Box.com available to campus starting Oct. 1

Faculty, students and staff will soon gain access to Box.com, a powerful file-sharing and data storage tool, giving UC Davis affiliates the ability to share and access information from anywhere, at any time, and with any device. Box accounts will provide 50GB of storage at no cost to campus members. By Oct. 1, through a partnership with a number of academic and administrative units, Information and Educational Technology (IET) will start offering Box.com accounts. With Box:

  • Files can be synchronized between the cloud and various devices (individual computers, smartphones, and tablets);
  • 50GB of storage gives users the ability to store the equivalent of about 28,000 digital photos or 375,000 books of 200 pages each;
  • Users can securely create and manage group projects, choosing collaborators and the level of access per person, assigning tasks, and commenting directly on files.

In late August, IET rolled out Google Apps for Education, which includes Google Drive (file storage and sharing), Google Docs (document creation and collaboration), and other popular Apps (blogging, sites, etc.). The UC Davis offering is free of ads; comes at no cost to faculty, staff, and students; and includes contractual protections against data mining.

Campus members can use both Box and Google Apps for Education. As a matter of fact, Box seamlessly integrates with Google Docs. You can create, edit and save Google Docs from within the Box interface.

Box accounts will be automatically activated for everyone on Tuesday, Oct. 1. Like Google Apps, the use of Box is optional. Because of more stringent legal, privacy and security requirements for medical records, the Health System, the Student Health Center, and the Occupational Health Center have opted to hold off on using these tools at this time.

Some campus members have a personal Box.com account using a UC Davis email address. Specific instructions on how to migrate the exis ting Box account to the new 50GB UC Davis account will be emailed directly to those affected.

Box requires a recent version of one of the following Web browsers: Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or Apple Safari. Box also requires Adobe Flash to be installed.

For information about Box and other cloud products, visit cloud.ucdavis.edu. Please direct questions and comments to cloud-services@ucdavis.edu or contact the campus IT Express Computing Services Help Desk at 530-754-HELP (4357) or ithelp@ucdavis.edu.