article

Box adds AI workflow design to its automation toolkit

Photo courtesy of Box

Box is no stranger to workflow automation. It has been incorporating workflow tools into its platform for over a decade going back to Box Relay. Last week, it announced the latest iteration, a new tool called Box Architect that lets users describe what the workflow should do, and it goes and builds it.

Box sees the advances being made across the model landscape and is trying to build a tool to take advantage of that and simplify the act of creating workflows. Instead of using low code or visual tools as in the past, with Box Architect you simply tell the model what you want it to do, point it to the right content and it will build an entire workflow for you, including the necessary agents, apps, automations and metadata templates (at least in theory).

Nirmal Ganesh, Box’s senior director of product management for Box Automate, described the tool on stage at BoxWorks as "an autonomous agentic system that partners with your enterprise to reimagine workflows for you."

Box is hoping to take workflow creation to the next level, taking advantage of the latest capabilities in the frontier models. While the onstage demo made it look like it's presto-chango, easy peasy, in reality, building a complex workflow like the ones Box described this week takes a fair bit of human tweaking and back and forth to get to a steady state. The tool is built to design, test and deploy and the testing may take a fair bit of time to get right.

And with the models constantly changing, getting there today doesn't mean it will work tomorrow. So while Box Architect sounds like a big step forward, it's important to remember that even with the help of vendors like Box, companies continue to struggle to build agents that deliver consistent and meaningful results (see this week's ForwardThinking commentary).

Box Architect is not generally available yet. It will be launched in beta in Q4, so soon, but at least initially, this tool will only be offered to Enterprise Advanced customers.

This story first ran in FastForward #85: Dispatches from the road, my Friday newsletter for enterprise tech leaders.

Want stories like this in your inbox every week? Subscribe to FastForward.

Adobe Max signage outside the Miami Beach Convention Center.

Adobe backs Creator Act to protect artists from AI-driven style exploitation

Disclosure: I am being paid by Adobe to produce a sponsored video at Adobe MAX 2026. Adobe had no editorial input into this article. Adobe sees itself as a central part of the creative process of many different artists from painters to graphic artists to marketers, all of whom create

CrowdStrike's new AI kill switch is really an agent access cutoff button

As fears spread that unfettered AI could cause systemic damage, the concept of an AI kill switch has emerged. This is the idea, that you hit the big red button (metaphorically at least) and it shuts down the system. Such an uber button is probably not realistic, but that didn&

Glowing red and orange fiber-optic strands against a black background.

Marvell makes a $115 billion bet on optical technology with Lumentum deal

Chip designer Marvell announced last week that it has agreed to acquire Lumentum, a maker of light-transmitting optical hardware, in a $115 billion all-stock deal including debt. The move gives Marvell technology and manufacturing capacity critical to moving data through AI data centers. Marvell and other industry experts

Air France passenger jet approaching landing against a golden sunset sky.

FastForward #85: Dispatches from the road

Hi everyone. It's November and it's getting dark early as the leaves turn brown and the sky turns grey. I’d like to thank Akamai for returning as a sponsor for the next four issues. If you're interested in advertising, please drop me a

Read more

Adobe backs Creator Act to protect artists from AI-driven style exploitation

CrowdStrike's new AI kill switch is really an agent access cutoff button

Marvell makes a $115 billion bet on optical technology with Lumentum deal

FastForward #85: Dispatches from the road