Before you begin, review the Create a User account and Set Access Right in the Prerequisites.

On this page

Step 1. Launch Aspire and Open the Content Source Management Page


Launch Aspire (if it's not already running). See:


Step 2. Add a New Box Content Source


To specify exactly what shared folder to crawl, we will need to create a new "Content Source".

To create a new content source:

  1. From the Content Source, select Add Source.
  2. Select Box Connector.

Step 2a. Specify Basic Information

In the "General" tab in the Content Source Configuration window, specify basic information for the content source:

  1. Enter a content source name in the "Name" field. 
    1. This is any useful name which you decide is a good name for the source. It will be displayed in the content source page, in error messages, etc.
  2. Click on the Scheduled pulldown list and select one of the following: Manually, PeriodicallyDaily, Weekly or Advanced.
    1. Aspire can automatically schedule content sources to be crawled on a set schedule, such as once a day, several times a week, or periodically (every N minutes or hours).For the purposes of this tutorial, you may want to select Manually and then set up a regular crawling schedule later.
  3. Click on the Action pulldown list to select one of the following: Start, StopPause, or Resume.
    1. This is the action that will be performed for that specific schedule.
  4. Click on the Crawl pulldown list and select one of the following: Incremental, FullReal Time, or Cache Groups.
    1. This will be the type of crawl to execute for that specific schedule.

After selecting a Scheduled, specify the details, if applicable:

  • Manually: No additional options.
  • Periodically: Specify the "Run every:" options by entering the number of "hours" and "minutes."
  • Daily: Specify the "Start time:" by clicking on the hours and minutes drop-down lists and selecting options.
  • Weekly: Specify the "Start time:" by clicking on the hours and minutes drop-down lists and selecting options, then clicking on the day checkboxes to specify days of the week to run the crawl.
  • Advanced: Enter a custom CRON Expression (e.g. 0 0 0 ? * *)

 

You can add more schedules by clicking in the Add New option, and rearrange the order of the schedules.
If you want to disable the content source just unselect the the "Enable" checkbox. This is useful if the folder will be under maintenance and no crawls are wanted during that period of time.
Real Time and Cache Groups crawl will be available depending of the connector.


Step 2b. Specify the Connector Information

In the "Connector" tab, specify the connection information to crawl the Box.

  1. In the "Server" field in the ' Content Source Properties' section, enter the Server URL to crawl.
  2. In the "Server API" field in the ' Content Source Properties' section, enter the URL to the Box API (For version 2.0, the current url is https://api.box.com).
    Most include the respective protocol, http or https.
  3. API Version, the connector was develop and tested with version 2.0.
  4. Enter the Client ID, Client_Secret, Redirect_Url: The Box API uses OAuth 2 for authentication, so in order to connect, we need register a Box application and get these values.
  5. Enter the Username, Password of the Box.Com account (Admin account).
    Note: The password will be automatically encrypted by Aspire.
  6. Enter the page size, which indicates the amount of documents or folders that will be returned by the API each call.
  7. Exclude extension for extract text by setting the extensions (separeted by comma) you don't want to extract the text, for instance dll or exe.
    Check on the other options as needed:
    1. Impersonate users?: Impersonate each user in order to crawl all shared and private content. 
      If unchecked, only shared content accessible by the crawling account will be crawled.
    2. Index folders?: index subfolders as items. If unchecked, only files will be indexed.
    3. Scan subfolders?: Scan through subfolder's child nodes.
    4. Exclude Sub Folders: Enter a Folder name (or a list of folders) to be exclude from the crawling.
    5. Include/Exclude patterns: Enter regex patterns to include or exclude files/folders based on URL matches.

      If you want to specify include patterns, click on the 'add new' button for include patterns and specify the regex pattern. So Aspire will only crawl URLs with the specified pattern.If you want to specify exclude patterns, click on the 'add new' button for exclude patterns and specify the regex pattern. So Aspire will exclude crawling of URLs that matches the specified pattern.

  8. Click on Advance Configuration option, verify the Box Working directory value, you will need to create Box.accesstoken and Box.refreshtoken files with the corresponding values from the previous process (Box Prerequisites) and save them into the working dir.


  

  1. In the "Server" field in the ' Content Source Properties' section, enter the Server URL to crawl.
  2. In the "Server API" field in the ' Content Source Properties' section, enter the URL to the Box API (For version 2.0, the current url is https://api.box.com).
    Most include the respective protocol, http or https.
  3. API Version, the connector was develop and tested with version 2.0.
  4. Enter the Client ID, Client_Secret, Redirect_Url: The Box API uses OAuth 2 for authentication, so in order to connect, we need register a Box application and get these values.
  5. Enter the Username, Password of the Box.Com account (Admin account).
    Note: The password will be automatically encrypted by Aspire.
  6. Enter the page size, which indicates the amount of documents or folders that will be returned by the API each call.
  7. Exclude extension for extract text by setting the extensions (separeted by comma) you don't want to extract the text, for instance dll or exe.
  8. Check on the other options as needed:
    1. Impersonate users?: Impersonate each user in order to crawl all shared and private content. 
      If unchecked, only shared content accessible by the crawling account will be crawled.
    2. Index folders?: index subfolders as items. If unchecked, only files will be indexed.
    3. Scan subfolders?: Scan through subfolder's child nodes.
    4. Exclude Sub Folders: Enter a Folder name (or a list of folders) to be exclude from the crawling.
    5. Include/Exclude patterns: Enter regex patterns to include or exclude files/folders based on URL matches.
    If you want to specify include patterns, click on the 'add new' button for include patterns and specify the regex pattern. So Aspire will only crawl URLs with the specified pattern.
    If you want to specify exclude patterns, click on the 'add new' button for exclude patterns and specify the regex pattern. So Aspire will exclude crawling of URLs that matches the specified pattern.
  9. Click on Advance Configuration option, verify the Box Working directory value, you will need to create Box.accesstoken and Box.refreshtoken files with the corresponding values from the previous process (Box Prerequisites) and save them into the working dir.

Step 2c. Specify Workflow Information

In the "Workflow" tab, specify the workflow steps for the jobs that come out of the crawl. Drag and drop rules to determine which steps should an item follow after being crawled. This rules could be where to publish the document or transformations needed on the data before sending it to a search engine. See Workflow for more information.

  1. For the purpose of this tutorial, drag and drop the Publish To File rule found under the Publishers tab to the onPublish Workflow tree.
    1. Specify a Name and Description for the Publisher.
    2. Click Add.

After completing this steps click on the Save then Done and you'll be sent back to the Home Page.


Step 3: Initiate a Full Crawl


Now that the content source is set up, the crawl can be initiated.

  1. Click on the crawl type option to set it as "Full" (is set as "Incremental" by default and the first time it'll work like a full crawl. After the first crawl, set it to "Incremental" to crawl for any changes done in the repository).
  2. Click on the Start button.

During the Crawl

During the crawl, you can do the following:
  • Click on the "Refresh" button on the Content Sources page to view the latest status of the crawl.

    The status will show RUNNING while the crawl is going, and CRAWLED when it is finished.

  • Click on "Complete" to view the number of documents crawled so far, the number of documents submitted, and the number of documents with errors.

If there are errors, you will get a clickable "Error" flag that will take you to a detailed error message page.


Step 4: Initiate an Incremental Crawl


If you only want to process content updates from the Box (documents which are added, modified, or removed), then click on the "Incremental" button instead of the "Full" button. The Box connector will automatically identify only changes which have occurred since the last crawl.

If this is the first time that the connector has crawled, the action of the "Incremental" button depends on the exact method of change discovery. It may perform the same action as a "Full" crawl crawling everything, or it may not crawl anything. Thereafter, the Incremental button will only crawl updates.

Statistics are reset for every crawl.

Group Expansion 


Group expansion configuration is done on the "Advanced Connector Properties" of the Connector tab.

  1. Click on the Advanced Configuration checkbox to enable the advanced properties section.
  2. Scroll down to Group Expansion and click the checkbox.
  3. Add a new source for each repository you want to expands groups from (you'll need administrator rights on all of them to be able to do this).
  4. Set the default domain, user name and password of the crawl account.
  5. Set an schedule for group expansion refresh and cleanup.
  6. As an optional setting click on the "Use external Group Expansion" checkbox to select an LDAP Cache component for LDAP group expansion. See more info on the LDAP Cache component on LDAP Cache