Forum Discussion
OneDrive Sharing UI "breaking" "Shared with Me" functionality
Glad to hear it Guy Johnson! Sorry we had to go through so much trial and error to figure this out. I'm going to send a copy of this thread to the team so we can make sure future iterations take all of this into account. If you have any other questions, let me know! Thanks!
This is new for me too!
BTW, is still there the option to get an anonymous link? How?
EDIT: Well, it appears that the default sharing option for a file ("anyone with this link can edit...") sends indeed an anonymous link with edit permissions to the recipient. Maybe this is the answer to people complaining that recipients out from the organization, and not with an MS Acoount or an O365 Account, don't like to be forced to signin for an MSA. Anyway, to send as default an anonymous link with edit permissions appears a bit too "strong" for me...
- StephenRice
Microsoft
Hi all,
We did release a message center announcement on the new sharing dialog in ODB but it was a month or two back so it has probably expired at this point. The very short version though is that our previous model combined two separate concepts (how do I want to share? and how do I inform the recipient of their access?) in a very weird way. If you wanted to e-mail the recipient, you could only permission the user directly. If you wanted to copy a link, you could only copy anonymous or company shareable links.
In the new sharing dialog, the user now makes a deliberate choice between e-mail and copy, and then another choice on the type of link (anonymous, people in my org or permissioning) to share. We've gotten a lot of good feedback on the sharing dialog and we are constantly looking for ways to improve.
In the meantime, we have a feature in the SharePoint admin center that lets the admin choose the "default link" in the sharing dialogue (either anonymous access, internal or direct/restricted). This chooses the default link that is selected but users can still change if needed.
Hope this helps! Thanks!
Stephen Rice
OneDrive Program Manager
IMO this was a very big blunder. The "shared with me" issue is how we discovered it, but that's not the root of the problem. The real problem is default behavior that creates anonymous links, which in every reasonable case should be the *exception.* So now we have some number of anonymous links floating around and I'm not particularly happy about that.
Also, while the new sharing dialog is simpler, we have had comments that it is less intuitive. I tend to agree. The old Share dialog actually made a lot of sense in that you could easily specify the "type" of sharing you wanted to perform. I agree with your notification comments, as "Get Link" makes more sense now, but I think that the baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
Interestingly enough, we can still get to the old dialog by clicking a file and bringing up the info pane on the right and then clicking "Add People."
I don't want to be overly critical, but this doesn't feel like it was well thought out.
- StephenRice
Hi Boden Larson,
Thank you for the feedback, this is definitely a delicate area where security and usability need to be balanced carefully. Our approach thus far has been to make the dialog as usable about of the box as possible and to provide IT controls that let them scope things down to meet their security requirements.
As I mentioned above, we have been taking all the feedback we've heard and we are in the process of applying it to our sharing flows to address those concerns. You should see the fruits of these changes in the next couple of months.
As for tracking down anonymous links that may have been created, you should be able to use the audit center to find all resources that had anonymous links created for them. We are also working on some other features to help both tenant and site collection admins discover how their resources are shared out.
IMO this was a very big blunder. The "shared with me" issue is how we discovered it, but that's not the root of the problem. The real problem is default behavior that creates anonymous links, which in every reasonable case should be the *exception.* So now we have some number of anonymous links floating around and I'm not particularly happy about that.
Also, while the new sharing dialog is simpler, we have had comments that it is less intuitive. I tend to agree. The old Share dialog actually made a lot of sense in that you could easily specify the "type" of sharing you wanted to perform. I agree with your notification comments, as "Get Link" makes more sense now, but I think that the baby was thrown out with the bathwater.
Interestingly enough, we can still get to the old dialog by clicking a file and bringing up the info pane on the right and then clicking "Add People."
I don't want to be overly critical, but this doesn't feel like it was well thought out.
Hi Stephen.
You write: "In the new sharing dialog, the user now makes a deliberate choice between e-mail and copy".
Do you mean the choice between "Share" and "Get a link"?
Also, you write: "we have a feature in the SharePoint admin center that lets the admin choose the "default link" in the sharing dialogue".
Where exactly?
TIA
Salvatore Biscari wrote:Hi Stephen.
You write: "In the new sharing dialog, the user now makes a deliberate choice between e-mail and copy".
Do you mean the choice between "Share" and "Get a link"?
Also, you write: "we have a feature in the SharePoint admin center that lets the admin choose the "default link" in the sharing dialogue".
Where exactly?
TIA
You can find the setting in the SharePoint Admin Center > Sharing
