizations to manage the entire content lifecycle, work securely from anywhere, and integrate across best-of-breed apps. In order to support the onboarding process and increase the comprehension of the Box technical solutions I prepared the Box Platform Basic Glossary. I’m sure this post will help you grasp the most important concepts and jumpstart your new content-based cloud-based solutions.
Admin AKA: administrator, superuser, supervisor
A specifically named role is the main admin on an enterprise account. Admins can manage users and groups, view and edit their organization’s files and folders, log in to any user’s account, edit their organization's settings, and run or access reports. The Box Admin is the principal account administrator. Read more about Box Admin Tools.
Admin Console
The dashboard area for administering a particular enterprise; it is accessible by the admin, group admins, and co-admins.
App user
Box app user is a specific type of user within the Box Platform associated with applications or services that integrate with Box. App users are only accessible via the API, meaning they do not have login credentials. A service account can create them and is, therefore, only applicable to applications leveraging server-to-server authentication. App users are tied to the application used to create them. While they can collaborate on content outside the application, the user cannot be moved to another application.
Box Custom Skill AKA: Custom Skill, Box Skill
A type of application that performs custom processing for files uploaded to Box. Skills are designed to make it possible to use third-party machine learning services to extract information from files uploaded to Box automatically.
Check out Alex Novotny’s posts:
- Box Skills: Pieces of the Puzzle + Tutorial
- Box Skills + OpenAI API TL;DR Summarization Tutorial
- Box Skills + IBM Watson Speech-to-Text Tutorial
Box Command Line Interface (Box CLI)
A user-friendly command-line tool allows technical and non-technical users to leverage the Box API to perform routine or bulk actions.
Check out our quick start guide for step-by-step instructions. Use the sample scripts to automate receptive and time-consuming tasks!
Join my presentation during BoxWorks 2023 for the Scaling admin duties with Box CLI session to learn more about Automation Templates. 👋 👩🏻💻 Check out Managing Content Tags in Box using the CLI by Rui Barbosa.
Box Embed
An HTML-based framework that makes it possible to embed the entire Box Web App experience anywhere people work. Box Embed provides the ability to upload, search, comment, share, tag, and edit files using Box Edit.
Read my previous blog post about Embed 2.0 and check out our documentation for further details.
Box Platform
An API-driven cloud content management and collaboration platform that provides developers with the tools and infrastructure to build custom applications, integrate workflows, and leverage powerful features for secure document storage, access control, versioning, metadata management, and real-time collaboration.
Read Alex Novotny’s post about Box Platform Basics: Authentication Methods 101 for more info.
Box Shield
A security solution offered by Box that helps protect sensitive data, prevent unauthorized access, and detect potential threats through automated classification and proactive monitoring. For more info on the Box Shield, read blog posts from Rui Barbosa:
- Getting started with Box Shield Smart Access
- How to setup Box Shield Ethical Walls
- How to setup Box Shield Threat Detection
Box UI Elements
Pre-built UI components that allow developers to add elements of the main Box web application into their applications. They can be used to navigate through, upload, preview, and select content stored on Box and are available both as React components and framework-agnostic JavaScript libraries.
Read more about Box UI Elements in our dedicated guide, or check out my previous blog posts:
like this
Classification
An instance of the classification metadata template containing the classification applied to the file or folder.
Learn how to set automated classifications with Rui Barbosa in his blog post Getting Started with Box Classifications.
Collaborations AKA: permissions, Role-based Access Control (RBAC), Access Control List (ACL), permission mapping
Collaborations define access permissions for users and groups to files and folders, similar to access control lists. A collaboration object grants a user or group access to a file or folder with permissions defined by a specific role. Read more in the dedicated guide.
Custom app
A tailored application that extends the functionality of Box by integrating with other tools and systems to streamline workflows and enhance collaboration. It can be created in the Developer Console and has several authentication methods.
Developer Console AKA developer portal
It is a portal that allows developers to create, debug, test, and monitor their applications by providing real-time insights into code execution and system performance.
Enterprise AKA: repository, content store, file cabinet, docbase, vault
Enterprise in Box is a comprehensive suite of tools and services for large organizations that offers secure file storage, collaboration features, access controls, workflow automation, compliance enforcement, and analytics. It enables efficient document management and teamwork while ensuring data security within an enterprise setting.
Limited access app
A secure and restricted application created in the Developer Console that allows specific users to access and interact with designated content within the Box Platform.
Metadata template AKA: Document class, Document type, Content type, Indexes
A metadata template is a predefined structure that captures and organizes essential information about a document or file. Visit Rui Barbosa’s blog posts to dig into that topic:
- Getting Started with Box Metadata Administration
- Automating Metadata Management using Box Cascade Policies
- Working with Box Metadata Queries.
Managed user
A user account that is centrally controlled and administered by an organization’s admin.
Sandbox
A manageable, trackable, and non-production testing environment for developers.
Service account
A service account provides developers with a programmatic authentication mechanism for server-side integrations with Box. In other words, an application can authenticate to Box as the service represented by a service account user. A service account can then be used to create other application-specific users, called app users.
Software Developer Kit (SKD)
A collection of tools, libraries, and documentation that helps developers create software applications for specific platforms or frameworks. Box offers SDKs in a variety of programming languages. We recently introduced a new generation of generated SDKs.
Read more about the new TypeScript SDK Generated in my latest blog post.
- Are you more into Java and building Android apps? I recommend a great step-by-step tutorial by
Mateusz Woda. - Fancy Python? Cool, start with our recently released self-paced Python SDK workshop from
Rui Barbosa.
Webhook
A webhook is a way for an application to provide real-time data or notifications to another application by sending HTTP POST requests.
Get familiar with webhooks by checking out Rui Barbosa’s Hooked on the Box Platform post.
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