Sharepoint Online Permissions options changed badly?

[Nikola Nenadovic]

Hi all,

I've noticed that the SharePoint online permissions tab/manage access tab has been changed.

In document libraries, there is no option to break folder inheritance. From today, there is also no option to manage advanced permissions, meaning that you can set folder permissions to edit/view only.

This is a huge step-back and is slowing down permissions assigning.

Also, when assigning permissions the permissions tab is behaving very badly in terms of speed and reliability.

Am I missing something out?

Cheers,

Nikola

[#2]

Click Grant Access up there next to the Share button, this will get you to the old Advanced Sharing UI.

[#3]

Ops, I forgot they switched that, you should have an "advanced" link underneath the names no?

[#4]

Oh wow, just switched over to first release tenant and have same updates you have. This is rather interesting and definatley see the complaint. They removed the ability to edit folder/file level permissions in advanced view even if you switch to classic which is interesting.

[#5]

Well for what it's worth I found how to get to advanced settings for folder/files. You need to switch to classic mode, then click on the ... for the file or folder and share. Then on the Share window, click Shared with on the left, then advanced. 

[#6]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for looking into this. This situation is very strange and is a huge disappointment.. Breaking folder inheritance easily was one of the best features of OneDrive/SharePoint.

Btw OneDrive also lost the feature.

[#7]

Yeah they are just streamlining the settings. In a way I like it overall to minimize and make it easy for end users which has caused user adoption to be better in Modern, but at least still leave an advanced option out of the way that is easy to access for those that need it.

[#8]

Adding @Stephen Rice here because the screenshots postes are the ones I expected for ODFB in regards of the new permissions management....I was not expecting them also in SPO at least at the same time they deploy it to ODFB. Stephen, can you confirm what's happeing here?

[#9]

OneDrive for Business has the same looking options.

Also one thing to note is that the file sharing done this way is very unstable and nearly unusable when setting sub-folder privileges. When you manage sub-folder access and press the button, the system sometimes opens the parent's folder settings. I don't have to mention that this folder management is very slow.

[#10]

Having the same behavior, I was not expecting it at all. I don't find anything in Message Center, was this communicated? 

Yes it's possible to switch to classic view and do the management per file as usual but this is not a satisfactory instruction we can give to users. There are currently many live solutions that rely on folder permission management so we need a clear explanation of what's coming ahead.

[#11]

I've tested it and changing permissions in the new interface does break permission inheritance behind the scenes, which means we have a way to still do this in modern. There are however two relevant downsides still:

1. How do you restore permission inheritance
2. How do you assign permissions beside Read and Edit (many valid scenarios include custom permission levels)

If anyone finds the answer please share. 

[#12]

Thanks Marcos, I can confirm the same.

If you want do either of those things, we are going to have to do them in the classic experience for the time being.

Microsoft needs to make sure we can do these things in the modern experience or re-add the advanced permissions button to the modern experience before they decide to remove the classic experience button for good (I am assuming they are planning to remove it).

[#13]

I found a workaround which may help you: 

First share the object, so that you break the inheritance like you mentioned before. Then you go to the Library-Settings and open "Permissions for this document library". Now you should see the yellow banner on top. You can show the items with unique permissions with the first link. From there you can enter the "old" permissions-menu for objects. There you can delete the unique permission and change the permission-levels. I hope this helps you. 

However I wonder if there was any news about this change. It makes it more difficult for admins to manage permissions on folder-levels. Unfortunately, we have to assign the permissions like this in some libraries. 

[#14]

On this thread it looks like we are talking about multiple issues. I have a first release tenant and i can see the "advanced" options on the lower right corner (See attached).

What are the options you are not seeing ? Do you have good and bad scenario ?

[#15]

Interesting. Unless there is multiple updates coming and we got one and not the others pushed to our tenants. I've seen this happen int he past where i'll get half a feature, then the other half shows up with some other updates. I myself as the original poster in my first release tenant has the new changes, because you can tell by the UI which looks like yours as well, but we are missing the advanced link at the bottom. If this is coming soon in addition and we are missing it great, but would be nice to know if that's the case or there is some reason why we are missing the advanced link :P.

[#16]

(using chrome) if you go to a modern doclib and press F12 (to popup the chrome dev bar), then go to the "sources" option and on the left expand the one that says "spoprod-a.akamaihd.net". It should contain a folder like files/odsp-next-prod_<date>_<version>.

Can you tell me what is the date and version ?

[#17]

Just checked and it's "odsp-next-prod_2018-11-09-sts_20181114.001". Thanks for the screenshot, good to know that it's not meant to disappear.

[#18]

Hi,

Mine is odsp-next-prod_2018-11-09-sts_20181114.001

[#19]

Thanks for the info. 

Can you recheck again tomorrow and see if the issue is still present ?

[#20 · Accepted solution]

Thanks for jumping in here @Bruno Aleixo :)

There should be an "Advanced" link and it is supposed to be in the same release as the new pane. If this doesn't resolve itself tomorrow, please let us know so we can investigate further.

Appreciate everyone's feedback here!

Stephen Rice

OneDrive Program Manager II