Recent (undocumented) changes to the Sharing experience

[Adrian Hyde]

Change #1

Within the last few days (possibly up to 7) it appears that a person sharing a file from SharePoint or OneDrive no longer receives an email notification.

The person who is being shared-to still receives the notification.

I just had it confirmed that this change was by-design.  The biggest complaint I have so far for this is that people who type notes when sharing a document want to be able to keep a record of that conversation.

Change #2

Microsoft has decided to add some obscenly large advertising and branding to the sharing notification emails.  This is horrible.  It makes it appear these are being shared from the OneDrive consumer service instead of OneDrive for Business.  Plus it also makes my users feel these files are from Microsoft and not from my Company.  And finally, there really isn't any reason my users want to know the corporate address of Microsoft is such big & bold letters.

I wish there was an option to add corporate branding - OR - turn this off.

[#2]

Ey @Adrian Hyde we have already talked about this and @Stephen Rice has alrady explained that this changes are expected and you are right in regards of the no CC e-mail, but this is something is going to be solved

[#3 · Accepted solution]

Hi @Adrian Hyde,

The change in CC behavior is by design. For users who need to keep records of their transactions, we have another change coming soon where we will send the mail from the user's mailbox (assuming they have Exchange Online) so the mail will end up showing up in the user's "Sent" folder.

This should also help address concerns around users understanding who the mail is from. We also have some plans around tenant branding in the future, though we don't have anything specific to share at the moment. Hope that helps!

Stephen Rice

OneDrive Program Manager II

[#4]

Thanks for the explanation @Stephen Rice - I was on the fence about the usefulness of the sharer getting the notification, but it sounds like the solution you guys are implementing will be good.

I would suggest however that you probably should not have made the change until you were ready to add the newer method.  Now we have a gap for the people who do care about this.

As for the branding, I don't have an urgent need to add our branding (nice to have, not need to have) - However having another companies logo and address appear at the bottom of all of these emails now is drawing all the wrong kind of attention.

I appreciate that there was a logo in the past, but why it had to be enlarged so much is something I hope you guys can look at again.  Prefer the ability to turn it off, or at least have you change it back to the smaller style that isn't so eye-catching.

(OR even better - change it to a company agnostic plug for OneDrive - "Click here to learn more on how to use OneDrive".)

[#5]

Oops, ok.  I still find this community very difficult to use when it comes to finding stuff.  I guess I am getting old.

[#6]

@Adrian Hyde, that is totally fair feedback. We did put out a message center post a few months ago about the behavior change, but we had a last minute delay on the new mail templates which meant the message and change were not tied together as tightly as we normally prefer. 

We're continuing to evolve the design of our mail templates and I'll pass your feedback along to the rest of the team. I know that part of the goal is to ensure that all mails sent via Office 365 are consistent in terms of how they are Microsoft branded, hence the use of the full logo and footer text. 

Thanks again!

Stephen Rice

OneDrive Program Manager II