Forum Discussion
Unable to share externally on Shared Channels
We are unable to share files and folders on shared channels with external users. We get the following message when trying share with an external email address:
“Your org doesn't allow sharing with these people. To continue sharing, remove the highlighted recipients.”
We are able to share externally on Standard and Private channels.
Guest Access is On in the Teams admin console:
In the SharePoint admin console > Policies > Sharing > External Sharing, both SharePoint and OneDrive are set to “New and existing guests”.
In the SharePoint admin console > Sites > Active Sites, the team site in question has External Sharing set to “This site can be shared with new and existing guests”. On the General channel we are able to share with external users.
However, on the shared channel sites, External Sharing defaulted to “This site can't be shared externally”. There is no edit button. As a workaround, I leveraged PNP PowerShell to enable external sharing with the following command:
Set-PnPTenantSite -Url $SiteURL -SharingCapability ExternalUserSharingOnly
The SharePoint admin console now indicates that I can share externally on the shared channel site. External Sharing shows “This site can be shared with new and existing guests”.
However, I still receive the aforementioned error when trying to share externally. What am I missing? How do I enable external sharing on shared channel sites? Why is this not consistent with SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams standard/private channels?
For anyone coming across this issue, I hope this helps!
I reached out to the Microsoft Support team.
I was advised it is a known issue/limitation on Shared channels.Official documentation can be found here:
ryanmillar, you should check Azure Active Directory > External Identities | Cross-tenant access settings to enable conection between tenants, it is no only Teams Admin Portal setting. (Collaborate with external participants in a shared channel | Microsoft Docs)
The B2B settings should have propagated by now, but still no luck. Here are the updated settings as well as others I had now shown before:
Cross-tenant access settings:
External collaboration settings:
Global Teams policy
Trying to share from SharePoint on a shared channel's site is unchanged. I still get the following message for external email addresses:
Your organization's policies don't allow you to share with these users. Go to External Sharing in the Office 365 admin center to enable it.
If I click on "Share with people" on a shared channel and enter an external email address, I get "We didn't find any matches". The same occurs if I enter the email address of an existing guest account.
However, I can add an external user to the Team.
When I sign into Teams as the external user, I can see the team and the General channel, but not the Shared channel, which is shared with the team.
Are there any other settings I could be missing?
Thanks,
Ryan
- I've just re-read your post and we may be having a slightly different problem. Am I correct that:
1. You have not added the external people to your shared channel, and
2. You are trying to share files / folders out of SharePoint with external users?
If so, because it's a shared channel you won't be able to share with external users unless BOTH you AND the external user's tenant have configured the Azure AD B2B direct connect settings. If the external user's tenant hasn't been configured, then I'd expect what you're seeing, i.e. not finding the external users when trying to add them to the channel.
My issue is slightly different, in that I can add them to the channel, they can access it and join in conversations, but they get a "That didn't work. External Sharing is disabled" error when trying to access / upload files.
- Thanks gilbertovm. I adjusted the B2B settings. I will wait a few hours for the changes to propagate and then follow up.
Hi Ryan,
All you have tried here seems to be right and I would recommend to wait some time untill the changes in the SPO site are propagated in the backend. Anyway, if you click on the view 2 channel sites in the main site card, you should be able also to check the settings for any channel site linked to that main site and make changes there.
Another important thing here: Is B2B Direct Connect configured behind the scenes for the shared channel? I think the problem you are experiencing could be related to the fact that Shared Channels relies on B2B Direct Connect even for sharing the SPO site being used....I have just tested this on a demo tenant and I can share documentation with users belonging to tenants configured in B2B Direct Connect, but I cannot if they belong to tenants not configured.
- Note that I made these changes in June - so it's not a propagation issue. Also, when I click on "view 2 channel sites" there is no option to edit the External Sharing settings as there is on the main site card. See the last screenshot on my original post. That is why I used PowerShell to change the setting.
B2B Direct Connect is not configured as we are not sharing with a specific tenant. We are only trying to leverage basic SharePoint external sharing that works on every other type of SharePoint site. Are you suggesting that is unavailable on Shared channel sites?- I think that could be the casse and it can make sense
- Hi,
Can you please check what is the external communications configuration in Microsoft Teams side? At times the external communications from Microsoft Teams block the same.
With Regards,
Satish UExternal access is set to allow "All external domains". External sharing works fine on standard and private team sites, as well as general SharePoint sites and OneDrive.
As I am off soon will reach out to some of my community friends to pick up
adam deltinger ChrisWebbTech jcgonzalezmartin - you guys got any idea as I know you have worked with Shared Channels prior
Best, Chris
