O365 Licensing T&C's - Sharing OneDrive document with externals and internals from a central account

[Frederik Madsen]

Can someone please clarify whether or not it is allowed, under the terms and conditions of OneDrive and Office 365, to have a central licensed Office 365 account where documents are uploaded to and shared from?

EXAMPLE SCENARIO: A business is looking to be able to share and co-author on documents from their internal document management system with external consultants as well as internal office365 users. In order to keep track of the shared documents, and to manage permissions, one central user/person is in charge of uploading and sharing documents via OneDrive for Business, then later bring them into their internal document system and lastly delete them from OneDrive again.

The central account will not be a shared account, as it is only used by one person. We are just not certain whether or not using a central account for managing lots of documents with internals as well as externals is compliant with the Office365 terms of service.

Thanks is advance for any assistance!

[#2]

I think that sounds reasonable, so if the central account shares a folder or individual files in OneDrive for Business with external consultants while the document is finalized, then brings them into the proper location afterwards, I don't see that affecting the licencing.  I'd check out this article for other considerations, more from a SharePoint angle - External sharing overview.

[#3]

Agree here, but bear also in mind that those external consultants "must" be external, otherwise if they belong to the organization in some way, you will need to provide a license to them