SharePoint Guests vs Azure AD Guests
I'm trying to understand the use of SharePoint Online Guests and the integration with Azure AD. We use External Sharing via SharePoint/OneDrive for Business extensively, with the default being to...
Forum Discussion
StephenRice
Microsoft
MicrosoftHi Maxwell Shifman ,
Hopefully I can shed some light here :)
At the moment, when you share to an entirely new person (i.e. never been shared to before) from ODB and share via the "specific people" option, one of two things can happen. If the recipient is an O365 user, when they redeem the link, they will be added to your directory as a full guest user (note that there are some cases where this may not occur). If they are not an O365 user, they are only instantiated on that site collection (or OneDrive).
This will all change in a few months when we fully migrate over to Azure B2B as the backing guest account service for ODB/SPO (as announced/demo'd at Ignite). Once done, all new shares will result in guest accounts being created.
The biggest difference between guest account created/not created is how you apply management & policy to those users.
Hope that helps!
Stephen Rice
OneDrive Program Manager II
StephenRice Just wondering about the "Azure B2B as the backing guest account service for ODB/SPO"? Are all tenants now using the new way of sharing?
- StephenRice
JonasBack, the short answer is "it's complicated, but getting less so" 🙂
All new tenants as of June 2023 have Entra B2B Integration with SPO on by default. All guest sharing will go through B2B as a result.
For existing tenants, they can opt into using B2B in all cases if desired. Otherwise file/folder sharing will use B2B accounts (if the guest already exists) or SharePoint one time passcode (if they do not). Sharing a site with a guest will always use B2B. There are a few other minor edge cases that use the legacy SharePoint Invitation Manager but we are working on deprecating those.
Hopefully this all makes sense but let me know if you have any questions!
Stephen Rice
Principal Product Manager, OneDrive
StephenRice It's mainly the scenario when sharing a file/folder (if user that does not exist) I'm wondering about - any timeline when this will default to B2B rather than SharePoint OTP?
- StephenRice
JonasBack nothing to share as of yet. Directionally, this is where we are going but will take us time to get there. As we start moving there, you can expect to see a Message Center post with the plan and timelines (with plenty of time for organizations to prepare!). Thanks!
Stephen Rice
Principal Product Manager, OneDrive