{"id":378,"date":"2015-01-03T13:55:53","date_gmt":"2015-01-03T18:55:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/?p=378"},"modified":"2016-07-04T14:07:22","modified_gmt":"2016-07-04T18:07:22","slug":"managing-external-sharing-in-office-365-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/?p=378","title":{"rendered":"Managing External Sharing in Office 365 &#8211; Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Office365.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-379\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Office365-300x96.png\" alt=\"Office365\" width=\"300\" height=\"96\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Office365-300x96.png 300w, https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Office365.png 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>I presented a talk\u00a0at a conference recently on how to use an existing Office 365 tenant to create an extranet without additional licensing fees. \u00a0A good part of the presentation was background on how external sharing works and the part played by access requests in the external sharing process flow.\u00a0\u00a0After the talk I had several people who asked if I had ever blogged about the details that I covered in my talk or if I knew of anywhere else that this information was documented. \u00a0This post is the first in a series of posts that will document those details. \u00a0Here&#8217;s a brief overview of the posts in the series:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a title=\"Managing External Sharing in Office 365 \u2013 Part 1\" href=\"http:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/?p=378\"><strong>Part 1 &#8211; (This Post)<\/strong><\/a> A\u00a0high level walk-through of how to configure external sharing starting with your O365 tenant and going down to an individual site collection.<\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/?p=434\">Part 2 \u2013 <\/a><\/strong> How the process flow of sharing differs between sharing a site versus sharing a document and how Office 365 adjusts this experience<\/li>\n<li><strong>Part 3 &#8211;<\/strong> How external sharing depends on the site collection access request list to manage permissions for an external sharing invitation<\/li>\n<li><strong>Part 4 &#8211;<\/strong> How to use PowerShell to manage external users<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Tenant Level Settings<\/h2>\n<p>The\u00a0Office 365 admin center has a specific tab for managing external sharing settings for you tenant. \u00a0This post will focus on settings related to sharing SharePoint sites, but you can also control external sharing of Exchange calendars Lync, and the use of third party apps. \u00a0The Sharing Overview page provides On\/Off\u00a0toggles for whether external sharing is available in your tenant or not. \u00a0The default settings are shown in the following screenshot.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ExternalSharingTenant.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-medium wp-image-381 alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ExternalSharingTenant-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"External Sharing Tenant\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ExternalSharingTenant-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ExternalSharingTenant.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Selecting the Sites tab (or clicking on\u00a0<em>Go to detailed settings for sites<\/em>) \u00a0will take you to a screen where you can set tenant level defaults for external sharing and view the site collections where external sharing has been enabled.<\/p>\n<p>The tenant level default controls whether\u00a0<em>anonymous guest links<\/em>\u00a0can be used anywhere in the tenant or not. \u00a0If\u00a0<em>Anonymous guest links <\/em>are enabled in a site collection, users can send email invitations\u00a0that contain links to individual documents which can then be accessed WITHOUT LOGGING IN to SharePoint. \u00a0These links can be very dangerous if the original recipient shares the link since anyone can use the link to access the document.<\/p>\n<p>This page also displays a list of all the site collections in your tenant and the current level of external sharing enabled for that site collection. \u00a0By default new site collections are created with external sharing disabled. \u00a0The External Sharing Sites page is displayed in the screenshot below:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ExternalSharingTenantSites.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-medium wp-image-382 alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ExternalSharingTenantSites-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"External Sharing Sites page\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ExternalSharingTenantSites-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ExternalSharingTenantSites.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h2>SharePoint Admin Settings<\/h2>\n<p>The SharePoint admin center also\u00a0provides settings that can be used to control the default External Sharing levels allowed in individual site collections. \u00a0These settings are not directly affected by the Tenant level settings described above. \u00a0Instead they provide an additional layer of configuration for External Sharing. \u00a0So even if External Sharing is disabled at the tenant level you will be able to adjust the site collection defaults available in the SharePoint Admin settings. \u00a0But when configuring External Sharing for individual site collections the level of sharing\u00a0possible will respect both defaults. \u00a0For example, if guest links are disabled at the tenant level, but enabled in the SharePoint settings you still won&#8217;t be able to configure a site collection to allow the use of guest links. \u00a0The SharePoint Admin External Sharing settings are highlighted in the screenshot below:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ExternalSharingSiteDefaults.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-medium wp-image-384 alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ExternalSharingSiteDefaults-300x197.jpg\" alt=\"External Sharing SharePoint defaults\" width=\"300\" height=\"197\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ExternalSharingSiteDefaults-300x197.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ExternalSharingSiteDefaults.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h2>Configuring a Site Collection<\/h2>\n<p>Once you&#8217;ve set all the defaults you can configure external sharing for individual site collections. \u00a0When a new site collection is created External Sharing is disabled by default. \u00a0Selecting a site collection and clicking on the <em>Sharing<\/em> button in the ribbon brings up a dialog where you can configure\u00a0External Sharing for sites in that site collection. \u00a0There are three possible settings. \u00a0<em>Don&#8217;t allow sharing<\/em>\u00a0will disable External Sharing for that site collection.<em>\u00a0 Allow external users&#8230;\u00a0<\/em>will allow sharing with authenticated external users. \u00a0And <em>Allow both external users and&#8230;anonymous guest links\u00a0<\/em>will allow sharing with both authenticated and anonymous external users. \u00a0The tenant defaults and SharePoint defaults discussed earlier will limit\u00a0which of these three options can be selected. \u00a0The sharing dialog is displayed in the screenshot below:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ExternalSharingSites.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-medium wp-image-387 alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ExternalSharingSites-300x229.png\" alt=\"External Sharing Site Collection setting\" width=\"300\" height=\"229\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ExternalSharingSites-300x229.png 300w, https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/ExternalSharingSites.png 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Now that External is configured your users can begin extending sharing invitations to external users and creating anonymous guest links. \u00a0I&#8217;ll cover the process for sharing sites and documents with external users in Part 2\u00a0of this series. \u00a0<strong>Part 2 coming soon!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I presented a talk\u00a0at a conference recently on how to use an existing Office 365 tenant to create an extranet without additional licensing fees. \u00a0A good part of the presentation was background on how external sharing works and the part played by access requests in the external sharing process flow.\u00a0\u00a0After the talk I had several &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/?p=378\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Managing External Sharing in Office 365 &#8211; Part 1<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,1],"tags":[74,55,60],"class_list":["post-378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-office-365","category-uncategorized","tag-external_sharing","tag-office_365","tag-sharepoint_2013"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":439,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions\/439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dontpapanic.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}