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Shared Channel in a Team with external sharing turned off! HELP please!
Hi all - confusing conundrum which I'm not sure how best to solve! Here's the overview: We've created a Shared Channel with external participants and they can join in conversations fine. However,...
OzOscroft Answer received.
"When a shared channel is created, that creates a new site collection that does a one-time copy of the parent site collection. The channel site sees that external sharing is disabled, and does the same. From that point on it is managed separately and not synced if the parent changes. The two options are to re-create the shared channel after sharing externally is enabled at the parent or use SPO PowerShell to turn on external sharing for the shared channel's site collection.Thanks for raising this to our attention, we will look at how best to document this behavior."Just tried the second option above and it works great. You use this Set-SPOSite (Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell) | Microsoft Docs with the -SharingCapability parameter.
Had to try it. Created a new Team site and added Teams to it. Changed site sharing level to "only in my org" and finally a shared channel. Can't share 🙂
So assuming they are counting on not restricting before shared channel setup.. Will try and ask someone in the Teams PG about it.
OzOscroft Trying to get some answers here. Will update if I get any.
Thanks Christian, much appreciated. I think you're right that they're assuming that the whole site has external sharing turned on - the question is whether this is by design or because of an oversight. Either way, the requirement needs to be documented and ideally a check put in place to avoid other orgs facing the same issue. I'm hoping that they break the inheritance of the external sharing policy between the shared channel's site and the parent site, as by doing that we could fully share the shared channel, but ensure the rest of the Team stays fully internal.
- Is there a delay after running the Set-SPOSite command? I executed this script with the ExternalUserSharingOnly option on an existing shared channel and still receive the error when trying to add external users several hours later.
- Life saver! Exactly my same situation and managed to get it around after setting up parent site and then re-create the shared channel. THANKS a LOT
- stumbled across the exact same issue. We selectively enable external sharing on site collections. When you create a shared channel where the Parent Team site collection is not externally shared, then you dont have an option to add external B2B Direct users to the shared channel. Even if you turn on external sharing for the shared channel site collection, "AllowAddGuests" for parent team is still false and therefore there is no option to add external members.
OzOscroft Hello, stumbled across this scenario again but used a sensitivity label for container instead of manual change of the site-level setting. Worked great and thought you might want to know.
- Hi OzOscroft
I have seen the same UseCase if you are changing the setting over time and create a channel during that time. For me, I would expect, that the setting is inhered from the team, each time you change that as it is the parent identity (owner of sensitivity label). We also have an open case, but I think they have to add an option in sharepoint which enables or disables inheritance of this setting. - Thanks so much Christian. They've confirmed the behaviour I've experienced and I hope they can provide more granular control in the future to allow the shared channel to be shared, but not the rest of the Team or parent site.
I'd read on another forum that people tried Powershell to change the setting and it didn't work for them, so it's great to hear you've tested and it works well.
Great community response to this - problem raised, issue confirmed and acknowledged, understanding shared! OzOscroft Answer received.
"When a shared channel is created, that creates a new site collection that does a one-time copy of the parent site collection. The channel site sees that external sharing is disabled, and does the same. From that point on it is managed separately and not synced if the parent changes. The two options are to re-create the shared channel after sharing externally is enabled at the parent or use SPO PowerShell to turn on external sharing for the shared channel's site collection.Thanks for raising this to our attention, we will look at how best to document this behavior."Just tried the second option above and it works great. You use this Set-SPOSite (Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell) | Microsoft Docs with the -SharingCapability parameter.
