Using a communication site to store and share business documents with clients

[Michiel van den Broek]

My customer needed a place in its SharePoint to store business documents to work on and eventually share with their clients. As there was no need for Teams, Planner and other group functionality I choose to create a simple communication site.

The documents are stored in a single document library. Every client has a sub folder. To share documents with their clients, the clients subfolder has a "review" folder which is shared with users at client.

But I'm having doubts if the communication site is to be used for this purpose. Maybe it would have been better to create a document center of other classic teamsite from the SharePoint Admin center. But those seem "old".

Now I have to decide if we are going to leave it this way or move all documents. In the meantime I've advised my customer to wait with sharing folders in the document library with his clients. Moving files is no problem, but sharing again with the client would create some confusing...

Please advice a strategy...

[#2]

@Michiel van den Broek I would consider moving a modern team site that allows externally authenticated users. Each folder(s) in the document library would be shared with your customer.

I work with a 3rd party vendor in a similar fashion, only they use Yammer. The private Yammer groups allow for file distribution and more ad-hoc engagement / discussions etc.

I hope this helps.

Norm

[#3]

Nothing wrong with using a communication site here, you are not going to gain anything else by going another site route unless you plan on using old school classic UI which most people don't these days. Communication site can have and behaves the same as a group connected site other than security and extra web parts etc. You'll get a much cleaner experience IMO when using a Comm site. without all the extra bloat that comes with a Team Site.

[#4]

Thank you for your reply. Do you mean creating a group (and thus a teamsite) per client?

[#5]

Thank you for your reply. Does sharing work different in a group connected teamsite? I read that a communication site uses the SharePoint security/user groups, where group connected teamsites use AzureAD, but I don't know if this true for document sharing with external users?

[#6]

They both can use azure ad users and security groups on the SHarePoint side.

The difference is the Group connected teamsite uses Office 365 groups for it's permissions. Which is pretty much a Owner / Member role setup. They will require setting up B2B accounts etc. if using that method to add to a site.

The sharing links, etc. all work the same on either site template.

[#7]

@Michiel van den Broek not a Group site but a non-Group connected modern team site (that was a mouthful). You can share at the site or folder level depending on your requirements. The external accounts need to be Microsoft associated or a school/work account. Appended below is pic from one our external sites and where we share folders from.

I hope this helps.

Norm

[#8]

Also interested in this, we want to create a space where clients can view news but more importantly download press images. Is SharePoint well suited for that, or would our main website with a file-sharing addon work better? Thank you!