OneDrive Sharing UI "breaking" "Shared with Me" functionality

[Ivan Unger]

Hi, so I'm not quite sure when the Sharing UI in OneDrive for Business (web) changed, but a couple of weeks ago it looked different.

What I'm specifically talking about is this usage scenario:

• Users right clicks folder in his/her OneDrive and clicks "Share"
  • right then pops up a little different sharing dialog than previously
  • when you look closely you'll see the text "anyone with this link can edit this item" below the File/Foldername and right above the User entry field
• Users enters Names/E-Mail of specific people
• User then clicks share
• done

Previously what happend is, that those users would get permission to the file/folder and also see this in their own OneDrive under "Shared with Me", since they've received explicit permission

But since the UI changed sometime in the last couple of weeks this is what happens

• the sharing dialog defaults to the "Get a Link" functionality, which btw is still accessible in the right click menu, but looks a little different as well than previously
• a links is created and that link is sent to the shared users
• BUT
  • no explicit permissions are granted anymore
  • instead a link is created with a default expiration of 180 days
  • and those Users no longer see the shared file/folder in their "Shared with Me" OneDrive UI

To change this, a user has to do the following

• in the new Sharing UI click that tiny text hyperlink "anyone with this link can edit this item"
• a new "Permissions" side pane flys open and in the available dropdown menu select "Only people in the To: line" instead of "Anyone with this link"
• Click OK
• Click Share

Can someone point out when this change happend, or where it was mentioned? I usually follow all the changes very closely, but this one I might have missed.

Also, what will happen to the "shared with me" functionality, because I can pretty much guarantee that nobody will effectively using it anymore, since no new shared files/folder will show up there as long as the sharing ui works like it does now.

I'm on full tenant first release btw.

Thanks,
Ivan

[#2]

The last one worked for me.

I have made the change in the SharePoint Admin center

[#3 · Accepted solution]

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!

[#4]

Thanx for the help. If users are involved let's keep this as simple as possible.

[#5]

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for all the clarifications and the repost of the MC message from "way back" :). 

I think we have proper workarounds in place for now (=SharePoint Admin Center change) to keep the "Shared with Me" functionality alive and working for now.

I'll be interested to hear about future iterations of the Sharing Process, and how it relates to the re-discoverability of shared files/folders apart from initial sharing email. 

[#6]

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. 

[#7]

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. 

[#8]

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.

[#9]

Here is some info about this from August
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/OneDrive-for-Business/A-Simpler-Sharing-Experience-on-OneDriv...

[#10]

Just came across this old thread, and decided to bump it back up because this "simplified" sharing experience is still there and still confusing my users. I get a handful of people asking me every day if we've disabled External Sharing because they are trying to share to an external domain that we have whitelisted and getting an error because they aren't clicking the little hyperlink to change the option.

I would urge you very strongly to make this more clear on the initial dialog box. I don't understand the need for or reason behind hiding that option behind a tiny hyperlink that everyone overlooks.

I would also urge you to focus on enterprise scenarios as opposed to anonymous links scenarios as you stated above. No enterprise that looks at security at all has anonymous links turned on, and those that do should probably think hard about whether that is a good idea. Do you really want anonymous users in your tenant with potential access to your IP? I don't, and my legal team certainly does not.

We're all more than willing to give you our feedback and guidance on these things @Stephen Rice. I do this quite regularly for a number of product teams at Microsoft. @Wictor Wilen and I even spent an entire day last week with the Microsoft Teams team in Bellevue giving feedback and talking about the future. Reach out anytime on here, or find me on Twitter and we'll setup some time to talk.

[#11]

Hi @David Rosenthal,

Thanks for your feedback! All of the issues you mentioned should be addressed very soon. Please keep an eye on message center as we'll be posting more information there. When that goes live, we're also going to make sure there's a thread here on the community forums so we can do an informal Q/A on the changes. Thanks!

Stephen Rice
OneDrive Program Manager II

[#12]

Thanks Stephen, really looking forward to these changes!

@Maarten Eekels FYI

[#13]

---

@Stephen Rice wrote:

Hi @David Rosenthal,

Thanks for your feedback! All of the issues you mentioned should be addressed very soon. Please keep an eye on message center as we'll be posting more information there. When that goes live, we're also going to make sure there's a thread here on the community forums so we can do an informal Q/A on the changes. Thanks!

Stephen Rice
OneDrive Program Manager II

---

Hi @Stephen Rice,

Looks like the update is out on FR (at least for us). First off, I like it. There are few issues here there, but overall I like the color coding. Here are a few screenshots with my comments above each:

I've selected the default "Attachments" folder in this users OneDrive and clicked Share. It shows the users name two times (only <username> and <username> can edit this item). 

I've entered someone elses email adress and then clicked the Outlook Icon below. An email should have been generated according to the UI, but nothing came. The permissions worked though and the file showed up under the recipients "Shared with Me" (do the global sharing settings still apply here?)

The sharing process needs some finetuning. I would suggest 1) edit sharing options (color coding) 2) select sharing method (link or email - make the Outlook icon blue if selected, but don't send the email immediately) 3) when selecting email, show recipient field below 4) make users click "Send" manually - otherwise make it a "Copy Link" button.

Nothing special here (screenshot is just for the community members here). I like that you grey out "Anyone" if sharing outside is prohibited by "IT policy" - or because Office 365 Groups by default have this disabled. There is also a forth option between blue and orange (red icon) that says something along "people who already have access".

Sharing externally looks like this. I like it, though it's missing some additional text ("expiration date") for the date picker. As a new users I wouldn't know what this date picker would do :p Could be interpretated as something else, like date to send the link (I don't know - people get creative with their thinking :)) 

[#14]

Hi @Ivan Unger,

Thanks for the feedback! I'll pass this along to the team, I know you've identified a few issues that are on our list to fix. Going through post step by step...

1) The user showing up twice in the link settings box is interesting. Pretty sure this is a bug.

2) When you click "Outlook", a new window should open directly into the Outlook web app with the link you've configured pasted in. I know I reported a bug with that just yesterday so you may be running into similar issues?

3) Yep, need to add "Expires: <Date>" because you're totally right and that doesn't make sense. 

We'll be posting the Q/A thread around the time of the virtual summit but feel free to ping me with any issues and questiosn you might have. 

Thanks!

Stephen Rice

OneDrive Program Manager II

[#15]

Another suggestion would be to merge the "Share" and "Copy Link" buttons on the document library menu bars since their UI is about to merge. If I had to choose, I'd just use "Share".

[#16]

Hi @Ivan Unger,

We want the "Copy Link" button to be a super fast way to get a sharing link to a document so it will continue to have slightly different UI (essentially a subset of the full dialogue). We'll be tracking both options on our end though and make adjustments accordingly. Thanks!

Stephen Rice