This week's Office 365 announcements include enhanced sharing UIs across OneDrive and SharePoint, as well as unique mailNicknames in Office 365 groups.
The sharing experience in OneDrive and SharePoint has been updated, in what is surely a welcome change. First announced in April 2017, the sharing UI has now been improved on the OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online websites and sync clients. These changes provide easier collaboration, better security, and enhanced usability. This update is being rolled out in the coming days.
Part of this change means sync users in Windows and OS X will find the same sharing experience available now for OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online websites. However, to ensure this works for you, your enterprise needs to ensure admin.onedrive.com is a permitted domain.
Similarly, Microsoft is planning on updating the default sharing setting for Office 365 group connected SharePoint Online site collections.
{loadposition david08}Currently, the default sharing setting for these site collections is set to allow sharing with external users that are already in your organisation’s directory. Based on user feedback Microsoft is planning to update this default to allow sharing with authenticated external users provided your tenant allows for Office 365 Groups to have guest members.
If your tenant disallows guest members in Office 365 Groups there will be no change to the external sharing setting default. Existing group connected site collections will not change at all. Only new group site collections created in your tenancy will have the new default setting.
Microsoft will be gradually rolling this out throughout August and the next few months.
A new feature which will appear in the coming weeks is the ability to know when a folder is shared on OneDrive Web. This will manifest as a sharing indicator on the end of the breadcrumb to make it clear in the in-folder view when that folder is shared with others.
To learn more about who the folder is shared with, users can click the sharing glyph to open the “Manage Access” pane. This rollout will be completed by the end of September.
Another new Office 365 feature to appear in the coming days is Unique mailNickname.
When Office 365 groups are created, the name provided is used for mailNickname, as well as for the first portion of the SMTP Address. Prior to this change, Office 365 group creation has not been enforcing that the mailNickname be unique across Office 365 groups. If multiple Office 365 groups contain the same mailNickname, you can encounter collisions when these groups are synchronised to on-premises via Azure Active Directory (AAD) Connect.
In AAD it will be enforced that the mailNickname property must be unique across Office 365 groups. Previously created Office 365 groups with duplicate mailNicknames will not be affected. If a user attempts to modify the mailNickname property through PowerShell or other means the service will verify whether the new mailNickname being specified is unique. If not, the modification will be rejected.
Additionally, a user can create an Office 365 group that has the same mailNickname as an Office 365 group that has been soft deleted. If a user attempts to restore the soft deleted group, they will be prompted to change the mailNickname.
Microsoft will complete this rollout by the end of August.