Files & storage
Set up Box
Connect Box to make a folder — or everything shared with your own Box app — searchable: every file the app can see becomes a document, and because Box lists each file's own checksum, a re-sync touches only what actually changed. Read-only.
The Box app and its credentials
A Custom App created at app.box.com/developers/console with the Client Credentials Grant and App + Enterprise access, approved once by a Box admin in the Admin Console (Apps → Custom Apps Manager). Three values identify it and mint short-lived server tokens on every sync — only reads are ever issued:
- Client ID — on the app's Configuration page.
- Client secret — same page, Fetch Client Secret; write-only here, never shown again after saving.
- Enterprise ID — Admin Console → Account & Billing → Account Information (also on the app's General Settings page).
- A developer token from the same console proves the connection but dies within about an hour, leaving the source with a credentials error.
- Create and approve the app, then Documents → Box: enter the Enterprise ID and paste the Client ID and Client secret.
- Invite the app's service-account email (…@boxdevedition.com, shown in the developer console) as a viewer on the folders that should sync. To pin one folder, paste its app.box.com address (or the number after /folder/) under Folder ID or URL in Advanced; blank syncs the whole All Files tree.
- Choose access groups, Test, then Sync.
What comes in
- Every file in the folder and in every folder beneath it becomes one document titled from its filename; Box web links and other non-file entries are skipped.
- Exclude patterns (Advanced) leave files or folders out — one pattern per line, * and ? wildcards (*.mp4, Archive/*).
Access
Box collaborators on a folder become readers of its files here, matched by email address, and as Box itself shares, a collaboration carries down to everything inside the folder. A group share isn't expanded: named collaborators are mirrored, the group's members are not. A folder whose collaborators can't be read keeps the broader access above it; one with no named collaborators anywhere above it falls back to the access groups chosen on the source. Allow-only throughout. Switch How access works to “One list for everything” under Permissions to put everything this source brings in under the chosen access groups instead.
Test signs in as the app, names its account and counts the first listing page's documents. It fails with a specific reason — a sign-in that returns no token points at the app's Client Credentials Grant settings and the admin approval; a Folder ID or URL that isn't a Box folder link is refused rather than silently widened to All Files. A sync stops at 10,000 files or 2,000 folders and says so; what already synced is kept rather than read as deleted.
Last updated 20 Sep 2026