Box Hubs

Box Hubs are secure, customizable portals that enable individuals and teams to curate collections of related documents in Box that can then be shared and queried to increase collaboration and productivity for departments, teams, projects, and academic classes.  Box provides a short introductory video as well as online support for Box Hubs.

Box Hubs are designed to enable:

• Teams to create shared workspaces (e.g., projects)
• Departments to create persistent, shared document repositories
• Operational or academic areas to create targeted ways to share information with their constituencies (e.g., onboarding portal for new employees, a training portal, classroom portal for students, etc.)

With Box AI, you can query across multiple documents associated with a Box hub.  For example:

• Summarize content in this hub
• What questions should I ask this hub?
• Compare two files to show differences
• Help draft an example presentation template
• HR hub:  What things should I know as a new employee?
• HR hub: How have HR benefits changed over the last year?
• Contracts hub: What are our 10 largest contracts?
• Project hub: What are the major milestones of this project?

Box Hubs do not move or copy your content from where it already resides in Box, but rather link or point to existing Box documents to make them easier to find, share, and collectively query using Box AI.  As such, Box Hubs obey existing Box folder and file permissions.  If you do not already have permission to access a document in Box, a Box Hub will not override those permissions.

Box Hubs do come with a few additional permissions/restrictions:

• Box Hubs only allow you to share Box content that you own or co-own.
• Only a Box Hub owner or editor can add content to a hub.
  • Box Hub editor permission does not give permission to edit the underlying Box files/folders associated the hub.
• Box Hubs only allow view or view/download permissions when sharing.
• After initial creation, a Box Hub requires 10-15 minutes to be indexed before you can query it with Box AI.  If indexing has not completed, Box AI may respond with "This content is currently unavailable for AI. Please check back later."

Creating a Box Hub

To create or access a Box Hub, simply click on the “Hubs” option in the left-hand Box menu.  Click on “New Hub” to create a Box Hub.  You can customize your hub by adding a title, description, and logo as well as organize your hub content into one or more “blocks” that let you point to Box files/folders you own, enter descriptive text, display visual dividers, add section titles, etc.

The easiest way to add content to a hub is to right click on a document you own or co-own in Box and choose “Add to Hub.”

IMPORTANT:  Box Hubs only allow you to share Box content that you own or co-own.  In this way, Box Hubs work similarly to Box folders.  For example, individuals (as well as departments) can create and share their own Box Hubs.  When an individual leaves the University, their personal Box Hubs (and content) are erased.  Therefore, if a Box Hub is meant to persist beyond a specific individual, it is *STRONGLY* recommended that the Box Hub be created at the University departmental level, just like a department-level Box folder.  To create a Box Hub at a University departmental level, please Request Departmental Box Hub.

Another similarity with Box Hubs and Box folders is that their names are not unique across the organization.  For example, if John creates a Box Hub called “My Project” and Mary creates a Box Hub called “My Project” and both John and Mary share their respective hubs with you, you will see two hubs called “My Project”.  Therefore, it is recommended to be as specific as possible when naming a Box hub (or folder) that you intend to share with others.  For example, “John’s Accounting Fall 2024 Project” and “Mary’s Biology Spring 2025 Project”.