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Box

If your company keeps documents in Box, you can connect Box so Mention can learn from those files while they stay in Box.

What gets synced

Mention scans your Box folder tree starting from the root of the connected account and lists files with a supported extension: .docx, .pptx, .xlsx, .pdf, .txt, .md, .html, .htm, and .json. Other file types are skipped. Folders are used for organization and paths in Mention; each importable unit is a file.

When you activate a file, its content is retrieved from Box for use in Mention.

How to connect

  1. Add Box as a source in Mention.
  2. Sign in to Box and approve the connection so Mention can list and download content you are allowed to access, and watch your folders so changes reach Mention as they happen.
  3. Review the file list and activate the documents you want included.

More detail: Connecting sources.

Things to know

  • You must have access in Box to a file for it to be listed and imported.
  • Deep or very large folder structures may take a little time to fully appear; check back after the first sync if the list still looks incomplete.
  • Access rules apply per first two folder levels: everything under the same second-level folder is one scope you can restrict to chosen audiences. See Source access.

Sync behavior

Box tells Mention as soon as a watched file changes, so edits usually land in Mention within a minute of being saved in Box:

  • File uploaded, moved, or renamed — Mention re-reads the file, along with its new path and access scope.
  • File trashed or deleted — the file is no longer eligible, so Mention removes it from your sources. Restoring it brings it back.
  • Folder moved, trashed, deleted, or restored — Mention re-lists the account, because a folder carries the path and access scope of everything inside it.

Mention watches each top-level folder of the connected account, and a watch covers everything beneath it however deep. Box does not allow the account root itself to be watched, so files sitting loose at the root — outside any folder — are covered by the daily sync only. Box also caps an application at 1,000 watched folders per connected user; an account with more top-level folders than that has the rest covered by the daily sync.

The daily sync still runs, and it is what recovers anything an event missed, picks up a newly created top-level folder, and restores a watch Box has dropped. You can refresh manually whenever you need the latest structure immediately.

Reconnecting an existing Box source

Event delivery needs a Box permission (manage webhooks) that connections made before this feature did not ask for. If your Box source was connected earlier, disconnect and reconnect it and approve the connection again. Until you do, the Box source keeps working exactly as before on the daily sync — you just won't see changes arrive within the minute.

Activation limit

You can activate up to 2,000 Box files per Box integration.