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App Users are programmatic user accounts that may only be created by apps that are using JWT authentication. They are designed to allow for users, groups, or processes to be represented behind the scenes in an application without the need for the user to have a Box account to log in. App users can only be accessed by the Box application through the APIs and do not have credentials to log in to box.com directly.

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Common App User Patterns

Typically app users are created for a number of different patterns:
  • To represent a single application user or group of users without a box.com account.
  • To represent an application process, such as having the app user monitor all events within an enterprise.
  • To provide the application with the ability to completely control the file and folder structure of a user account without the possibility of that content being modified through the box.com web app.

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Creating a New App User

To generate a new app user, the minimal information that will be required will be a name for the app user. 
BoxUser.Info createdUserInfo = BoxUser.createAppUser(api, "A User");
To see all available optional parameters that may be set when creating an app user, see the create user endpoint.
Before you can make any changes to the newly created account, you need to click the link you receive in the confirmation email.
Once the app user is created a user object will be returned. Within the user object is an ID for the app user, which may be used to make API requests to modify the user in the future.