External Users In SharePoint Online/ Office 365 - Part One

In this tutorial, I’ll explain how to allow people outside the organization (External users) access to SharePoint online. Since this topic is huge and has lots of details to share, I’ll divide the article in two parts. This is the Part 1 covering basics, what are External Users, how to configure the settings etc. In next part I’ll share more details.

External Users: External users are the users who don't have the organization office 365 or SharePoint online license.

Controlling/Configuring External Sharing:

We can configure external sharing at two levels:

A. SharePoint online Tenancy level

B. Site Collection level

A. SharePoint online Tenancy level :

1. Only SharePoint online administrators can configure this setting.
   
   
2. This setting overrides the setting at site collection level.
   
   
3. Navigate to SharePoint admin center site,
   
   a. Log In to Office 365 portal (office 365 admin center) as Administrator.
   
   b. From left navigation expand the “Admin” section and click on “SharePoint” link as,
   
   
   Figure 1 : Navigating to SharePoint admin center
   
   c. On SharePoint admin center site, from left navigation, click on “settings” link as
   
   
   Figure 2 : Tenant-wide Settings
   
   You will be redirected to “TenantSettings.aspx” page (_layouts/15/online/TenantSettings.aspx). On this page we have option to control the External Sharing as
   
   
   Figure 3 : Options for External Sharing

There are three options

1. Don't allow sharing outside your organization – None of the sites in SharePoint online tenant will be shared with external users.
   
   
2. Allow external users who accept sharing invitations and sign in as authenticated users,
   
   a. This option requires external user to sign in with Microsoft account.
   
   b. Site Owners or users who has full control rights they can share the site with external users.
   
   
3. Allow both external users who accept sharing invitations and anonymous access links,
   
   a. This option allows to share the content with users who signs in with Microsoft account as well as anonymous guest links.
   
   b. Site Owners or users who has full control rights they can share the site with external users.

B. Site Collection Level

1. Site collection administrator can configure this setting on per site collection basis provided following one of the option is set from below two options at SharePoint online tenancy level.
   
   a. Allow external users who accept sharing invitations and sign in as authenticated users.
   
   b. Allow both external users who accept sharing invitations and anonymous access links.
   
   
2. To control sharing option at site collection level go to SharePoint admin center as,
   
   
                           Figure 4 : SharePoint Online Site Collections
   
   
3. Select the site collection for which we need to configure the Sharing option as shown in above figure 4, check box will be checked.
   
   
4. After selecting specific site collection please click on “Sharing” option as shown in above figure 4.
   
   
5. Once we clicked “Sharing” menu in ribbon, Sharing popup will appear as,
   
   
                        Figure 5 : Sharing settings popup at site collection level
   
   
                     Figure 6 : Sharing settings popup at site collection level
   
   
6. At site collection level also, same three options as we have on SharePoint tenant level with same meaning.
   
   i. Don't allow sharing outside your organization.
   
   ii. Allow external users who accept sharing invitations and sign in as authenticated users.
   
   iii. Allow sharing with all external users, and by using anonymous access links.

I’ll conclude this article here. In Part 2 I’ll explain more details.