Do you create and use form letters the department regularly uses? Are you storing images for a department newsletter? Is the information that you store subject to university retention rules? Do you curate data owned by a multi-person research group?

Store that valuable information in a group folder rather than your personal Box account.

There’s a good chance that the folder list you see in Box is a mixture of your personal folders and those that other people have shared with you. You may even save form letters, faculty reimbursement receipts, or group research data in your “Department stuff” folder, then share that folder with your colleagues for your day-to-day work. The ease of sharing folders, with its seven levels of access, make Box ideal for this kind of collaboration.

However, when someone leaves the University, their personal Box folders vanish. This can be a real problem when their “Department stuff” folders suddenly vanish with them. Box Departmental Folders solve this problem.

Box Departmental Folders take advantage of Exchange Group Accounts (EGAs) – secure accounts that are owned by a group or department instead of an individual. EGAs still need someone to administer the account (ideally two people), but when an EGA administrator leaves the University the account stays active. The Box folders owned by the EGA don’t disappear and anyone who uses the folders still has seamless access.

The Box Departmental Folders page will guide you through the steps of setting up an EGA (if needed) and starting your first departmental folder.