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Running Reports

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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.

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To run reports:

  1. From the Admin Console, go to Reports > Create Report.
  2. Click the down arrowhead (arrowhead_down.png) for the report you want to run. A pane will expand with a summary of what the report will contain.
  3. 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.
  4. In the Run [Report Name] dialog box, enter any report constrains and set a start and end date for the report data, if available .
  5. Click Run.

From the Reports screen you can run the following reports:

Note:

  • This report typically takes up to 12 hours to generate.  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.

 

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.

Notes:
You may see an "Anonymous" user on the User Statistics report which shows when anyone who wasn't logged into Box took an action on a Box item. This can occur for various reasons:
  • 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.

 

Security Logs

Your Security Logs keep track of changes made to settings in your Admin Console. Run a Security Logs report to see what settings have been changed within a given time period, and who made said changes. This report can be useful for monitoring the actions of a Co-Admin or multiple administrators, as well as keeping track of your enterprise settings.

Folders and Files

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.

A Collaborations report contains the following information for each collaboration invitation:
  • Owner Name
  • Owner Login
  • Path (file path in Box)
  • Path IDs (item IDs of each item in file path)
  • Item Name
  • Item ID (unique ID number assigned to each file and folder)
  • Item Type (folder/file)
  • Collaborator Name
  • Collaborator Login
  • Collaborator Type
    • managed
    • external
    • group & group name
  • Collaborator Permission
  • Inviter Email
  • Invited Date
  • Invite Accepted Date

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.
A Shared Links report contains the following information for each shared link:
  • Owner Login (user who owns the file or folder associated with the shared link)
  • Folder/File ID (unique ID number assigned to each file and folder)
  • Folder/File Name
  • Path (file path in Box)
  • Shared Link Status (who can access the item via the shared link)
  • Shared Link (actual shared link URL)
  • Custom URL (if no custom URL has been set, field will remain blank)
  • Password
  • Expiration
  • Permissions
If you would like to report on Custom URLs attached to content in your enterprise, check out our article 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.
An Outbound Collaboration report contains the following information for each external collaboration:
  • Account Name (name of external user)
  • Account Login (email of external user)
  • Owner Login (managed user who invited external user)
  • Item Name (folder in which external user is a collaborator)
  • Item ID (unique ID number assigned to folder)
  • Permission Level (access level of external user)
  • Inviter Email
  • Invited Date
  • Invite Accepted Date

Legal Holds

A Legal Hold report will export a list of all the files currently being held by an active legal hold. Hover over the legal hold that you would like to run a report on, then click Report to run the report.
A Legal Hold report contains the following information for each file held by the legal hold:
  • Assignment Type
  • Assignment ID
  • Parent Folder
  • Parent Folder ID
  • File Name
  • File ID
  • File Version ID
  • Creation Date
  • Uploaded Date

 

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, including:

  • Policy Name
  • Policy Status
  • Policy Type
  • Policy Time Period
  • Policy Disposition Action
  • Policy Created Date

And for each file listed, the report displays:

  • Parent Folder Path
  • Parent Folder Path ID
  • File Name
  • File ID
  • File Version ID
  • Disposition Date
  • Created
  • Uploaded

 

Platform Activity

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, he or she generates an API call.)

More details about the Platform Activity report.

 

Historical Platform Activity

This report provides archived monthly total usage from January 2017 through March 2018. (Box does not maintain historical data on a daily basis; the date listed on this report represents information – in this case, the total number of API calls – for that entire month.)

Like the Platform activity report, this report displays activity broken out by application (Salesforce, Slack, Box Sync, any custom app, and so on). This report contains the following fields:

  • Date (month)
  • App Name
  • Metric
  • Value
  • App ID
  • Chargeable
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