Corner 01: The Basics
‘What is Box?’ is a great question to kick this guide off. Sure boxes are used to store odds and ends as well as all those embarrassing baby photos in your attic but Box is actually a cloud storage and file sharing service. UVU has partnered with Box to give all students a place to store and share files and folders.
Being part of UVU’s Box account gives students access to 1 tb of storage, file uploads up to 5 gb, and unlimited external collaborators (meaning you can allow ALL your friends can view your files). This guide will give you a quick tour of how Box works and what you can do with your account.
Log In
Logging into your UVU Box account is simple. Start by going to box.com and picking ‘log in’. Simply input your uvu email and password and you’re in.
Home Screen
From here you will be redirected to your box home screen. It looks a little like this:
Notice that the ‘New’ and ‘Upload’ buttons on the top right of the screen are greyed out. As a user of UVU’s Box account you can only create and upload files within your student folder. Clicking ‘(your name) Student Files’ gets you where you need to be.
Now that we are within your student file, let’s do a little exploring.
Uploading and Creating
Let’s start our by focusing on the right hand collumn.
Here we can see your name with ‘Co-owner’ underneath it. This means that you co-own your student folder along with UVU administrators. No matter what screen you find yourself on, you can always see who has access to a file
or folder by looking here in the Sharing tab(More information on this later on). Now let’s take a look at our buttons. Directly above the ‘sharing’ tab are three buttons. Starting from the right we have ‘Upload’ which allows you to choose a file or folder from your computer and store it in Box. The ‘New’ button allows you to create everything from a folder to a Google Doc.
Choosing to create Microsoft or Google document will access either your Google Drive or open your a Microsoft application. Whatever you choose to create, it will all be accessible through your Box account. Creating a folder means you can then upload files and additional folders within the folder you created to keep your documents organized. Let’s now take a look at the icon on the far left. Clicking here will allow you to create a Box Note. Box Notes can be used for everything from simple to do lists to a working report of how a project is progressing for a team.
You can share your notes with others to keep everyone in the loop or keep it to yourself for personal reminders and ideas. Whatever you choose to do, your Box Note can be found in the folder you created it in.
File Hierarchy
The key to having a well-organized Box with easy to find files and folders is folder Hierarchy. Folder/File Hierarchy makes it so everything has a place to be stored which makes finding anything and everything more effiecient.
The diagram above gives us a simplified picture of how file hierarchy works. Level 1 generally contain a folder with an overarching topic like ‘Fall Semester 2017’ which can be broken down into smaller subtopics. In our diagram level 2 contains 2 uploaded files (possibly semester reports) and a new file (which could contain projects). Level 3 contains another uploaded file and a new file (maybe a google doc you are working on with peers). This type of organization allows you or anyone with access to your account to quickly find what is needed. File Hierarchy is sometimes called ‘file nesting’ because the files/folders are nested within eachother. In Box you can always see how a certain file or folder is nested by looking in the top center of your screen just above your files and folders.
Here you can see how this folder hierarchy is broken down to finally reveal the ‘Katie’s Sketches’ folder and the files within it.
Congratulations! You have finished the first corner of your Box experience.
