A question I frequently hear from clients when moving to Office 365 and SharePoint online, is how can I manage external sharing?
Maybe an organization does not want to allow content to be shared with external users, or allow users direct access to documents without first having an account and logging in. There are many different situations and requirements which may need to have the external sharing settings tweaked.
To do so, go into your SharePoint Online Admin Center
and select Settings from the left-side navigation
And then once there (and currently it is the second header down on the right side of the screen), choose one of the options which firs your requirements.
Don’t allow sharing outside your organization
Allow external users who accept sharing invitations and sign in as authenticated users
Allow both external users who accept sharing invitations and anonymous guest links
I have the privilege to announce that I will be presenting again in lovely San Francisco at The SharePoint Technology Conference on March 3-6th, 2013.
Information on the event and the sessions I will be presenting is below. I hope to see you there! San Francisco is a beautiful place, and I cannot wait to get back down (and over… diagonally really) there.
Event Description
SPTechCon: The SharePoint Technology Conference – is the largest independent SharePoint conference in the world – for IT professionals, business managers, analysts, and developers. Choose from more than 90 Classes and Workshops!!! Learn from the brightest minds in the SharePoint universe – more than 40 Expert Speakers and Microsoft MVPs! There’s a shortage of SharePoint experts! Develop your skills, and improve your own professional standing! "I would recommend SPTechCon to SharePoint admins and developers. By far the best Tech Event I have attended." Venki Oruganti , Software Developer – Pitney Bowes
Planning and Configuring Extranets in SharePoint 2010
Monday, March 4 – 11:15 AM – 12:30 PM
Most companies, large or small, require contact and collaboration with external entities, whether they are vendors, clients, or contractors. SharePoint gives us the ability to open up portals for collaboration with these external entities, and this session will show you how to accomplish this using SharePoint 2010. We will review what is required to make SharePoint “open” to the external world and discuss scenarios regarding security and privacy. We will also walk through configuring Forms-Based Authentication, Claims-Based Authentication, as well as using Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010 to authenticate and manage our external users. Once completing this session, you should have a firm grasp on how to configure an extranet environment using SharePoint 2010, as well as what should be considered during the planning of your extranet scenarios.
Level: Advanced Topic Area: IT Pro Essentials
Automating Your Enterprise Application Deployments With PowerShell
Tuesday, March 5 – 4:00 PM – 5:15 PM
In enterprise application deployments to SharePoint, there are generally farms or Web applications that host specific applications for specific groups, rather than having just an all-in-one deployment. Oftentimes, you do not have access to these other environments, and will need to pass the deployment baton off to the system administrators of those farms. This class will walk you through how you can deploy your applications—without needing to have the administrator who will be deploying the application—have to do much more than type a few keys into the SharePoint Administration Console and press enter, and having full configuration and deployment of your custom SharePoint applications to other environments.
A big thank you to the organizers, sponsors, and attendees of SharePoint Saturday Virginia Beach! The event was well put-on, and it is a great location, with a great layout! I cannot believe it took me 4 years to get down there, I wish I had gone much sooner!
I am looking forward to the next #SPSVB, but in the meantime, you can find my presentation from my session, Planning and Configuring Extranets in SharePoint 2010 below… please leave any questions you have in the comments!
Planning and Configuring Extranets in SharePoint 2010
Session Level: 300 Session Type: IT Pro / Admin Most companies, large or small, require contact and collaboration with external entities, whether they are vendors, clients, or contractors. SharePoint gives us the ability to open up portals for collaboration with these external entities – this session will show you how to accomplish this using SharePoint 2010.
We will review what is required to make SharePoint “open” to the external world, discuss scenarios regarding security and privacy, as well as walk through configuring Forms Based Authentication, Claims Based Authentication, as well as using Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010, to authenticate, and manage our external users.
Once completing this session, you should have a firm grasp on how to configure an extranet environment using SharePoint 2010, as well as what should be considered during the planning of your extranet scenarios.
I will also be giving away 2 copies of the book I am working on of the same subject.
About SharePoint Saturday Austin:
SharePoint Saturday Austin is a joint effort headed up by Jim Bob Howard and Matthew Lathrop, but made possibly only through the dedication and commitment of our volunteers, sponsors, the local Central Texas SPUG, the speaker community, and all of our attendees.
If you have any questions or would like to volunteer, please us the contact form on this page.
SharePoint Saturday Austin is part of a national and international calendar of free events, organized and overseen by the SharePoint Saturday Board of Directors. For more information about SPS and other events, visit: www.sharepointsaturday.org.
When and where will this magical event be held, you ask?
SharePoint Saturday Austin (#SPSAusTx) Saturday, January 21, 2012 AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center, Austin, TX 8AM – 5PM SharePint following ’til 7PM
I cannot believe it has been 4 years since SharePoint Saturday started, and I am honored to be speaking at the very place where it all started, at SharePoint Saturday Virginia Beach! Who knew that in 4 years, SPS is now a GLOBAL phenomenon, in almost all parts of the world? I owe a lot to SharePoint Saturday, as it gave me my start in speaking on SharePoint almost 4 years ago in Boston.
Planning and Configuring Extranets in SharePoint 2010
Session Level: 300 Session Type: IT Pro / Admin Most companies, large or small, require contact and collaboration with external entities, whether they are vendors, clients, or contractors. SharePoint gives us the ability to open up portals for collaboration with these external entities – this session will show you how to accomplish this using SharePoint 2010.
We will review what is required to make SharePoint “open” to the external world, discuss scenarios regarding security and privacy, as well as walk through configuring Forms Based Authentication, Claims Based Authentication, as well as using Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010, to authenticate, and manage our external users.
Once completing this session, you should have a firm grasp on how to configure an extranet environment using SharePoint 2010, as well as what should be considered during the planning of your extranet scenarios.
What’s SharePoint Saturday Virginia Beach? SharePoint Saturday Virginia Beach is an educational, informative & lively day filled with sessions from respected SharePoint professionals & MVPs, covering a wide variety of topics focused on Microsoft SharePoint technologies.
SharePoint Saturday Virginia Beach is FREE, open to the public and is your local chance to immerse yourself in SharePoint!
When is SharePoint Saturday Virginia Beach? January 7, 2012, Saturday
Schedule outline is listed below and we are currently looking at over 60 sessions for the event, including some sessions for the City of VA Beach Public Schools. 7:30 am – 8:00 am – Registration & Breakfast 8:00 am – 8:45 am – Welcome and Keynote 8:50 am – 10:00 am – First Sessions 10:10 am -11:20 am – Second Sessions 11:30 am -12:40 pm – Third Sessions 12:40 pm -1:30 pm – Lunch 1:30 pm – 2:40 pm – Fourth Sessions 2:50 pm – 4:00 pm – Fifth Sessions 4:10 pm – 5:20 pm – Sixth Sessions 5:30 pm – 6:00 pm – Closing & Giveaways
Where will SharePoint Saturday Virginia Beach be held? Virginia Beach Advanced Technology Center VA Beach Campus of Tidewater Community College 1800 College Crescent Virginia Beach, VA 23453 http://www.vbatc.com
If you are opening your organizations virtual doors to the outside world, please, please, PLEASE, only open up port 443, and use a secure certificate (or Secure Sockets Layer certificate), a/k/a, SSL certificate, to secure it.
Even if you do not have anything resembling a budget – you can still be secure. GoDaddy offers SSL certificates for as little as $12.99 – just use this link.
Why? Well… take this scenario. Say you are connecting to your extranet from a café, and they do not have a secure WiFi setup, and you can just connect and browse. I bet you that somewhere in there, there is some pimply kid with his Macbook his parents bought him, in his Misfits T-Shirt, sniffing the unsecured WEP network, and watching you log into your Forms Based Authentication extranet, over an unencrypted port 80. Not only does he see the URL you are visiting, and your username and password. He can also see everything you do. Confidential documents, payroll information – you name it. And there you go, your company’s data has been breached.
Now, if you take the extra time, and spend a few dollars – this would not have happened. SSL encrypts the connection from the end user’s browser, all the way to the server, so all the pimply faced hacker would see is just gobbledygook.
So a login session may just look like this (encrypted using SSL):
While I do not have specific details, certificate providers also can actually insure your SSL certificates, in case a data breach does take place. GoDaddy, Network Solutions, GeoTrust, Thawte, etc. Look around, find what is right for you. And secure your extranet. Not tomorrow, but NOW. Pay for some security, it is worth it to pay money up front and be secure, than be involved in lawsuits, and corporate losses, all due to a yearly fee of up to a couple of hundred dollars. Protect your company, protect yourself, and protect your clients.
SharePoint Saturday New Hampshire was a great event! A job well done by the organizers. This was the first SharePoint Saturday New Hampshire, and there seemed to be a great turnout, and the location worked out well. Saw a lot of familiar faces, as well as was able to meet a bunch of great new people. This was also my first official event as a Jornata employee, even though today is officially my first day 🙂
This next part of this post is special for those who attended my session, it’s out little inside joke.
My session was very well attended, and I got nothing but great remarks.
Thank you all again for attending, and for the standing ovation – really, you didn’t have to. But thank you none-the-less. Below you will find my slides from the event.
And if you missed my session, or just want to see it again, come see me in a couple weeks at the Granite State SharePoint Users Group, where I will be presenting the same session, on October 13th.
Organizing and maintaining a SharePoint Saturday can be hard work. LOTS of hard work. Luckily, the way we run SharePoint Saturday Boston, we have less hard work than other SPS events. We put the responsibility of ordering shirts, pads, pens, food, etc. on the sponsor, so we do not only have to deal with the event, speakers, sponsors, etc., so we do not also have to order shirts, food, etc. It makes life a lot easier.
Then there are other SharePoint Saturday events, such as SharePoint Saturday New York, they take it to the next level, and deal with all of that. Now, these are just single day events.
Now, with SharePoint Saturday – The Conference, this was a 3-day event, they had roughly 1800 people registered, well over a thousand attend. IMAGINE STUFFING 1800 ATTENDEE AND SPEAKER BAGS?! GAH! They had LOTS of volunteers however. It was not the best well-oiled machine, but, there was no chance of the motor seizing up on this one. They did one heck of a job. This is not to slight the conference in any way, the organizers of this event actually have day jobs, that are not all about planning and putting together conferences, so this was done in their spare time, if they had any.
I was amazed at the level of sophistication that a basically free ($39-$59 for a 3 day event is the best price out there for a SharePoint conference of this size). They had the ability to change name tags on the fly, lots of volunteers had radios, there were session and schedule updates on monitors around the campus, people all over the place directing traffic and offering help getting from building to building, and if for some reason your session time and date had changed, people to find you and drag you to them! (more on that in a moment).
Great job by everyone involved! I was happy to be a speaker and attendee at the conference, and look forward to another one down the road!
With that, I delivered 3 sessions. Below is information on each, as well as slide decks. Thank you to all who attended my sessions!
9 Ways to Become a (SharePoint) Rock Star
This was supposed to take place on Saturday, not Friday. So, when I arrived at the conference on Friday at 5 after 11 in the morning, I saw the lunch table, and headed over… got a plate of food, and then all of a sudden, I was approached by one of the volunteers, and a friend of mine, Jennifer, and the interaction went something like this…
Jennifer: “C’mon! You’re 15 minutes late for your session!”
Me: “What? I don’t have a session until the end of the day”
Jennifer: “No, you have one now”
Me: “Ok then, what session is it?”
Jennifer: “9 Ways to Become a (SharePoint) Rock Star”
[EDITORS NOTE: She did not exactly use parenthesis when she said it.]
Me: “That’s not until tomorrow”
Jennifer: “There are 40 people waiting in there for you now”
Me: “Uh oh, [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted], Let me grab my bag!”
Jennifer: ”Let’s go!”
[winded dash to another building … then walking, well, being dragged into the classroom]
Me: “Sorry I am late everyone! I slept late and am hung over, you know, living the rock star lifestyle”
…and then we began the session, after my laptop booted up. So we only got through about 6 of the 9 steps. Luckily, Christian Buckley (the band broke up before the session, so he wasn’t there), is starting a blog series at EndUserSharePoint.com here 9 Ways to Become a SharePoint Rock Star, which will cover each of our “9 Ways”.
For some background on “the best fake SharePoint band EVER, EVER”…
Our lightning talk from SPTechCon in Boston in June, 2011
Horse’s End–Behind the Music
Legal Notice from Christian for SPSTCDC
and without further ado… the slide deck.
Just Freakin’ Work! Overcoming Hurdles in SharePoint Development
This basically boils down to a best practices around SharePoint development. As well as a fun edu-tainment session with my co-presenter, Mark Rackley. We had a blast, had some good questions, and got through the entire session. Here’s the deck!
Planning and Configuring Extranets in SharePoint 2010
And my last session, which after this was delivered, I had to run to the airport to head home. Again, a great session, great questions, and again, finished up on time. I hope to have that Cloudshare virtual image up and running soon.
A big thank you to the organizers, sponsors, and attendees of 
I am pleased to announce that I will be presenting at SharePoint Saturday Austin on January 21st, 2012, presenting my session on 
Geoff Varosky's Blog 