Box users generate a lot of data that administrators might find very interesting, and the latest edition of the Box administrator console has been redesigned to surface some of that data previously hidden in log files.
The new-look Box Admin console should make its debut later on Wednesday, and it promises to centralize a lot of interesting but hard-to-find Box data in a single console view, said Jon Fan, vice president of product management at Box. The new console allows the people responsible for maintaining a Box installation to see how often people are accessing their Box accounts from different locations, and which files they’re working with most often, which can help inform policy decisions.
“One of the things we’ve been pushing forward on is, ‘how do we surface the right information to admins that is already in the system?'” Fan said. For example, depending on the company, admins might want to restrict access to certain types of files from certain locations, or make decisions about which file types to support based on usage statistics.
Box is also improving the capabilities of its Box Governance product, which allows companies to set automated policies around how they retain documents and other files in accordance with regulations or when faced with legal action. Companies can now set retention rules by file type, as opposed to setting those rules globally or within certain folders on a Box account, Fan said.
The new Box Governance policies were not designed with the looming May GDPR deadline in mind, but they could allow Box customers to comply with those regulations in certain cases, Fan said. The main idea is to give companies that want to enable their employees to have access to cloud-based files as needed to improve their productivity without running afoul of governance rules that often work against free and easy access, he said.
