Share files with external users in an Information Barriers enabled tenant

Question

Hi,

We are trying to deploy Information Barrier policies in our tenant in order to isolate some groups of users from the regular employees. Right now we are carrying out some tests and we have created different segments with an allow policy where they are only allowed to communicate with users of the same segment. Everything is working fine in Microsoft Teams, so we are planning to extend this to OneDrive and SharePoint, but we are facing some issues regarding external users.

According to the documentation (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/information-barriers-onedrive), once you enable Information Barriers for SharePoint and OneDrive every SharePoint site is configured in Open mode and every segmented user's OneDrive is configured in Explicit mode. The problem comes with OneDrive and that Explicit mode. As a result of the policies, users can share SharePoint files with external users, however, users cannot share their OneDrive's files and folders with external users. Everytime we try it we get an error stating that the external user cannot be found, thus we can't share the file.

We have tried setting up the Mixed mode (allow communication with unsegmented users) for the OneDrive account, but we are getting the same error. According to the documentation, our goal would be to configure every OneDrive in Open mode, just like SharePoint sites, but it cannot be done if the users is included in a segment. As a result, when Information Barrier policies are enabled segmented users cannot share their OneDrive files with external users. Unsegmented users can still share files without any issue.

So, my question is, is there any way for segmented users to share OneDrive files with external users when Information Barriers are enabled?

Answer 1

Hi @MaxPowell ,

According to my research, when Information Barriers are enabled for OneDrive, segmented users cannot share their OneDrive files with external users. This is because the OneDrive of segmented users are automatically protected with IB policies, and the IB mode for segmented users' OneDrive is set as Explicit by default. In Explicit mode, files and folders can only be shared with users whose segment matches that of the OneDrive. The option to share with Anyone with the link and Company-wide link is disabled for Explicit mode.

Mixed mode allows files and folders to be shared with users whose segment matches that of the OneDrive and unsegmented users in the tenant. However, according to the documentation, setting up Mixed mode for the OneDrive account does not allow segmented users to share their OneDrive files with external users.

Therefore, it seems that there is no way for segmented users to share OneDrive files with external users when Information Barriers are enabled.

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