Organizations often need control over whom users can share content with, especially when they mostly collaborate with external stakeholders. In such cases, they may choose to allow sharing only with specific email domains that belong to their trusted external partners, sometimes with a few exceptions. Similarly, organizations might want to restrict users from sharing content with public email domains such as Gmail or Hotmail, again with certain exceptions as needed.
Egnyte offers its customers the ability to define either allowed or blocked email domains for external link sharing. Additionally, to make it much more impactful, admins can choose to activate such restrictions for specific co-editing links. To provide them with more flexibility, the customers can even add exceptions to these restrictions to ensure they are able to restrict link sharing to all the users belonging to a specific email domain except a few select ones. These added controls improve the link-sharing experience by ensuring that shared content reaches only the intended audience and reduces the risk of unauthorized access.
This feature is available to customers on select Platform plans - Enterprise Lite, Enterprise, Life Sciences, Document Room, GxP and all Next Gen plans. Contact your account manager or Egnyte Sales team for more information.
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Enable or Disable the Setting
Allow Email Domains for External Link Sharing
Search, Sort, and Remove Added Domains
Block Email Domains for External Link Sharing
Enable or Disable the Setting
If the customer enables and adds email domain(s) to the allowed list, link sharing will be allowed only to the email recipients belonging to the allowed domains. Similarly, if the customer has defined blocked email domains, link sharing will be allowed only to the recipients that do not belong to the blocked domains. The same applies to the co-editable links.
The restricted email domains are validated only at time of sharing the links via email. Accordingly, the compliance for links shared publicly is not guaranteed.
- Navigate to Settings -> Configuration -> General.
- Enable the toggle for External access rules -> Activate Sharing Link Restrictions and/or Activate Co-Editing Link Restrictions to activate the sharing link restrictions.
A pop-up will be displayed where the users can set up an Allow list or Block list.
Similarly, disable the toggle for External access rules to deactivate the sharing link restrictions and/or co-editable links.
If the Admin decides to deactivate, there will be an additional confirmation required. Click on Deactivate to confirm.
The settings will be updated.
If the setting is deactivated, the email domains already added will be retained and automatically restored when the setting is reactivated.
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Allow Email Domains for External Link Sharing
- Navigate to Settings -> Configuration -> General
- Enable the toggle(s) to activate the sharing and/or co-editable link restrictions or click on the added domains to add domains to the allowed list.
- The Sharing/Co-editing Link Restrictions pop-up will appear. Enter the desired domain and click on Add.
- Exceptions can be added for the allowed domains to block certain user(s). Hover to the added domain and click on the edit icon or click on the three-dots menu -> Edit exceptions.
- Enter the email address of the user to add to the exception and click on Add. Click on Save changes.
- Repeat the steps to add more users to the blocked list of the allowed domain. To remove a user from the exception, hover over the email address or click on the three-dots menu -> Remove. Search functionality can be used to search for a specific user. Click on Save changes.
- Click on Save changes after adding all the desired domains and the associated exceptions.
The entered domain(s) will be added to the allowed list.
Users can currently allow a maximum of 2000 domains.
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Search, Sort, and Remove Added Domains
Users can sort the domains using the sort option and search for a specific domain by entering keywords in the search box.
- To remove an added domain, click on the Delete icon that appears on the right-side of the respective domain.
- Click on Save changes.
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Block Email Domains for External Link Sharing
- Access the email domains allowed for sharing or co-editing link restrictions and switch to Block from the dropdown at the top.
- Confirm the action by clicking on Continue.
The allowed email domains will be removed if the user switches to Block.
- Add the email domain(s) to block, add the exceptions, and click on Save.
The blocked domains will be added to the list.
Users can currently block a maximum of 2000 domains.
The users will be notified if they try sharing a link with any of the restricted domains.