Business, Business Plus, and Enterprise admins can monitor activity and view data about their Box accounts and the content owned by their accounts by generating reports in the Admin Console. Reports can be generated on-demand for any specified time period and these reports can go back as far as 7 years, or as long as you have an account tariff with reporting access.
Both admins and co-admins can run and filter reports, depending on permission settings:
- The primary admin can run reports and filter by any group or user type (managed, unmanaged, admin, co-admin).
- Any co-admin who has permission to Run new reports and access existing reports (marked in orange below) can run the usage logs that are date bound (without selecting a user or group).
- A co-admin who has permission to Run new reports and access existing reports (marked in orange below) and permission to Manage groups (marked in green below) can run a usage log by groups.
- A co-admin who has reporting permissions can run a usage log by user.
To run reports:
- Go to Admin Console > Reports.
- Click the Create Report tab.
- Click Run or Set Filters for any report. Set Filters will allow you to decide what data gets output to the report. See Report Filters for details.
Note
Some reports, such as Legal Holds and Retention, are not run from Reports. Click View to be taken directly to the area of the Admin Console from which these reports can be run.
- In the Run [Report Name] dialog box, enter any report constrains and set a start and end date for the report data, if available.
- Click Run.
From the Reports screen you can run the following reports:
- User Detail
- User Activity
- User Statistics
- Security Logs
- Folders & Files
- Collaborations
- Shared Links
- Outbound Collaboration
- Legal Holds
- Retention
- Platform Activity
Note:
- Reports can take several minutes to up to 12 hours to generate, depending on the size of the data set. However, for particularly large data sets, it can take longer.
- If the status of your report does not update in 24 hours, or has been in a Pending status for 24 hours, please contact Product Support.
- For most reports, data is available for up to 24 hours before the time that the report is run. For the User Details report, data is available for up to 1 hour before the time that the report is run.
User Details
User Details reports provide a range of data about every user in your organization (name, emails, groups, collaboration permissions, and so on). This includes identifying whether and how many of the users in your organization are unmanaged. More information on running the User Details report.
See User Details Report Columns for more information about what's contained in User Details reports.
You must define filters for the User Details report before you can run it. See User Details Report Filters for more information.
User Details reports are created as comma-separated value (.csv) files.
User Activity
User Activity reports provide an overview of the actions your users are taking in Box. Use this report to view the actions made by your users within a given time period. You can select a Group or Managed User to filter by. You can also select specific folders or files for which to filter activity. Then you can filter by action type using the dropdown below the header. If you choose to export this report, a new folder will be created in your Box Reports folder containing a .csv file. This folder description in the right-hand sidebar will contain information about your report. It may take some time for the .csv file to appear. While your report is exporting, the Status field in the folder description will read In Progress. Once your report has been exported, the status changes to Complete.
See User Activity Report Columns for more information about what's contained in User Activity reports.
You must define filters for the User Activity report before you can run it. See User Activity Report Filters for more information about User Activity report filters, including a list of actions you can filter by, and a description of each action.
User Activity reports are created as comma-separated vale (.csv) files.
Notes:
- At least one Action Type must be selected to run a User Activity report.
- Actions taken by External Users will be included within a User Activity Report if the report is run on the entire Enterprise.
- If the date range is within last year, it is usually faster to run the report in Box rather than exporting it.
- If your date range is greater than 1 year, you must export the report. The run button will be disabled.
- User actions may be delayed by up to one day before uploading an exported .csv reports.
- A "user" with the name "Box Admin Reports" appears as a newly-created user the first time an admin runs a report.
- You cannot filter by a deleted user prior to running or exporting the report.
- Filtering for a folder displays activity for files and folders immediately within it, but not activity for content within subfolders.
- For the View report, events only within the last year are available.
User Statistics
A User Statistics report gives you a breakdown of your managed users, groups, and external users, showing how many actions they have made in Box over a given period of time. When you export this report, a new folder will be created in your Box Reports folder containing a .csv file. This folder description in the right-hand sidebar will contain information about your report. It may take some time for the .csv file to appear. While your report is exporting, the Status field in the folder description will read In Progress. Once your report has been exported, it will change to Complete.
See User Statistics Report Columns for more information about what's contained in User Statistics reports.
You must define filters for the User Statistics report before you can run it. See the User Statistics Report Filters for more information.
User Statistics reports are created as comma-separated value (.csv) files.
- Shared Links: Users do not need to be logged into Box to access a shared link. Thus you may see previews, uploads, and downloads by "Anonymous". This typically relates to shared link activity.
- Email Upload: Users do not need to be logged into Box to upload via email. As a result, you may see "Anonymous" making many uploads.
- Embed Widget: Users do not need to be logged into Box to preview an embed widget on a website. Thus, you may see "Anonymous" previews.
- API integration: you may see other "Anonymous" actions if you have an API integration that performs actions in your account.
- When uploads occur via File Request you may see the folder owner as the name of the uploader (as it is technically an anonymous uploader). To identify uploads via a file request, navigate to User Activity Report > File Management > Uploaded and click View. Then, under Details, filter by Service = File Request.
- If you are curious for more details around an "Anonymous" action, run a User Activity Report for that action type and select the same date range.
The Folders and Files report lists all the content in your Box account.
See Folders and Files Report Columns for more information about what's contained in Folders and Files reports.
A global folder picker, enabling you to select folders from your user's accounts, is available for Business Plus and higher accounts. See Folders and Files Report Filters for more information.
Folders and Files reports are created as comma-separated value (.csv) files.
Note
There is a 10 million item limit on this report. If an organization has greater than 10 million items, the report will not run.
Collaborations
The Collaborations report lists collaboration invites sent to users both in and outside of your enterprise within a given time period. In this case, the "Owner Name" is the name of the folder's owner, "Inviter Email" is the name of the user who sent the invitation, and the "Collaborator Name" is the name of the user invited.
See Collaborations Report Columns for more information about what's contained in Collaboration reports.
You must define filters for the Collaborations report before you can run it. See Collaborations Report Filters for more information.
Collaborations reports are created as comma-separated value (.csv) files.
Shared Links
The Shared Links report lists all active shared links created for files or folders in your Box account. This report is useful when you want to see what content in your enterprise has been shared.
See Shared Links Report Columns for more information about what's contained in Shared Links reports.
Shared Links reports are created as comma-separated value (.csv) files.
If you would like to report on Custom URLs attached to content in your enterprise, see Reporting on Custom URLs.
Outbound Collaboration
The Outbound Collaboration report lists all of your managed users who are listed as collaborators in content owned outside of your box account. If a managed user is a collaborator in more than one folder, they are listed multiple times, once for each folder.
See Outbound Collaboration Report Columns for more information about what's contained in Outbound Collaborations reports.
Outbound Collaborations reports are created as Excel spreadsheet (.xlsx) files.
Legal Holds
A Legal Hold report will export a list of all the files currently being held by an active legal hold. Legal Holds reports are not run from the Reports section of the Admin Console, but from the Legal Holds tab in Governance. Click View in Reports next to Legal Holds to navigate there directly from Reports. Hover over the legal hold that you would like to run a report on, then click Report to run the report.
See Legal Holds Report Columns for more information about what's contained in Outbound Collaborations reports.
Legal Holds reports are created as comma-separated value (.csv) files.
Retention
Retention policies enable you to retain certain types of content in Box for a specified period of time, and remove content from Box that is no longer relevant. A retention report exports details of a particular retention policy, along with a list of all of the files the policy covers. Retention reports do not include files that have already met their retention requirements and been removed.
Each report provides basic information about the retention policy. See Retention Reports for details and see Retention Report Columns for more information about what's contained in Retention reports..
Retention reports are created as Excel spreadsheet (.xlsx) files.
The platform activity report enables you to monitor on demand your organization’s consumption of platform resources. Using this report can help you:
- verify resource consumption for yourself, saving you the time and hassle of reaching out for support from anyone at Box
- figure out more precisely how your people are adopting Box and integrating it into their daily work routines
- determine the growth or success of any applications your organization may have built on the Box platform
- ascertain the overall value your Box investment is returning
- identify your most highly-consumed integrations
- see how many custom apps are being built
The platform activity report is a downloadable .CSV file, accessible from your admin console via the Reports tab. The report displays your organization’s resource usage in the form of API calls. (Each time someone uploads, downloads, modifies, or access a file, they generates an API call.)
More details about the Platform Activity report.