External users are collaborators from outside your organization. From an administrative perspective, these are people who have been invited to collaborate on your company's content. External users can be granted the same collaborator access and sharing rights as managed users, but your control over the content they own and their security settings are limited.
To view and manage the external users associated with your account:
- Go to Admin Console > Users & Groups.
- Click the External Users tab.
- Double-click an external user name.
As a co-admin, you only have access to folders you own or collaborate on, and you might not see all of the managed/external user folders under Folder Collaborations in the Admin Console. Contact your admin for more information.
Once you are viewing the details page of an external user, you can:
- Change the folders or access level of folders by clicking Edit in the Folder Collaborations section to:
- Add folders that the external user can be collaborated into by clicking Select New Folder and then selecting one or more folders.
- Change the Access Level for any folder the external user is collaborated into by clicking the drop-down list and selecting a different collaborator permission.
- Remove collaborator access to a folder by selecting the folder check box (visible when you hover over the folder) and then clicking Remove Access.
- Delete the external user, which removes all collaborations to which the user has been invited, by clicking More Options (
), and then clicking Delete External User.
- Click Make Managed User to convert the external user to a managed user. (This option will not be available for external users who are currently part of another Business or Enterprise account.)
Note
Invitations to convert an external user to a managed user expire in the time period set in Admin Console > Enterprise Settings > User Settings > Expire Join Invites.
Legacy Design Differences
- The Change User Settings (which is how to change access to collaborated folders), Remove User from All Items, and Invite to Join as Managed User commands are in a More Options (
) drop-down menu visible when you hover over the external user in the list.
Double Experience for External Users Tab
As an admin, you can choose if you want to use the current External Users tab experience or a new one.
To change the view of the tab:
- Go to Admin Console > Users & Groups.
- Click the External Users tab.
- Click the Try New button.
- Click the Switch Back button to return to the current tab experience.
The new External Users tab displays the following information and features:
- Unmanaged Users list (see the Unmanaged Users section of this document for details).
- Last Active - the last time an external user interacted with the organization’s content.
-
Date Added:
- date of the first invitation for the user to collaborate on the content,
- the name of the person who invited the external user.
- Bulk delete of external and unmanaged users.
- Status of the invite to join the enterprise.
The number of collaborations for each user is currently visible in the User Details screen.
The search feature for external and unmanaged users is available only in the current External Users view at this time.
Unmanaged Users
Unmanaged users are collaborators that don’t belong to your Box enterprise and their Box accounts are unlicensed. These users have unpaid personal Box accounts used to collaborate on your company-owned content.
To view and manage the unmanaged users associated with your account, open the Admin Console, go to Users & Groups and click the External Users tab. To see all unmanaged users, select the Unmanaged Users (Users who share company domain and collaborate on organization’s content) in the drop-down filter list. On the list of your unmanaged users you can:
- view when they were last active,
- on how many documents/folders they collaborate (coming soon),
- view the details of their accounts,
- convert them to managed users,
- remove their collaborations (with the delete option),
- Invite Status (invite to join enterprise)
- select them for a bulk update.
The unmanaged users increase the security and compliance risks. Box advises you to convert them to managed users as soon as you can.
Admin Actions
Check User Details
To view the details of a specific user, click on the row with their user details. Click the View Details button that appears next to the basic user information.
User details screen provides the following information:
- user’s name,
- user’s email address,
- user ID,
- last activity date,
- folders of the user,
- and managed access to the user’s content.
Make Managed User
You can convert an unmanaged user in two ways:
- click the Make Managed User icon in the content menu next to specific user,
- open the View Details screen and click the Make Managed User button.
Resend the Invitation
If you want to resend the invitation email to a user, click the Make Managed User button next to the specific user. A message will show on your screen:
An invitation to join your network as a managed user was sent to [user’s email address] on [date]. Would you like to resend the invite?
Click Confirm to resend the email.
Delete Unmanaged User
To remove the unmanaged user’s collaborations, click the Delete button. You will be asked to confirm the deletion.
Removing an external user will not delete this user’s Box account, only their collaborations.
If you can’t remove an unmanaged user, it is because:
- Their collaboration is already deleted.
- The unmanaged user is converted to a managed user.
- User is being deleted.
- User is deleted.
- Your changes are not yet visible on the external users page. It can take up to 24 hours to reflect updates on the page.
Bulk Actions
You can select multiple users to convert them from unmanaged to managed, and to delete them.
To do so:
- Hover over a specific user on the users list.
- Tick the checkbox icon in the context menu.
- Click the Make Managed User (coming soon) or Delete Users button.
Repeat it for all users you want to convert (coming soon) or delete.