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Configuring Guest Collaboration with Microsoft Office (Legacy) Integration for Egnyte for Admins

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Collab App v. 2.8R  Release Date: July 8, 2021  

Office Desktop (Legacy) co-authoring is currently replaced by Microsoft Office Desktop (Preview). For more information on how to setup the current co-authoring option, click here.

Configuring Microsoft Office Legacy Integration for External Users

Microsoft Office (Legacy) Integration enables co-editing by connecting Egnyte to Office 365 to allow multiple users to edit a document simultaneously using the Office desktop software on your laptop or desktop. This article walks you through the setup on how to enable co-editing for external users.  

General Requirements

Before you can use Co-editing with Microsoft Office (Legacy), you need:

  1. Microsoft Office Business License - Users of Egnyte must have an Office 365 account that incorporates Office 365 customer licenses (Business, Business Premium, E3, E4, or E5) to change or edit their files. 
  2. Latest Microsoft Office Apps Installed on your laptop or desktop.

A. Egnyte Microsoft Office (Legacy) Integration Configuration 

This article follows Configuring Co-editing with Microsoft Office (Legacy) Integration for Egnyte for Admins setup to enable Co-editing for the external users, so please refer to it before you begin. 

In addition, for External users, you need the following: 

  • They need to be Egnyte users with the permissions and access to documents and folders.
  • They need to be added to the Microsoft Tenant and Azure Active Directory (which you have set up for the integration) as "Guest" users with the correct access. 

1.  Go to Apps & Integrations to follow the setup of Microsoft Office

2._Settings.png

Or to change the existing settings if you applied the setup before. 

16._Summary.png

2.  During the set-up of the User Mapping stage, choose Match manually to allow external users. 

13._emails_not_matching.png

If admins did the configuration before and Egnyte admin selected the "Match automatically" option, the setup needs to be re-done if you need to add external collaborators and this can be done using the "Change" option as illustrated above from the Summary screen. 

 

3. During the setup on Sharing stage, select the first option as shown, and click "Go to SharePoint" to apply sharing settings as described in the following sections.

14._Sharing_NEW.png

If admins did the configuration before and Egnyte admin didn't do settings as applied in Section B and C -  the setup needs to be re-done one more time (if you need to add external collaborators) and this can be done using the "Change" option as illustrated above from the Summary screen. 

Once you complete SharePoint Setup, remember to come back, and then click continue to finish the setup.

B. Microsoft SharePoint Setup - Enable External Sharing 

1.  Go to SharePoint - will redirect you to the chosen site SharePoint Admin Center.

2. Click on Sites -> Active sites -> Choose SharePoint site, which was used in the Microsoft Office set-up -> click on Sharing.

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Or, an additional panel on the right will appear -> choose Policies -> under External sharing select Edit.  Both options will lead you to the "Sharing" view. 

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3. There are four sharing options displayed on the screen. The first two options give access to documents for external users. Please select either of the options, "Anyone" or "New and existing guests", and Save. 

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The above screen examples are taken with SharePoint modern UI **. 

**Relevant links and information are here if your SharePoint setup is different from what's illustrated here. For that, please refer to the Microsoft Article - Manage sites in the new SharePoint admin center

You now need to change permissions on the SharePoint site.

C. Microsoft SharePoint Setup - Enable Access for External Users

1. Go to Microsoft 365 Microsoft 365 admin center

2. Go to SharePoint - this link will redirect you to the site Documents page

3. Enter the SharePoint site we setup  -> select Documents -> Select folder -> Manage access

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4. An additional panel on the right will appear -> choose Advanced from the right-bottom of the panel

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5.  Click Stop Inheriting Permissions and confirm by OK button on a pop-up. 

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6. You can see the Grant Permissions view. Now, you can send invites to the external user (s). 

13..png

You can now grant access to the SharePoint site to the desired external user/users.

7. Click on Users -> Guest users ->  Add a guest user

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8. Select "Create user" or "Invite user" and follow on prompts on the Microsoft side to extend invitations.  

3..png

External user(s) will receive an automatic email with an invitation to access the applications within your Microsoft organization. 

You are all set to collaborate with the external users. Please go back to Section A and complete the setup if you haven't finished it. 

Please ensure these users have edit permissions and access to documents you are collaborating with, and Microsoft Office (Legacy) integration is "Added" for them. 

 

Note. for Standard User Types, external collaboration across Microsoft Tenant on SharePoint Online site is not supported by Microsoft in general, so this is not scalable.  If you encounter issues, then please use Office Online, while we are working on providing official Microsoft supported integration on roadmap. 

Relevant Links

Configuring Co-editing with Microsoft Office (Legacy) Integration for Egnyte for Admins 

FAQs for Co-editing with Microsoft Office (Legacy) Integration on Egnyte

 

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