Box Tags and Microsoft SharePoint Enterprise Keywords Using REST API

Learn how to manage Box Tags and Microsoft SharePoint Enterprise Keywords in migration jobs using the DryvIQ REST API.


Overview

In Box, the Tags feature allows you to mark, sort, and easily search for related files. Once enabled, users will be able to filter and search for files based on shared tags. In SharePoint, the Enterprise Keywords feature allows you to add enterprise keywords to items on a SharePoint site to tag and create a folksonomy. DryvIQ can preserve these tags when transferring content between Box and SharePoint platforms, in copy, migrate, and sync jobs.  

Supported Box Tags

Only Box Tags for files are supported. Box tags on folders are not transferred. Box tags added on the source after initial transfer will not be picked up on subsequent runs. However, if the file was modified we would pick up the new file version and the new tag would then transfer in this situation. Metadata would behave the same way

 

Supported Platforms

  • Box (Tags)
  • Office 365 (Enterprise Keywords)
  • SharePoint 2016 (Enterprise Keywords)
  • OneDrive for Business (Enterprise Keywords) (only visible in "classic OneDrive" view)

User Experience

Migrated Tags to Enterprise Keywords in OneDrive for Business will surface documents when searching by keyword. However, the tags/keywords would not be visible to the user in the default view; they are only visible in the “classic” OneDrive view. Microsoft's current guidance suggests that any content containing tags or metadata would be best migrated to Office 365/SharePoint Online sites.

Options

Options Behavior
Tags (none) - Default No tags/Enterprise Keywords will be propagated to the destination
Tags (add)  Distinct Tags/Enterprise Keywords will be propagated and will be added to any that already exist on the destination
Tags (overwrite) Tags/Enterprise Keywords will be propagated and will overwrite any that already exist on the destination

Configuration

In SharePoint, the Enterprise Keywords column must be enabled. See Microsoft documentation for further details.

Invalid Tags

When a Box tag is created with characters that are not supported in SharePoint, DryvIQ will add a warning to the logs and transfer the file without the invalid tag. For example, a log for an invalid tag would look like the following: "event": "tags_warn" thrown. The value '<>' is invalid.

Job JSON Example

{
  "name":"Box to O365 - Tags to Enterprise Keywords",
  "kind": "transfer",
  "transfer": {
      "audit_level": "trace",
      "tags": "add",
      "transfer_type": "copy",
      "source": {
        "connection": { "id": "{{cloud_connection_source}}" },
        "target":
        {"path":"/BoxPath"}
      },
      "destination": {
        "connection": { "id": "{{cloud_connection_destination}}" },
        "target": {
          "path": "/O365Path"
        }
      }
  },
  "schedule": {
    "mode": "manual"
  }
}