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Question

Can we find objects by shared link id or URL only?

  • May 22, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 83 views
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We're finding users often request access to files from IT still. They'll send a request with a shared link to us and ask for access. If we don't have access to that file, the hunt begins to try to help them or find the right person/department.

 

With the Box CLI, I can search against shared links, but only if I know the owner. It seems I have to act as-user and know the ID of the owner of the object behind the shared link. Both of these take too long to hunt down or realistically iterate through as a human.

 

The other option is to run a shared link report, wait, wait, wait, tell the user to ask for access from the person that sent the link, wait, if the report is done, oh good it is, open it in Excel, search for my link ID, and they already have access or have given up and copied the file some other way circumventing Box and getting frustrated in the process. Not a good experience for IT or the user or Box.

 

So, how can we search all shared links within the enterprise? This seems like something that should be easily available in the admin console or searchable through the content or reporting query tools. This is a security/exposure report with a filter - easy right?

 

Right now we can't offer the users anything but a re-direct to the sender. If we knew the file, owner, path, folder/file ID, we could at least tell them more about it - expired, owner, who to actually ask if the link was forwarded.

 

Thought? Workarounds? Build a script that iterates through every user and attempts to search until it doesn't get a 404 or 403? Feature request for the admin console?

    3 replies

    C
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    I think you may find your answer here

    https://developer.box.com/en/reference/get-shared-items/

    C
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     that only works if the ID doing the search (or as-user) has access to the object.

     

    Right now I'm hunting through an approach using the admin_logs/enterprise event stream. It's a bit of a hunt because you can only return 500 events at a time. It does appear to work though, and it will give the share id, user that created it, when, object owner, name, etc. Then you can do an "as-user" as the owner to get object details if you need more.

     

    It's a bit of a slog, but it's coming into focus.

    C
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     Oh, sorry, I forgot that we need to know the owner id so we can retrieve the item belongs to the shared link.

    I think search through Enterprise Events probably is the only way (at this time). You can write a service and let it collects enterprise events (with event_type=SHARE,SHARE_EXPIRATION) in real-time then write shared link's id as well as folder/file's id to database (or spread sheet,etc) . 

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