Cloud content management company Box Inc. today added new features to its Box Relay workflow automation tools aimed partly at boosting collaboration and security for people working from home.

Launched in 2016, Box Relay provides workers with tools to manage and track repetitive work processes such as submitting expense reports and getting approvals for agreements. It can be used by workers to create workflows they can share with colleagues, boosting collaboration and efficiency at the same time.

The new capabilities announced today include a library of pre-built templates that make it easier for workers to create workflows without any technical help, plus an integration with Box’s new File Request feature and support for multiple file types.

The pre-built template library enables workers to build common workflows for human resources, finance, legal, marketing and sales processes within minutes, eliminating the need to create them manually. The customizable templates cover 24 common business use cases, the company said. And users can modify the steps in each workflow to suit their purpose, adding notes to related content and assigning tasks to specific individuals.

In an interview with SiliconANGLE, Box Chief Executive Aaron Levie (pictured) said the company wants to help users automate digital processes across the enterprise. To that end, Box has added pre-built templates for every major line of business, including things such as contract reviews and budget approval processes.

“The need to digitize processes is more urgent than ever,” Levie said. “Down the road, we imagine that Fortune 500 companies will want to publish their customized templates into a gallery for themselves.”

Levie said the new feature is very similar to robotic process automation, which involves using software robots to observe workflows in common business applications and then deduce ways to automate repetitive tasks.

“It effectively is accomplishing what many RPA systems are doing,” Levie said, although the difference is that with Box Relay, everything is tied to the company’s ecosystem. “We want to be the world leader in content-based workflow automation.”

Box Relay has also been integrated with the new File Request feature the company launched in May, which enables files and their metadata to be shared securely between external partners and third-parties. The integration enables an “automated handoff” between Box Relay and File Request workloads. Now a Relay customer can associate a previously configured File Request to act as a trigger for a Relay workflow.

In a final update, Box Relay workflows now come with multifile support, which means users can package different types of files that can move together in lockstep through the workflow as a single entity. Box gives the example of a human resources department that needs to process multiple documents for an employee wanting to take medical leave, including an application form, ID and a benefit claim form. The idea is to simplify document handling for these kinds of complex processes.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller told SiliconANGLE that Box Relay was born out of the company’s realization that documents and files are actually artifacts of work processes and workflows, both inside and outside the enterprise.

“Box Relay has addressed that and now it is evolving to tackle a key challenge of enterprises, namely creating and running workflows as fast as possible to practice enterprise acceleration,” Mueller said. “One strategy to enable this is pre-built templates. Time will tell if Box Relay’s templates can help customers launch critical workflows much faster.”

Box said the pre-built template library and File Request integration will be made available at the end of the month, while multifile support will be added in July. The features will be available to all Box Relay users at no extra cost.

With reporting from Robert Hof

Photo: JD Lasica/Flickr