How do I enforce acceptance of a Terms Of Use Policy for a Shared File from SharePoint or OneDrive

Mike Smith 0

How do I enforce the acceptance of a Terms Of Use Policy for a file shared from SharePoint and/or OneDrive?

I've created the terms of use document, created the policy requiring TOU is accepted (for all cloud apps) but the users are still able to access the file without being prompted with a dialog to scroll through and accept the TOU. The user does not have a guest account in the environment.

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Andy David - MVP 150.6K Reputation points MVP

2024-03-22T18:55:41.9733333+00:00

What type of accounts are these?
Mike Smith 0 Reputation points

2024-03-22T19:04:20.8266667+00:00

External other O365 accounts in another tenant, gmail accounts, yahoo...
Andy David - MVP 150.6K Reputation points MVP

2024-03-22T19:20:01.8133333+00:00

Do they get prompted if they attempt to access other apps than Sharepoint?

What do the Sign in logs show about the policy and why its not applied.
Mike Smith 0 Reputation points

2024-03-22T19:25:04.5266667+00:00

They get the normal pop up to enter a code sent back to their email. There is nothing in the sign-in logs as they are not guest accounts, just shared links to documents.
Mike Smith 0 Reputation points

2024-03-22T19:43:09.8233333+00:00

They get the normal "Send a code" to the email address the share is sent to, after entering the code they are able to go into the shared document without accepting the TOU policy. There is nothing in the sign-in logs as they are not truly named guest b2b users in the tenant. The links are just shared externally.

I just found this wording in one of the MS Docs:
"Terms of use policies are only displayed when the user has a guest account in Microsoft Entra ID. SharePoint Online currently has an external sharing recipient experience to share a document or a folder that doesn't require the user to have a guest account. In this case, a terms of use policy isn't displayed."

So I guess it's doing what it should but it doesn't make any sense why you wouldn't be able to setup a TOU policy for users that get a shared link. They are still accessing the content you have shared with them and it should be under the same restrictions as if you created a guest account and then shared the file or site.

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Andy David - MVP 150.6K Reputation points MVP

2024-03-22T21:27:15.4933333+00:00

Ah ok. You are sending a link. Yea kinda stinks and appears to be a limitation of Sharepoint Online.

Maybe some feedback and a suggestion to change this behavior would possibly help one day? :)

https://feedback.azure.com/d365community

Of course the other option is to not allow sending links to external and require guests but thats prob not practical for you at this point.
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How do I enforce acceptance of a Terms Of Use Policy for a Shared File from SharePoint or OneDrive

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