advanced scenarios with office365/sharepoint online external users

“I mean, you can't say they don't look like that, that's what they look like, right? They look like prawns.” - District 9

• SharePoint Online enables sharing with external users

• UX is not well thought out

• How can we integrate external users more closely?

• How can we give them a better experience?

• Can’t edit profiles or set pictures

• Can’t view other people’s profiles

• Normal users can see mostly empty external profiles in people search

No profile picture

• Can’t edit profiles or set pictures

• Can’t view other people’s profiles

• Normal users can see mostly empty external profiles in people search

Error when clicking a normal user

My Settings instead of About Me

External users are taken to the WSS Simple Profile

Bad UX. Users can’t Edit Anything.

• Easy to enable profiles

• In Tenant Admin, give Everyone rights

• Enable external user access in the My Site Host Site collection

External User gets About Me link now

…and can now view/edit their profiles…

…Site Newsfeeds look better with pictures…

…and People Search shows good information…

• You don’t have to create the profiles

• They are created automatically

• Sometimes immediately (if external user edits profile)

• Or by Timer Job

• Still no Newsfeed, or SkyDrive Pro (personal site)

The second profile was auto-created by SharePoint

• Criteria: Property, AccountName, Contains, “membership|live.com”

• Audiences compile ONCE A WEEK in Office365/SharePoint Online

• Then you can do some cool stuff, like give external users a Note Board on their profile page.

Audience targeted NoteBoard Web Part

SERVER SIDE OBJECT MODEL

• SPUser.IsShareByEmailGuestUser(Not in Sandbox API), so useless

• SPUser.IsShareByLinkGuestUser(Internal Only Property)

JAVASCRIPT OBJECT MODEL

• UserId == null

• LoginName contains “membership|live.com”

• Check for <div id=“Suite_NavBar”> in the markup. If present, user is a normal user.

• If(!$(“#Suite_NavBar”).length)

• Then you can do some cool things, like visually highlight external users with overlays:

• Create a result set for external users

• Query Text:

• {searchTerms} contentclass=SPSPeople AccountName:live.com

• Default UX for External Users is pretty poor

• Some simple tweaks can make it much better

• Start thinking about other ways you can integrate external users