SharePoint Online External users and search capabilities

Question

Hello, 

I need to check a scenario technically. 

I plan to have a SharePoint Online publishing site on which I implemented a few search features with the javascript object model (JSOM). The code consists in retrieving documents stored in the current site collection with the search engine.

Also I have an enterprise search center with custom refiners (the webpart is oob, but I configured search settings to have specific refiners). 

I had everything based on search features that wouldn't work for external users.

I saw on this site that external users can't search stuff: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Manage-external-sharing-for-your-SharePoint-Online-environment-c8a462eb-0723-4b0b-8d0a-70feafe4be85 and other search features that might not be available to external users. 

On another page, I see that same sentence but preceeded by "by default" : https://support.office.com/en-us/article/What-is-an-external-user-c04a3ff2-6373-4d1b-bfa9-d2b877cfea93 

At last, I went on this site saying there is trick to unlock the by default configuration : http://wp.sjkp.dk/office-365-sharepoint-search-for-external-users/ 

And everthing worked after a crawl since then. 

So my question is what an external user really can or can't do regarding search features in SharePoint Online ? I mean is the trick shown above valid or is it a kind of bug that might be resolved by Microsoft later ? 

Can I use this site for external users like this or should I do it another way ?

Thanks for the answer

Answer 1

Hi Christian,

Yes, you can use the workaround to enable search center for external users, it's valid.

The default search result page don't apply to the external users and it cannot be edit in SharePoint Online, either. But, you can configure the search settings to make the search result open to external user.

If I have misunderstood anything, feel free to let me know.

Thanks,

Eben

Answer 2

Hello, 

I need to check a scenario technically. 

I plan to have a SharePoint Online publishing site on which I implemented a few search features with the javascript object model (JSOM). The code consists in retrieving documents stored in the current site collection with the search engine.

Also I have an enterprise search center with custom refiners (the webpart is oob, but I configured search settings to have specific refiners). 

I had everything based on search features that wouldn't work for external users.

I saw on this site that external users can't search stuff: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Manage-external-sharing-for-your-SharePoint-Online-environment-c8a462eb-0723-4b0b-8d0a-70feafe4be85 and other search features that might not be available to external users. 

On another page, I see that same sentence but preceeded by "by default" : https://support.office.com/en-us/article/What-is-an-external-user-c04a3ff2-6373-4d1b-bfa9-d2b877cfea93 

At last, I went on this site saying there is trick to unlock the by default configuration : http://wp.sjkp.dk/office-365-sharepoint-search-for-external-users/ 

And everthing worked after a crawl since then. 

So my question is what an external user really can or can't do regarding search features in SharePoint Online ? I mean is the trick shown above valid or is it a kind of bug that might be resolved by Microsoft later ? 

Can I use this site for external users like this or should I do it another way ?

Thanks for the answer

Christian