Finding all collaborations to all files/folders owned by a user (so we can clear them).

We have been using the API to provision users and groups for the past few years. As part of our user expiration process, we want to move the target users folders to a "deadfile" user before we delete the actual user. The API call to change owner for a folder (root) works perfectly. Except, it leaves all of the collaborations in place, so all of the other users who are still using those assets continue on, not knowing their days are numbered.

What we want to do after changing the ownership, is to then remove all of the collaborations so other collaborators might notice the files are gone (but while we still have them around). Our original process of just deleting the user resulted in several user support calls, when third parties noticed files gone a few weeks after we deleted them. Sometimes AFTER BOX had flushed the data. Oops...

I would rather not have to walk down every file tree looking for collaborators. It appears that this data is somewhat available in the Admin Console collaboration report, but I want to do this all from the API and not have to scan through an Excel file.

jcleblanc

November 13, 2019 12:31

Hi ,

At the current time admin level reporting through the APIs isn't an available feature, but it is something that is being explored / researched quite heavily for the future. These are highly requested features and are being looked into.

With that said, you hit on the current 2 methods for accomplishing the task, namely either using the admin report or walking the folder / file tree to look for collaborations. It's increasingly more common for large scale applications to maintain a separate collaboration "skeleton" that stores that information to make the process easier, but for your needs in the current state those two methods are the best to use.

We know this is a gap in the API offerings and and working on researching the best way of shoring up that gap.

- Jon

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