Box Feed

Available only in a browser at Box@UNH

Box Feed identifies documents and files it deems most relevant to you based on the people and files you work with most.

Where your feed comes from

Box generates Feed from the document activity of your coworkers -- views, edits, comments, uploads, and so on. Feed determines relevance in several ways:

Personal relationship -- When someone uploads, downloads, shares, or accesses a file, it may appear in your feed, depending on your relationship with that person -- how many files you share, how often you interact via comments, and so on.
Weighting -- different file actions are weighted differently. For example, comments are weighted more heavily than views.
Timeliness -- Files updated more recently hold a higher weight than files updated less recently.
Trending -- Files that are viewed or commented on more frequently hold higher weight than files with less interaction.

Stay in control

You can modify what you see in your feed -- AND you can modify what activity of yours is visible in others’ feeds. For example, you can:

Modify sorting to display posts based on the most recent and relevant action taken.
- If multiple relevant actions are taken on a file, it still appears in the feed only once. However, the frequency of relevant actions does boost a post's relevance and, as a result, its placement in your feed. This is similar to the way a Web site’s activity boosts its position in a Google search.
Hide a file or folder such that it never appears in your feed.
Hide your own activity so that it doesn’t appear in others’ feeds.

Finally, Feed also respects privacy (yours and everyone else’s). It retains each file's existing Box permissions, so nobody sees anything they’re not supposed to see.

Using Box Feed

Understanding Box Feed

You can:

See who acted on a file, what action they took, and when they acted
Locate the Box folder containing the file
Preview a file right from within Feed, or open it in a separate tab or window
Download or share a file, or add it to your favorites
Comment on a file
Change the sort order of your Feed
Hide a file from your Feed
Track your most recent files and what files are trending
Hide activity on a specific folder’s contents from everyone’s feed
Hide all your activity from others’ Feeds
Feed for mobile devices
Set Feed as your home page

To see who acted on a file, what action they took, and when they acted

Feed automatically displays information about each specific post in your feed. It displays each post in the form of a snapshot of the file, with two lines of information above the snapshot and one line below.

Note: The action Feed lists is not necessarily the most recent action taken on the file. That’s because the most recent action may have been by someone not relevant to you. Only the actions of people relevant to you trigger a Feed post. Similarly, the person listed is not necessarily the creator of the file. In other words, a comment your manager makes on someone else’s file triggers a post; a file created by someone in an unrelated department, with whom you have a minimal relationship, does not trigger a post.

To preview a file right from within Feed, or open it in a separate tab or window

Each Feed post consists of a snapshot preview of the file. To view each page if it’s a multi-page document, click anywhere in the snapshot within the post. A menu displays enabling you to click through the file. To open the file separately, in its original Box location, above the file snapshot click the file name.

To download or share a file, or add it to your favorites

In the top right corner of the post, click the . This displays the Feed action menu.
Click Download, or Share, or Add to Favorites, and proceed as you normally would in Box.

To comment on a file in your feed

At the bottom of the post, click Add Comment. A text entry box displays.
Type in what you want. Then press

Your comment displays in the Feed post, right underneath the file preview window.

To change the sort order of the posts in your feed

By default, Feed displays your posts most recent first. But you can instead sort your posts by what Feed deems as most relevant, first. To do this, above your first post, click the Sort By down arrow, and then click Top.

To hide a file from your feed

In the top right corner of the post, click the . This displays the Feed action menu.
Click Hide this item. Box immediately removes this post from your Feed. It ensures the item will not reappear in your feed. And it takes your action into account when it calculates the relevance of other, similar content in your Feed.

Your comment displays in the Feed post, right underneath the file preview.

Note: This is most effective in blocking an item in which you’re not interested, or which is not as relevant to you as Feed calculated. You must be an admin, owner, co-owner, or editor of the item to hide it. Also, hiding it from your Feed does not hide it from anyone else’s Feed.

Keeping Track of What’s Recent and What’s Trending

Whenever you access a file directly from your Feed, Box removes it from your list of posts, to keep your Feed fresh and relevant. But what if you wish to continue to access this file, without navigating through Box to do so? That’s what the Recents panel is for. The Recents panel preserves quick access to these files for you. It displays, in reverse chronological order, links to the files you previewed or opened from your Feed.

The Recents panel functions the same way as the Recents icon in your lefthand navigation.

Tip: You may want to assign a document as a Favorite, if you want to keep easy access to it in case other, more recent items push it out of the Recents panel.

Feed also gives you insight into what documents are currently most relevant to your organization in general. It does this via the Trending panel. The Trending panel lists content that is has seen frequent and recent activity in your enterprise. This list does not take into account the relevance to you of the people accessing this content.

The Trending panel helps you discover content of potential importance to you that you may not find, or even be aware of, elsewhere in your enterprise.

Note: The Trending panel does not display any files you do not have permission to access, regardless of how "popular" that content may be.

Controlling how Your Activity Shows up in Other People’s Feeds

So far we’ve been talking only about what you see in your Feed. But what about what your coworkers see? How does your activity display in their Feeds? Fortunately, Box Feed gives you substantial flexibility to control how visible you want to be to others.

Just as you are most likely to see updates from the people with whom you collaborate most closely and frequently, from their perspective Feed assigns substantial relevance to your file activity and as a result likely display your updates to them.
Of course, this only applies to the content they have permission to view. Feed never overrides Box permissions, so it does not display any files you keep private. Relevance does not enter into it; no one sees anything they do not have specific permission to see. Shared links also do not display in your feed unless you are specifically added to the document. You can change specific file permissions directly from Feed.

You can also prevent items in specific folders from appearing in others’ Feeds.

To control who else can access a file

In the top right corner of the post, click the . This displays the Feed action menu.
Hover over Who can see this? and then click Manage Collaborators. The Box Collaborators page displays, and you can modify the permissions of anyone you have access to modify, or invite more people to collaborate.

You can also click Manage Folder Permissions to open the Box Folder Settings page and modify access to folder contents as you normally would in Box. And as with any other file in Box, you can only do this if you are an editor, owner, or co-owner of the file or folder.

To hide activity on a specific folder’s contents from everyone’s feed

In Box, navigate to the folder you want and hover over it.
Click the , and from the menu that displays click Settings. The Folder Settings page displays.
Scroll down to the File View Activity section, and click Hide file view activity in this folder.

Feed will not display any activity on any file stored in this folder.

If your work routinely involves sensitive data -- if you work in HR or in legal, for example -- you may want to prevent all of your feed activity from showing up in others’ feeds.

To hide all of your Feed activity from others’ feeds

On the top right portion of the screen, go to Account Settings > Sharing. In the page that displays, scroll down to the File View Activity
Check Hide My File View Activity.

If you hide your activity, no action you take ever generates a feed post.

If subsequently, you decide to re-display your file activity in Feed, the actions you take from the moment you re-display it are reflected in Feed. Actions you took while you were "hiding" never display.

Box Feed for mobile devices

When you have enabled Feed it also becomes available via your mobile devices. Feed is the default screen for mobile access. For both iOS and Android, Feed behavior is as described above. Other Box mobile functions also remain unchanged. However, if you want to hide Feed activity around a specific file or folder, you must use the Web app. You cannot use your mobile device to turn off specific file or folder activity (that is, you cannot hide it via a mobile device). Once hidden, activity around these items won't display in your feed no matter how you access Box.

Setting Box Feed as your home page

Because Box Feed is designed to help you manage all of your Box content and keep current with your most important documents, you may find that setting Box Feed as your home page can save you additional time. With Feed as your Box home page you can get up to date as soon as you log into Box and be confident no important file will escape your attention.

Updating...