External File Storage in Box

If you want to be able to manage your uploaded files via Box.com instead of Jive, you can set up a place-level connection to synchronize files as well as comments about the files from both sides.

To integrate selected Jive places with Box as the external file storage provider, and to socialize the documents you store in your Box folders, you can connect a Box account to a Jive community. The initial relationship is created when you connect a Box admin account to your community. A Box Integration user with rights to this account is created in Jive. When community users and administrators create places, a folder within the Box account is created and identified with the name of the place. Files added to or modified in that folder from either the Box side or the Jive side are then synchronized. When a Jive user uploads a file to the group, the file is posted to the Box group using the Box Integration user.

This means Jive users don't need Box accounts to access the information in places to which they have rights. They can access and modify any files posted there from the Jive side. However, they won't have access to the contents of the folder from the Box side unless they also have a Box account. Box users who have access to the folder will also need a Jive account if they want to add more documents to the Jive-linked Box folder or modify its contents. Users can comment on documents from either side, and their comments will be visible from both Box and Jive.

Note: If you connect a space to Box, be aware that spaces with the All Registered User permission in Jive will be mapped to All Enterprise Users in Box. Users who have this permission in Box will be able to see the content, even if they don't have rights to access the Jive space.

Setting up the Integration

The complete setup includes these steps:

Make sure your Jive installation includes the Extended APIs plugin. For more instructions, see Installing the Extended APIs JAR File.
On the Box side, apply the correct settings to your Box enterprise account as described in Configuring Box to Work with Jive.
On the Box side, create the Box Integration User. This user is the account you'll use to connect your Jive community to Box. It's also the basis for the Jive system user that will be a member of every Box-linked place in Jive, linking it to the associated Box folder.
On the Jive side, connect Jive to Box using the Jive Integration User credentials. Then decide whether users can create new places with a Box-connected folder, as described in Connecting to External File Storage.
Note: If you're using an SSO solution such as Okta with Box, make sure the integration user is defined as an admin. Otherwise, the IdP could remove the integration user's administrative privileges from Box, breaking the integration.

Using More than One External Storage Provider

You can use more than one type of external storage. For example, you can have some of your groups store files in Jive for SharePoint, and some in Box.com. After you've set up the initial community connections to your storage accounts, connections are set up group by group. When you create a group, you decide whether the group will use native Jive storage or another storage. However, you can't connect the same group to more than one storage provider.