Enabling Enhanced Lock/Unlock on Box Drive

Summary

Beginning with v2.21, Box Drive supports the ability to lock (or) unlock files when users opens (or) closes the document. Admins can enable this feature for their end users to help improve the collaboration experience for Box files when accessed by the user on their desktop.

Background

Box Drive currently provides users the option to lock a file to ensure other users are not able to edit the document at the same time. This requires the user right click on the file and select the lock option, before opening the file. If the user does not lock a file, there may be conflicting copies of files created when multiple users try to save document at the same time.

For ex: If Mary edits a Box document on her device that she opened using Box Drive and John edits the same document at the same time from his device that he opened from Box Drive, there may be conflict copies created when both of them try to save their changes. When a conflict copy is created, Box appends "[email address]" to the end of the file name. In a collaborative environment, this causes additional time to be spent by users to merge changes.

Enhanced lock/unlock experience

On Box Drive v2.21 and above, admins can enable the enhanced lock/unlock feature for their users. There are 2 configurations the admins can set - Automatic or Prompted locking.

• Automatic Locking (AutoLockUnlock=1) - The file will automatically be locked/unlocked when the user opens/closes the file.
• Prompted Locking (AutoLockUnlock=0) - When the user opens the file, they will receive a prompt asking if they want to lock the file. When the user closes the file it will automatically be unlocked. 

Enabling the enhanced lock/unlock feature 

1. Automatic locking option:
   1. Create a new DWORD (32-bit) value (REG_DWORD) using the Registry Editor tool under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Box\Box called AutoLockUnlock
   2. Set the value of AutoLockUnlock to 1.
   3. Restart Box Drive
2. Prompted locking option:
   1. Create a new DWORD (32-bit) value (REG_DWORD) using the Registry Editor tool under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Box\Box called AutoLockUnlock
   2. Set the value of AutoLockUnlock to 0.
   3. Restart Box Drive

Disabling the enhanced lock/unlock feature

1. Delete the AutoLockUnlock registry value from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Box\Box.
2. Restart Box Drive.

Important:

1. Support - Enhanced lock/unlock is supported only for the following:
   1. Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2010 and above.
   2. Windows 10 32-bit and 64-bit
   3. Collaborated folders
2. Offline behavior
   1. Box Drive does NOT support enhanced lock/unlock experience when the user is offline. Opening a file when offline will not automatically lock or prompt the user to lock the file. Similarly, closing a file when offline will not unlock it.

Known limitations

• Drive will not be able to detect file opens and closes when the Office application is opened with admin privileges. This is a system limitation without a workaround.
• Users who have enabled Preview pane on Windows File Explorer will not receive the unlock prompt if Explorer is trying to fetch the preview for the file (when the file is selected when File Explorer is in focus).

User Experience

The below table lists the experiences for the different configurations for enhanced lock/unlock when accessing files on the Box Drive folder: