Some advanced scenarios around SharePoint Online External Users. The UX for external users is limited and lacking. See how to make it better and more closely integrate external users into your SharePoint Online experience.

3. “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

4. • 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?

5. • 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

6. • 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

7. My Settings
instead of
About Me

8. External users are
taken to the WSS
Simple Profile

9. Bad UX. Users can’t
Edit Anything.

10. • Easy to enable profiles
• In Tenant Admin, give Everyone rights
• Enable external user access in the My
Site Host Site collection

11. External User gets
About Me link now

12. …and can now
view/edit their
profiles…

13. …Site Newsfeeds look
better with pictures…

14. …and People Search
shows good
information…

15. • 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

16. • 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

17. 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)

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

20. • Create a result set for external users
• Query Text:
• {searchTerms} contentclass=SPSPeople AccountName:live.com

21. • 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