When it comes to college projects, it seems the piles of emails, materials and rough drafts can be endless. It can be hard to keep track of all these communications and documents separately, so The University of Alabama is introducing a new service to help faculty, staff and students keep track of their work.

The University is launching a free service known as UA Box, which will allow teams working on projects to digitize and centralize the documents they wish to share. All content will be in one place that can be accessed from computers or mobile devices.

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Scott Montgomery, deputy CIO for UA Box, said the service will provide secure document storage managed by the Office of Information Technology and the Center for Instructional Technology.

“Because many people at UA use cloud storage services, UA decided to offer a UA-managed service with verified security levels and appropriate functionality,” Montgomery said.

Montgomery said UA Box will allow students to edit the same documents without having to manage multiple copies while providing a more flexible, secure option than email. Researchers will be able to share files with collaborators at both the University and other locations.

“UA Box provides an excellent tool for collaboration,” Montgomery said.

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Ashley Ewing, information security officer, said UA Box will allow users to maintain secure files with multiple groups.

“All files are encrypted at the client end, shipped and stored encrypted in the UA Box cloud and only de-encrypted at the client end,” she said. “Different folders and/or files can be created by the owner and shared with different groups. For example a family group, a class group, a study group, etc., can all have different folders with different users identified with each group.”

Ewing said users will have a number of options for limiting the level of access others have to documents shared on UA Box. Users can share documents as view only for a specific period of time or make other users co-owners of a folder or file.

“Times can be set to auto-delete a file or deactivate a link to a file,” Ewing said. “Password protection can be added for sensitive files and folders. Files can be locked while they are being edited to prevent someone else from making changes at the same time.”

Montgomery said UA Box will be a free service for faculty, staff and students, funded by the Office of Academic Affairs.

“Upon leaving the University, a person can transition his or her UA Box account to a personal account with Box.com at no charge,” Montgomery said.

For more information on UA Box, go online to oit.ua.edu.

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