External Account Access to Office 365 SharePoint Online

I often get asked, “How can I give someone access to SharePoint that is not an employee?” In BPOS my answer was always “Buy a User License and create an account for them.” In the new world, Office 365, SharePoint Online has the ability to invite users outside your organization to view and/or edit your site. This has the potential to be very powerful for your organization.

I am still testing some more “how do I…” stuff, but for now it looks like your external invitee’s need to have a Live ID for you to use in in order for this to work. If your user doesn’t have a Live ID, make one for them, it only takes a few mouse clicks to do so.

Here is a sample of the invitation:

Welcome to Super Great Company LLC! Tim Reemtsma (tim@yourdomain.com) has invited you to collaborate on Super Great Company LLC Accept your invitation!   Accept Tim Reemtsma’s invitation to start collaborating now. You can bookmark the site Super Great Company LLC to access it later. Sincerely, The Microsoft Office 365 Team

Microsoft Corporation | One Microsoft Way Redmond, WA 98052-6399 This message was sent from an unmonitored email address. Please do not reply to this message. Privacy | Legal

 

You then jump to a page like this:

As long as the Live ID they use to sign in matches the Live ID you sent the invite to, that will have access.

From the cost savings alone of not needing to use up an Office 365 User License, this can be a HUGE benefit to your company

 

 

I’m still playing with this, and will update this post as I learn new things.

 

Enjoy,

Tim