The Custom Terms of Service feature can be enabled in your Box account for Business Plus and higher plans. This functionality enables you to require that all collaborators view and agree to a Terms of Service document before accessing your company’s Box content. The Custom Terms of Service feature is available with both the UI and API.
If you would like this setting to be enabled for your account, contact your Customer Success Manager.
If you have a Box Shield contract, Box enables this feature for your enterprise by default.
IMPORTANT: Updating Terms of Service requires users to accept the new Terms of Service before continuing to edit content. If users are editing content in Box, they must refresh the page or re-authenticate before proceeding. If a user fails to accept the new Terms of Service, edits created after updating the Terms of Servcie may be lost.
Configuration
Once enabled for your organization, configure the Custom Terms of Service feature in the Admin Console (Admin Console >Enterprise Settings > Custom Setup tab.)
- Select the types of users who require Terms of Service (ToS). Choose from the following:
- No one
- External users only
- Managed users only
- Managed and external users
- Enter the custom Terms of Service you want users to view and comply with. In the top of the page, click Save .
Note
Admins cannot use the instant login feature to accept the Terms of Service on behalf of an account holder. The account holder must log into box.com to do this. However, if you need that functionality, Box provides an API endpoint.
HTML Support
Custom Terms of Service feature supports only the tags listed below:
- links <a href> and <a>,
- bold <b>,
- line breaks <br>,
- italic <em>, italic <i>,
- strong <strong>,
- span <span>,
- underline <u>.
Known Limitations
The following limitation applies only to users who are logged in to the application when Terms of Service is set up or updated:
If a user logs in after the custom Terms of Service is set up or updated, the user can accept them in the app.
The Box Mobile application does not allow account holders to accept custom Terms of Service.
However, as an account holder you can accept the custom Terms of Service by doing the following:
- Open a web browser and log into your Box account.
- Access the folder with the custom Terms of Service.
- Accept the custom Terms of Service.
After accepting the Terms of Service on either the desktop or mobile web browser, account holders can access their content through the Box Mobile application.
The User Experience
Managed Users
Once you’ve created your Terms of Service, the next time a managed user logs in to Box, the managed user must accept the Terms of Service to proceed to their account.
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Users are asked to re-accept the Terms of Service if you turn off the feature, save, and turn it back on again.
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Users will also be asked to re-accept the Terms of Servcie if you change only the text.
External Users
After you’ve created your Terms of Service, Box changes the collaborations of existing external users to Pending and these users temporarily lose collaboration access to the content. The next time an external user logs in to Box, the external user must Accept the Terms of Service to regain collaboration access to the content.
- After accepting the Terms of Service, Box restores the collaboration levels of external users. If any external collaborators do not accept the Terms of Service within 30 days, Box removes these users as collaborators from the content.
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If you turn off the feature, save, and turn it back on again, users must re-accept the Terms of Service. Box blocks users from collaborating until they have re-accepted the Terms of Service.
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If you only change the Terms of Service text, Box does not require users to re-accept the Terms of Service.
Notes
- When Terms of Service are enabled for external users, Box scans external collaborations and asynchronously sets them to Pending. Depending on the number of external collaborations, it can take time for Box to prompt external users to accept the custom Terms of Service.
- When Terms of Service are enabled for external users, but then disabled before all existing external users accept the ToS, any users who were unable to accept the ToS receive the status Pending and are removed after 30 days.
- User Activity Report shows when an external user is removed from collaborations because that user did not accept or rejected the ToS in 30 days. The Removed collab action indicates the user was removed by a backend service. The report also shows from what content the user was removed, which can help to reinstate the collaborations.
an Admin cannot accept these Terms of Service on behalf of a Managed User. If the Managed User's Account has not yet accepted these Custom Terms of Service set by your Enterprise, logging in as the user via the Admin Console will result in lack of basic functionality.