ARCHIVED: About Box Group Accounts

At Indiana University, student organizations, project teams, and smaller university units use standard university group computing accounts for a variety of reasons. These accounts are not enabled for use with Box by default, but you can request that Box be enabled for an existing group account, thus creating a Box Group Account (GA). The account owner needs to approve the request, and Box GAs are also subject to usage review and may be disabled if they become inactive or are misused.

UITS recommends that all institutional and departmental data be stored in a Box folder that is owned by a group. Ideally, sensitive data (including data classified as Critical or Restricted data) should be stored in Box Entrusted or Box Health accounts; see ARCHIVED: Types of Box accounts at IU.

To set up a Box Group Account:

1. If you do not have a group computing account at IU, request one.
   Note:

   When requesting your group acccount username, in the "Display name:" field, enter a name that will appropriately identify your group. This name will appear in Box as the owner of any folders owned by the Group Account, and will overwrite any changes made in the profile settings within Box. If you need to update the display name of an existing group account, contact Accounts Administration.
2. After you have obtained a group computing account, submit a request to authorize the account for Box via the Box Group Account request form.

   If prompted, log in with your IU username and passphrase.

   (Don't use the group computing account credentials.) This request can be submitted by anyone; however, the request can only be approved by the group computing account owner.
3. Group account owners need to approve requests in their Action Lists (even if the owner initiated the request). As an account owner, you should receive email notification with a link to the relevant eDoc, unless you've disabled Action List notifications. In that case, you can go directly to your Action List to approve the Box Group Account Request. The original requester should receive a notification when the request is approved.
4. Once the request is approved, log into Box at IU with the group computing account username and passphrase. This will create the account in Box.
5. If you wish, edit the account's profile information (for example, to add an address, phone number, or website); however, any changes you make to the name field will be overwritten by the official group account display name, as noted in step 1.
6. If you want to transfer ownership of a folder that is currently owned by your personal account, you may find it easier to follow the instructions in ARCHIVED: Transfer ownership of a Box folder to a different account rather than completing the rest of these instructions.

   If you don't already have a folder with the content you want to transfer, you can create a top-level folder while logged in as the group account, using a folder name that clearly identifies it as belonging to your group. All content for the group should be stored inside this folder.

7. Invite the people who will administer the account (ideally, two or three) to your group's folder at the co-owner permission level. One of these should be the group computing account owner.
8. Log out of the Box Group Account.

After this point, the folder co-owners should log into their personal Box accounts to create and manage subfolders, collaborations, and content. Co-owners should avoid logging in with the group computing account credentials when performing these routine management tasks for the Box Group Account.

Co-owners are responsible for managing membership changes and transfers of ownership whenever a change in co-ownership occurs. If both co-owners must change, IU Box administrators can help you remove them from the GA and assign new co-owners. To request help with this, or for any other problems with Box Group Accounts, contact your campus Support Center.