Forum Discussion
Notification when external user accepts sharing invitation
Dear all,
Wondering if its possbile to receive a notification when an external user accepts the inital sharing request?
The scenario is that we would like to give external user read-only permissions on a document library.
Currently we 1st share (view permission) a document within the library with the user. Once the user has accepted and logged in we can then add them to a group for that library e.g. read only group.
Of course we can't add them to the group (please correct me if I am wrong) until they have accepted the inital request.
So it would be nice to get a notification on the inital request so we can then add to the group.
Advise and thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers
Within the Security & Compliance center you can filter by accepted invitations. So no email alert but at least you can get to the infromation:
26 Replies
- StephenRice
Microsoft
Hi Damien,
I have some good news for you. We have a new feature rolling out soon that will address this exact scenario. When an external user accepts a sharing invitation to a document in your OneDrive for Business, you will receive an e-mail notification informing you of who the user is and what resource they are accessing. The e-mail always goes to the owner of the ODB. There is an additional notification for when someone else shares one of your ODB documents to an external user.
This feature will be rolling out to ODB in September and we'll be listening for feedback as we plan out how to bring this feature to SharePoint Online & team sites as well. Thanks!
Stephen Rice
OneDrive Program Manager
HiStephenRice . Are there plans for the same feature be included in sharepoint document libraries?
thank you!
Alisson
- StephenRice
Hi araujotech,
This is something we've talked about but don't have any plans to share just yet. Definitely submit this over at onedrive.uservoice.com though as this helps us prioritize what collab features we work on next! Thanks!
Stephen Rice
Senior Program Manager, OneDrive
- Hi Stephen, this doesn't seem to work for us at this point... in fact, when I try to share with someone external who doesn't have a Microsoft account (ie. a gmail mail address), all I get to is the new login experience… there is no suggestion to create a Microsoft account or anything like that - and since I don't have a Microsoft account as that user, I get nowhere… Is this a known problem?
- StephenRice
Hi Allan,
With the new external sharing flow, you don't need to create a Microsoft account to access the content. Instead you just need to verify that you own the e-mail address by entering the verification code. There should be no need to sign-in or sign-up for an account. Thanks!
Stephen Rice
OneDrive Program Manager II
StephenRice Thanks! looking forward to this improvement.
Can you check in Azure AD after sending the share request? I'm guessing that the AD entry isn't created until after the external user logs in but you never know, I've not tested that scenario. If they are created at share time, you should be able to add them immediately to the group.
Otherwise, you are probably faced with writing a script that queries the combined audit log (that's the one that Dean pointed out the interface for). I believe this is possible but it is still early days for that log so examples might be thin on the ground. You would then have to run that periodically and have some way of sending notifications (probably a reasonable use case for the new Flow tool).
- Good news, you're wrong ;)
Create a group for the external users, set its perms as desired
Then when you Share a library, click the More Options link, scroll to bottom of the popup form if necessary, change the group from Members to the new Group.Hi Dean_Gross,
The group is already created and permissions given and the goup is added to the library.
Not sure i'm following below correctly as i am not seeing a more options when inviting users to the library via the Shared with in the ribbon.
Am I missing something? Sorry :/
"Then when you Share a library, click the More Options link, scroll to bottom of the popup form if necessary, change the group from Members to the new Group."
That is strange, your screen is different than mine, see below. I'm not sure why that would be. In my example, I am the Site Collection Admin, what role are you in your site?
- Thanks Dean, Let me test this process and get back to you.
Hi Dean_Gross,
Does that send an email alert when the external first accesses the library? Or does that send an email alert then the library is shared?
As far as I know there there isn't an easy option for this.
- Thanks Pieter, can you suggest a better way to handle the process?
Within the Security & Compliance center you can filter by accepted invitations. So no email alert but at least you can get to the infromation:
