Anonymous Sharing not working with Communication sites

Steel Contributor

We're starting to roll out some Communication sites, however it looks like it is currently impossible to enable Anonymous sharing links:anon-sharing-button.png

I get the following error when I try to set anonymous sharing in PowerShell:

anon-sharing-comms.pngHopefully this isn't by design, since there are several teams who have documents that are shared both internally and externally. It would be nice to be able to update the file in just one place.

 

 

 

42 Replies
what is your sharepoint tenant setting for external sharing?

I dont yet have Communication sites in my tenant, but that looks like the Group/Team site sharing dialog. If it follows the same logic, then it's indeed by design.


@Ivan Unger wrote:
what is your sharepoint tenant setting for external sharing?

Tenant is set to allow anonymous sharing links.


@Vasil Michev wrote:

I dont yet have Communication sites in my tenant, but that looks like the Group/Team site sharing dialog. If it follows the same logic, then it's indeed by design.


With the previous Group/Team sites, I could run that PowerShell command against them to enable anonymous sharing. I verified that it still works for Group sites after getting the above error for the Communication site.

@Stephan Swinford

I don't have Communication Sites yet, but, out of curiosity: are they listed in SPO admin center, like classic team sites,, or not, like modern team sites?

They are like modern sites and are not listed in Admin, so any management needs to be done via PowerShell.

Thanks.

Just another question: what is the (default) SharingCapability reported by get-sposite?


@Salvatore Biscari wrote:

Thanks.

Just another question: what is the (default) SharingCapability reported by get-sposite?


Disabled.

Attempting to set it to either ExternalUserSharingOnly or ExternalUserAndGuestSharing results in the error above.

Interested to find out what the deal is with sharing communication sites with anonymous or external users

I think @Stephen Rice could help here...

Hey all,

 

Thanks for pinging me. I'll forward this around internally and figure out what's going on. Thanks!

Stephen Rice

OneDrive Program Manager II

Already made a Service Request in my Admin Center because the same problem is in my tenant. Would like to use the really nice Communication Sites - but with this "feature" they're not usable. The Communication Sites are also not visible in SP Admin Center.

 

Answer of the MS Support: Communication Sites are still in a developement Status and they cannot support until they're rolled out official to all customers. 

 

Found this Info in the Newscenter:

 

Q. Can I use a communication site in an extranet scenario with external users?

A. Yes, communication sites will support external users for extranet use cases. Initially, Office 365 admins would need to enable it at the site level via PowerShell. We are working on the admin user interface to enable external sharing in a similar fashion as is done today for team sites.

I can't enable that in my tenant with powershell. I got this error when trying to do that:

 

Get-SPOSite https://mytenant.sharepoint.com/sites/communitysite | set-sposite -SharingCapability ExternalUserAndGuestSharing

set-sposite : SPOTenantSiteCollectionProvider::SetSiteProperties - Site https://mytenant.sharepoint.com/sites/communitysite not found in Grid, but TAPS_Sites_UseSharePoint flight in ONReverting to GM-based set-sposite (old) behavior for now

 

Note that same command works perfectly with team sites.

 

Have you checked the Lockdown site (collection?) feature?

 

This feature was enabled on our publishing sites and prevented the anonymous sharing.

Yes, it's disabled.


@Bart Vermeersch wrote:

Have you checked the Lockdown site (collection?) feature?

 

This feature was enabled on our publishing sites and prevented the anonymous sharing.


 

I get the same error on every tenant I've tried it on. 

Have you added everyone in your tenant to "First Release - Select User"??

I have been playing around with Comms sites, but everyone who I send a link to who isn't in "First Release - Select User" get very strange rendering and pages aren't usable, so I guess the First Release group isn't just to get access to "create a site" it's to actually get access to web resources also.... Can anyone confirm this??

Investigating the behavior.

Definitely - i can confirm the strange rendering - also the webparts aren't working correctly for the not "first-release" users.