M+E Daily

Box used its Content Cloud Summit on April 14 to announce a new Box App Center and unveil several enhancements that included updates to Box Sign, its native e-signature capability; a deepened integration with Zoom; and new capabilities for Box Shield, its security solution for protecting content in the cloud.

The announcements came as enterprise workflows continue to shift to “digital-first,” Aaron Levie, Box CEO and co-founder, said in a keynote. There is an increasing “need to access information from anywhere,” as well as “collaborate and brainstorm in real-time in a digital-first experience no matter where somebody is working from,” he said.

“That is what the future of work looks like,” according to Levie. “We also know that every business process, every employee experience, every client workflow is going to become digital-first,” he said. “This means that the way onboard new customers or employees, the way we transact with our clients, the way we sign contracts – all of that is going digital.”

Additionally, he explained: “As we’re working from anywhere and as all of our workflows go digital-first, we know that we’re going to be dealing with highly sensitive intellectual property that we have to be able to share and make sure stays protected from anywhere that we’re working from.”

And that, he said, is “why cybersecurity, compliance and supporting regulatory governance is more important than ever before.”

Meanwhile, “at the center of these mega-trends is content,” he added. Eighty-percent of data we’re working with today is unstructured and most of it is content, he noted.

The new Box platform enhancements were all designed with these growing trends in mind.

The New App Center

The new Box App Center, launching in May, will be a destination for users, administrators and developers to discover and access the more than 1,500 applications that the company said integrate with the Box platform. Those applications include Microsoft Teams, Slack, ServiceNow, Google Workspace, and Salesforce.

With the new App Center, Box users will benefit from an advanced search mechanism and a modern, tile-based user interface that it said simplifies the process of browsing and enables pre-built partner integrations. Users and administrators will be able to easily find the applications they need most by organizing their favorite apps with new categories and grouping functionalities, Box said.

Administrators will also be able to work to reduce security risks by providing users with a list of enterprise-approved tools through a new application catalog available on Box.com and the Box web app.

And developers will be able to leverage application programming interfaces (APIs) in the new App Center to “easily build, submit and preview custom apps and workflow automations, expanding the audience to millions of users,” Box said in a news release.

The average enterprise today uses 187 different applications to get its work done, according to Box. Although that “proliferation of tools and apps enhances many business processes, it also creates silos of content that are hard for customers to manage and secure,” the company said.

That is why Box provides an open platform that integrates with so many applications, ensuring that content continues to be “secure, compliant, and easily managed, no matter where it’s accessed and shared across the IT stack,” the company said.

Box Sign Enhancements

Since launching Box Sign in 2021 and making it available worldwide to all business and above customers at no additional cost, Box has continued to add new capabilities and APIs that it noted power e-signatures in third-party and custom applications.

New enhancements will enable Box Sign customers to: streamline critical business processes by generating contracts within Box and sending them out for signature directly from Salesforce (available now); send a single document to hundreds of recipients at once and expedite high-volume tasks, including collecting signatures for employee acknowledgement of new company policies (available in May); and access six new dedicated fields and formatting options for documents, including initials, name, email, stamp, company and title, making document preparation easier, and delivering a smoother and faster experience for signers (May).

This summer, Box Sign will also release additional capabilities, including the ability to send multiple documents for signature as part of a single package, the ability to edit or correct a signature request in flight, and a dedicated Box Shield policy that the company said will restrict signature requests from being issued on sensitive content.

Box for Zoom Chat Integration

Box and Zoom announced the launch of the Box app for Zoom Chat Channels to make it easier for users to work seamlessly together across the two platforms.

Available now through Zoom enablement and generally available starting April 17, the Box app for Zoom Chat Channels allows users to: upload files into Zoom Chat Channels and they’ll automatically save to Box; create new Box files, including Box Notes or Microsoft Office or Google Workspace documents, from Zoom Chat and grant users access to work together on those files in real-time, for reduced context switching; and open documents stored in Box from Zoom Chat Channels to collaborate with just one click, for maximized workflow efficiency.

New Box Shield Enhancements

Box Shield scans more than 50 billion files a year, which Box said significantly reduces content-centric security risks because of threats including malware and ransomware.

In October, Box announced new threat detection capabilities that build on the traditional hash-based approach to help identify more sophisticated malware.

Starting now, administrators using Box Shield will be able to: apply malware deep scan to additional file types; add automatic watermarking to classified documents, helping to reduce unauthorized sharing by offering an indicator as an additional reminder to end-users about classified content; and enforce and passively monitor how access policies could potentially interfere with end-users before applying them.

Box Relay Updates

“Thousands of Box customers use Relay to automate everyday processes like digital asset reviews, work order submission approvals, regulatory reporting approvals, and grant reviews,” the company said.

Box has now announced a deeper integration between Box Relay and Box Sign, including the ability to trigger a new workflow based on a document being completed, canceled, expired, or declined in Box Sign. “Users can then automate next steps by selecting a combination of file, folder, task, metadata, and notification outcomes available in Relay, and build the downstream workflow,” it said.

Customers can now: apply metadata templates to organize, search and manage signed customer contracts for easy and efficient contract management; “expedite vendor onboarding by assigning a task to the partner manager when a signature request on a vendor’s application expires;” classify signed offer letters so they’re protected by Box Shield policies, allowing secure employee onboarding; and  apply a watermark to media and entertainment agreements to deter unauthorized re-sharing of sensitive information in virtual data rooms (VDRs).

Additionally, this summer, Relay customers will be able to also view any active classifications and retention policies on content in the Relay builder, allowing them to be aware of security and governance while designing workflows, Box said. “They will also have the option to automatically add metadata on folders, enabling metadata application at scale.”

New Content Insights

With Box’s new Content Insights, users will be able to see how, when and by whom their files are being accessed and used, Box said.

Available in Q2, Content Insights will provide increased visibility into content, enabling: operations teams to ensure the latest procedures are being read and followed; go-to-market teams to understand when and how sales teams are using their pitch decks; and customers sending information to sales prospects to see who has viewed them without following up over email, Box said.

Earlier in the week, ahead of the event, Box unveiled Box Canvas, a virtual whiteboarding and visual collaboration experience that it said “securely connects hybrid teams so they can brainstorm, ideate, and create, together from anywhere.”

The company demonstrated Box Canvas during the Content Cloud Summit.