Forum Discussion
Introducing guest access for Office 365 Groups!
Guess access became available over the weekend, after I'd struggled through the PowerShell steps - needed to install different versions of Azure AD moduleto get the commandlets so it would work - and it looks like it will be an answer to several collaboration issues.
But Groups bring new issues. I know, from following the threads on Groups that these issue will be resolving themselves over time, but here's what I'm seeing:
Navigation is clumsy. It seems that there's no direct way to get to the Group Team Site. One has to go to the group in OWA or OneDrive, That link brings you to either the mailbox or the documents library for the group. From the OneDrive/Library path one can then click Home and get to the Team Site. From OWA/Mailbox one has to click Files to get to the library and then Home to the Team Site.
Too many clicks!
It seems the Group Team Sites are otherwise hidden. There's no place to go from O365 SharePoint Online to see which sites exist.
I know that my users won't want to be bothered with all these steps and most of them won't (or can't without handholding) create bookmarks/favorites for navigation.
So, for me, navigation will be a critical aspect.
These direct links work for my group members - of course you don't have an invite so they won't work for you :-) so you need https://TENANTNAME.sharepoint.com/sites/GROUPNAME
Sharepoint team site for the group is: https://davidslight.sharepoint.com/sites/CAF/SitePages/Home.aspx
Document library for the group is: https://davidslight.sharepoint.com/sites/CAF
Discover and a directory of sites also works in Outlook client quite nicely try Browse Groups.
Would be nice if the Group Description field also was part of the Group listing ...
Thanks for the replies. Especially the assuarance that navigation is being looked at as an important update.
David, thanks for reminding me of the path statement. I may be able to get my users to understand. The users in question are salespersons for whom curiosity about and actually investing energy in using the software tools we have made available to them is severely limited.
For the sales people, if these links, such as https://TENANTNAME.sharepoint.com/sites/GROUPNAME, don't appear magically on the devices, they don't want to bother and will continue to use other, non-collaborative means.
OTOH, if I can get them to use Groups in Outlook, we might get somewhere :)