Notification when external user accepts sharing invitation

[Damien Flood]

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

[#2]

As far as I know there there isn't an easy option for this.  

[#3]

Thanks Pieter, can you suggest a better way to handle the process?

[#4 · Accepted solution]

Within the Security & Compliance center you can filter by accepted invitations. So no email alert but at least you can get to the infromation:

[#5]

Here you can find the details on how to find the report in the Security & Compliance center

https://veenstra.me.uk/2016/08/25/office-365-sharepoint-who-has-accepted-your-sharing-invitation/

[#6]

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.

[#7]

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?

[#8]

Thanks Dean, Let me test this process and get back to you.

[#9]

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."

[#10]

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).

[#11]

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?

[#12]

Thanks Dean,

I do get the same screen above but only when sharing a full teamsite and not a library.

In my scenario I wanted to share the library and not the full teamsite.

Cheers

[#13]

Ok, one way to do that is to grant the new group access to the desired library, and deny that group access to everything else, then when you share the site, all the group members can do is access the desired library.
An easy way to do this is to create the new group with no permissions, then grant the group permissions to the desired library. This is easier than creating a group with some permissions and then having to remove the group from all of the lists/libraries that inherit their perms.

[#14]

Thats what I have actually done.

1. Library (A), I stopped inheriting permissions

2. Create a group(A) with no permissions

3. Grant group A permissions (readonly) to Library A

Now when I try to share the site as you stated above, I see Group A in the drop down list but it has [No access] beside it.

Something I am doing wrong?

[#15]

I don't think so, i think that it is showing you that because the group doesn't have any access to the top level of the site. I would recommend putting a test account into the group and trying it out to confirm. I have several Hotmail accounts that i use for this purpose.

[#16]

Hi Dean,
It looks like you are answering how to share with external users. I haven't found in your answers how to get alerted when an external user first logs in and therefor accepts the invite. Reading the original post Damien is looking for alerts and already knows how to externally share content.

[#17]

Thanks both for your comments and time helping me sort this.

Even though my original post was re alerts, Dean did mention that my sharing process was not right which now I am trying to understand and figure out.

To avoid confusion for others, I will maybe start a new discussion on sharing with externals and leave this for the original topic.

Hope this makes sense?

Cheers

[#18]

@Pieter Veenstra Thanks! But unfortunitally I do not have these permissions. I only have Site Owner permissions.

[#19]

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

[#20]

@Stephen Rice Thanks! looking forward to this improvement.