BOX - Perpetual Access
When an employee leaves Baylor, ACCESS to ALL BOX Folders they OWNED goes away. All collaborators LOSE ACCESS after the owner's last day - even co-owners. To regain access to business data, email the Helpdesk.
Best Practice:
- Perpetual work-related BOX Folders should have a "Department Owner" - not an individual employee; If you work in folders with a human Owner, ask the Owner to transfer Ownership to a resource account and when you create a folder that should remain after you leave, change the Owner to a resource account after creation
- If you do not see a Box Account for your department, request one! Go to helpdesk.baylor.edu > Click the blue Service Catalog button > Click the "Box Shared Folder" tile > Submit (we recommend the title be a one- or two-word department _box name; like Statistics_Box or Politcal_Science_Box)
- A resource account does not retire!
How to make a resource account the Owner of a BOX folder:
- Have the Owner open the BOX folder
- If a Co-Owner does not exist, elevate an existing Collaborator to Co-owner (so they may elevate others to co-owner)
- Add a new collaborator (Editor) using your “department resource account” (chemistry_box) (history_box) (arts_sciences_box) (etc)
- The current Owner may now transfer ownership to the resource account
- Open Collaborators for the folder
- Click the 3 dot ellipsis next to the resource account
- Assign "Owner" to the resource account; it becomes the folder “Owner” and you become an Editor; ask another Co-Owner to elevate your account to Co-Owner (if desired)
NOTE: Co-Owners may do almost everything an Owner can do; they cannot MOVE the parent folder nor perform certain minor folder settings rarely needed (add private collaborators; restrict collaborators; restrict commenting; restrict shared-link access). Most folders do not need this; a best practice is to have a Co-Owner in the parent folder to denote who "manages" the folder.
Let us know if you have questions or if we need to improve this message.
Folders with ongoing business data should be owned by a resource account, not an individual account. Perpetual ownership is the key to perpetual access.
Related: See the Box FAQ for how to transfer your personal data prior to departure.
Sample image of a Resource Account Owner with Co-owner and Editors:
Arts & Sciences Technology
Created 06-15-22 due to increasing confusion when folks leave; updated 4-24-2025
If not clear, email astc @ baylor.edu to help us make this better.