Sharing files with people external to the UW

There are times when we want to share Files/Folders with people who are not associated with the UW and who do not have a UW NetID. Here are your options and some limitations.

OneDrive

  • You can only share files in your personal UW OneDrive for Business with people that have a UW NetID.
  • Workarounds include:
    • Sponsoring a UW NetID for the external collaborator(s) and then provisioning the UW Office 365 service for them.
    • Creating a Shared UW NetID, provisioning the UW Office 365 service for it, and then sharing the credentials for this NetID with all the external collaborators. Of course, this negates any security and auditing and you risk the credentials for the Shared NetID getting passed around.

SharePoint

  • You are able to share Files and Folders and Sites in SharePoint Online with anyone that has a Microsoft Account.
    • Note this can be ANY Microsoft Account (Hotmail, Outlook.com, etc.) and does not need to be a Microsoft 365 Account.
    • Any email address can be a Microsoft Account so collaborators don’t have to sign up for anything new.
  • You can also share anything in SharePoint Online anonymously meaning no login required.
  • If HIPAA or FERPA compatibility is a concern, this is your only option.

Google Drive

  • You are able to share Files and Folders in both your personal UW Google Drive and in a UW Shared Google Drive (formerly known as a Team Drive) with ANY Google Account.
    • Note any email address can be a Google Account so collaborators don’t have to sign up for anything new.
  • You can also share anything in any Google Drive anonymously meaning no login required.
  • If HIPAA or FERPA compatibility is a concern, Google Drive is not an option.

N Drive

  • It is not possible to share anything on the iSchool N Drive (our network file share) with anyone that does not have a UW NetID.
  • Accessing the N Drive from off-campus requires the Husky OnNet VPN (which also requires a UW NetID).
Add or edit multiple SharePoint In/Out Board entries

Add or edit multiple SharePoint In/Out Board entries

This page includes directions for adding or editing multiple SharePoint In/Out Board entries.

01) go to the SharePoint In/Out Board:

https://uwnetid.sharepoint.com/sites/ischoolnew/sites/HumanResources/Lists/InOutBoard/

02) click edit

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03) click the box next to a row to select the entire row (you can click-and-drag to select/highlight multiple rows), copy the row(s) using keyboard commands (Windows – Ctrl+C) (macOS – command+C)

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04) scroll down to the bottom of the page/list to find an empty row entry, click the far-left-box next to the empty row, paste the row(s) using keyboard commands (Windows – Ctrl+V) (macOS – command+V)

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05) click the calendar icon to edit the date as necessary, click the drop-down button next to other entries to edit as necessary

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06) when edits are complete, scroll to the top of the page/list, click Stop to save your edits

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Create SharePoint List from Excel Spreadsheet

The advantages of using a SharePoint list instead of just uploading an Excel file to SharePoint is that multiple people can edit the file simultaneously, you avoid version sprawl by only having one centrally located version of the list and you can always download the list as a file if needed.

Here are the steps.

  • Make sure your Excel file is saved in the newest format, it needs to have a .XLSX extension. If it does not, simply save it in this newer format. The old format is .XLS.
  • Browse to your SharePoint site using Internet Explorer. This task requires IE as it is the only browser that works with ActiveX controls.
  • Follow these steps here using Internet Explorer:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-a-list-based-on-a-spreadsheet-380cfeb5-6e14-438e-988a-c2b9bea574fa

Display People images on the iSchool SharePoint Intranet

Sometimes when you browse to one of the “People” links on the iSchool SharePoint Intranet all the image links are broken like this.

people

The reason for this is our Intranet and your Office 365 Profile (where your picture and bio live) are on different servers and you need to authenticate to both.

The easiest way to do this is to right click any of the broken images and select Open image in new tab. Once you see the picture (or the generic buddy icon in the case of a person who has not uploaded a picture to their Office 365 Profile) you can refresh the SharePoint page and you will see all the pictures.

Edit your Office 365 Profile

SharePoint has many social features. Ever since the iSchool decided to adopt SharePoint as our collaboration tool we decided to make our Intranet as personable as possible to facilitate said collaboration.

As iSchool Staff, here is what we would like you to do.

1) Browse to here:

https://portal.office.com/Home

and log in.

2) Click on the picture (or buddy icon if there is no picture) in the top, right corner.

3) Click the “About me” link.

4) Upload a picture of yourself (you can use your iSchool staff picture if you like).

5) Optionally, you can also edit your Profile to add additional information.

Being able to put a face to a name goes a long way toward achieving the goal of making our Intranet more personable. Your picture, and any information you add to your Profile and make viewable by everyone, will be displayed under the “People” links on our Intranet.

Subscribe a UW Mailman list to a UW SharePoint Announcement List

Sometimes it’s easier to send SharePoint Announcements out to a Mailman list that your users are already subscribed to rather than trying to get everyone to browse to your Announcement List and subscribe themselves or to manually subscribe everyone yourself.

Another benefit of this method is subscribers of your mailing list are already used to receiving messages from the list so this won’t be such a new thing (although the email address that posts these messages will be new).

Lastly, SharePoint will archive the announcements in a way that is easier to browse than a Mailman archive.

Here is how iSchool IT did this.

Create a Shared UW NetID

  • Ideally, you will create a new/unique NetID just for this purpose. You don’t want this email address being used for anything else and you don’t want this SharePoint/Mailman relationship to suddenly break for any reason. A dedicated NetID for each Mailman list is best.
  • You can get a Shared UW NetID here:

https://uw.service-now.com/sp?id=sc_cat_item&sys_id=61fc4ab50fc3e7006cad419ce1050e78

  • Make sure this NetID has a strong password and record it somewhere, it only has one function so you won’t need to remember it once this has been configured.

Forward UW email

Provision Office 365

If your SharePoint Announcement List is hosted on SharePoint Online, you will need to provision the Office 365 service for the Shared UW NetID. You can do that here: https://provision.uw.edu/

If you don’t provision the service, Office 365 will not recognize the account and will see it as being outside of the UW domain. Provisioning should not be required if your SharePoint List is on-premise.

Add the NetID to SharePoint

You can’t subscribe to a SharePoint Announcement List unless you have access to it, the easiest way to grant these shared accounts access to the List is to add the NetID you just provisioned directly to this list with the Read permission.

Subscribe the NetID to the Announcement List

  • Browse to your SharePoint Announcement List using using the NetID you just provisioned.
  • In the Modern view, click the ellipsis in the top nav > Alert me
  • In the Classic view, click the List tab and then Alert Me > Set alert on this list
  • We left all the defaults alone since we don’t post announcements very often but you are of course free to adjust any variable or interval as it best suits your needs.
  • Click OK to save your alert preferences.

Allow the Announcement List to post to your Mailman list

  • Browse to the administrative interface of your Mailman list with an account that is an Administrator for this list.
  • Click Privacy options > Sender filters

If your SharePoint site is on SharePoint Online (https://uwnetid.sharepoint.com/)

  • Add no-reply@sharepointonline.com to the “List of non-member addresses whose postings should be automatically accepted.” field and submit your changes.

If your SharePoint site is on premise (https://sharepoint.washington.edu/)

  • Add a_spnotification@u.washington.edu to the “List of non-member addresses whose postings should be automatically accepted.” field and submit your changes.

Qualify alias as explicit To or Cc

  • Browse to the administrative interface of your Mailman list with an account that is an Administrator for this list.
  • Click Privacy options > Recipient filters
  • Add the Shared UW NetID email address to the “Alias names (regexps) which qualify as explicit to or cc destination names for this list.” Be sure to use the exact same format (@uw.edu, @u.washington.edu, etc.) as you did when you set up the forwarding.

Done! Now every time you post a new SharePoint Announcement to your Announcement List it will be sent to your Mailman list. Feel free to test before you need it, we suggest making the subject and body of your test post an obvious test so users recognize this.

Caveats

  • If you are not creating a new shared UW NetID and instead recycling an old one and find that it is not being recognized by Office 365 even after you provision the Office 365 service for it, you might need to reset the password. UW-IT has a policy that all shared accounts (and perhaps all accounts?) that are not logged into for a year are deactivated. Resetting the password will activate it again. Once this has been done it will take a couple of hours for Office 365 to recognize it.
  • We also recommend that you add these dedicated accounts to this UW Group here (using the UW Groups web interface) to prevent them from getting deactivated in the future.
    • u_msinf_delou_<ou-name>_accountsthatdonotlogin
    • Where “ou-name” is the name of your delegated OU.