Managing metadata templates

Metadata allows your managed users to define and store custom data associated with their files in Box. As an admin, you can create templates for your managed users and enable them to keep track of custom information such as owners, project names, or release dates. Metadata makes it much easier to organize, understand, and search through all of your Box files. You can reference the end-user metadata documentation for more benefits and use cases. Structured metadata templates offer advanced capabilities beyond custom metadata, including:

• Enforcing uniformity across metadata application on files
• Advanced search on specific metadata attribute values
• Creating views and filters in Box Apps
• Driving workflows in Box Automate
• A SQL-like query API that supports logical operators

To enable your managed users to start using metadata in Box, create templates that they can choose from and apply to files.

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Creating metadata templates

1. Go to Admin Console > Metadata.
2. Select New.
3. Fill in the Template Name field.
4. Use the toggle to decide if the template should be Hidden from managed users.
5. Under Add your first field to the Template, select a field type you want to create.
6. Provide a name for the attribute by typing in the Field Name input.
7. Use the Description field to incorporate additional information about the attribute.
8. Select Add Field to add additional attributes.
9. Select Save.

There are 5 field types available:

• Text: free-form text entry
• Number: numeric values
• Date: date values
• Dropdown: a predefined list of options for users to choose from
• Taxonomy: hierarchical metadata values defined through metadata taxonomies

You can change the field type by selecting the Field Type dropdown. You must have at least one attribute in the template in order to save your template.

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Creating templates from Box Extract

Admins and Co-Admins can also create metadata templates directly in Box Extract when creating or configuring a Custom Extract Agent. From the Extract configuration page, you can:

• Generate a template with Box AI: Box AI analyzes files in your source folders and generates a template with relevant fields. Generating a template with Box AI is a paid feature that uses premium models. See Box AI pricing for details.
• Create a template manually: add fields one at a time using the same field types available in the Admin Console (text, number, date, dropdown, taxonomy).
• Use an existing template: select from templates already configured in the Admin Console.

For full steps, see Using Box Extract.

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Editing metadata templates

1. Go to Admin Console > Metadata. A list of metadata templates displays.
2. Select the template you want to edit.
3. Make any desired changes.
4. Select Save.

While editing a saved template, you can still add attributes by selecting Add Attribute. You can also hide existing attributes by selecting Hide template from users, or delete existing attributes by selecting Remove. Within an attribute, you cannot make changes to the field type unless the format is a dropdown list. If you selected Dropdown for your format, you can add or delete options.

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Deleting metadata templates

Admins and Co-Admins cannot delete metadata templates from the Admin Console. To delete a template, use the Metadata Template Deletion API. Deleting a template also deletes all metadata instances of that template across your files. This action cannot be undone.

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Hiding metadata templates

If you have templates that you want to hide from users, whether you are still developing a template or want it available only through the API, you can hide them from managed users:

1. Go to Admin Console > Metadata. A list of metadata templates displays.
2. Select the template you want to hide.
3. Enable the Hide template from users switch.

To restore visibility of a template, follow the steps above and toggle the switch off.

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Template limits

Keep these limits in mind when creating metadata templates for your enterprise: The maximum metadata instance size limit is the combined size of all values in a metadata instance. For user experience purposes, we recommend having a smaller set of metadata attributes and values. By following the architecture guidelines below, you should not hit the 512KB metadata instance size limit.

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Architecture options

Option 1: Standard metadata Option 2: Many dropdown options Option 3: Larger field values Option 4: Many fields If you have your own custom configuration, you can roughly compute your maximum metadata size as: 8 * [(# chars in metadata attribute key) + (# chars in metadata attribute value)]

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Admin report logging

The creation, update, and deletion of metadata templates and metadata values are available in the Box User Activity Report. If the metadata template is changed or deleted, only one event is logged noting the template change or deletion. There is no separate event logged for all template values associated with items that are impacted. You can also report on current metadata values using the files and folders report. Metadata is an optional column you can include in that report.