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When it comes to administering Box, you don’t have to do it alone. Box offers a suite of administrator roles to help you monitor and manage your account. This guide will walk you through the various admin roles so you can make the choice that is right for your organization and ensure the long-term (and secure) success of your Box account. Before You Start Before you even start tapping people to be part of the admin team, you’ll want to take stock of your current solution and long range goals for Box. These factors will let you know the types of roles you’ll need to involve. Use the following questions as a guideline for your inventory:

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1. What are we using Box for?

Having a clear picture of your use case will let you know about the type of restrictions and boundaries you will need to put in place. This, in turn, will identify the roles you’ll need to support those processes. For example, if you plan on restricting the ability to create folders at the root level, you may want an admin to support the creation of new folders on behalf of users. Or, if you plan on creating accounts for your users rather than letting them sign up on their own, you will want some Co-Admins to help provision accounts.

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2. Who administrated our previous solution?

Think about your previous solution and the administrators. Would you like the same people to be administrators in your new solution? Also, think about what administrating that previous solution entailed. Do those same needs apply to Box, or will you need to reset expectations? This knowledge can also help you draw parallels in your new instance.

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3. How involved do I want to be?

Do you want to monitor everything, or would you just like to be kept informed? This question will help you define your admin role, and let you know which parts of the administration you would like to delegate.

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4. Who are my key stakeholders? What is their security clearance?

These questions will help you identify potential Co-Admins and Group Admins.

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Choosing Your Primary Admin

Now that you have a clearer picture of your Box landscape and who might need to be involved, you can start assigning admin roles. First, you will need to identify the primary admin for your account. The responsibilities for the primary admin include:
  • Leading the admin team as a whole
  • Configuring the Box account and adjusting account settings as needs change
  • Logging into user accounts for auditing purposes
  • Creating users and assigning permissions to folders
  • Creating Groups
  • Running Reports as part of regular check-ins
  • Having the time and proper security clearance for managing the general user base
The primary admin might be you, but it could also be a key stakeholder or IT manager who needs full control over the Box account and its administration.

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Choosing Your Co-Admins

If you plan on having a large number of users in your account, or if you have other team members who need greater Box control and insight, you can assign Co-Admin roles. Not all Co-Admins are created equal. As the primary admin, you can assign admin privileges a la carte to match the role the person will have in the administration of your account. See Co-admin Permissions for information about all of the permissions you can assign to Co-admins.

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Co-admin Personas

To get you started, here are a few different co-admin types and their accompanying settings:
  • Helpdesk Personnel – This person needs to see account-wide settings, run reports on activities for investigative purposes, and have visibility into the user view.
  • View Enterprise Settings, Run and View Reports, and Instant Log-In
  • Helpdesk Personnel + User Provisioning - This co-admin would be able to create new accounts for you as well.
  • All of the above settings… and
  • Manage Users and Manage Groups
  • Legal Team – This person would need to have visibility into all activities and audit the account and users.
  • View Enterprise Settings, Run and View Reports, and Instant Log-In
  • Business Analyst – This person only needs visibility into account activity, but doesn’t need to make changes as a whole.
  • Run and View Reports
Remember that you can adjust these access levels at any time.

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Choosing Your Group Admins

The Groups tool allows you to scale your account by granting blanket permission to a sub-set of your users. You can decide to designate key people to be Group Admins to help you manage and monitor these clusters of users. To learn more about Groups, check out the Managing Groups Best Practice document at success.box.com.
NoteA Group Admin has a miniature version of the Admin Console that only affects the users inside their group.  Log in as the primary admin to view and manage all the users in your enterprise.
Responsibilities of a Group Admin include:
  • Logging into group member accounts for auditing
  • Creating new user accounts in the group
  • Adding existing users to the group
  • Managing group member accounts
  • Creating folder access for the group
  • Reporting on group activity
A good Group Admin candidate is someone who needs oversight into a subset of users without needing to make changes to the account as a whole. Potential Group Admins are:
  • Department Heads
  • Team Leads/Project Managers
  • HR Personnel
  • Regional Leads
Depending on your use case for Box and account size, you may not need to use all of these admin roles - you may also find that you need to add new administrators as your account grows. The most important thing to ask yourself is “Will making this person an administrator help us accomplish our business objectives?” – the answer will let you know if they should be part of your admin team.