Sharepoint access for internal users without license

Question

Hi

A customer of mine are using O365 and Sharepoint Online.

Of 700 employees about 250 have F1 licenses, 60 have E3 licenses. The rest who are employed by the hour do not have a license.

Is it still possible to give them visitor access to the Sharepoint site (intranet)?

I seem to get different answers on this depending on who I ask.

If it is possible, do I just add them as users in AAD?

If it is not possible, what is the minimum license that they need?

Answer 1

Hi Marten,

Thanks for your updates.

Rather than invite them via their Outlook/Gmail accounts. I think your first plan would be the best practice in this scenario, it will enhance your management on the intern users.

And that doesn't offend the using license because they will only have limited access to the SharePoint Online service.

Regards,

Alex Chen

Answer 2

Hi Alex,

Thanx for a swift reply.

My first plan was to give these unlicensed users a UPN in the tenant and then add them to a group with visitor access to the Sharepoint site.

I've tried this with some fake/test accounts and also created a Power app (with Flow adding users fråm a Sharepointlist to AAD) that would be easy to use for HR-staff when adding deleating users.

But then I was told by someone that this would be a violation to Microsoft license model and that every employee needs to have a license i order to access Sharepoint, even as a visitor.

But you say that this would be ok? Or that I could add them as guests (with their private gmail/outlook accounts).

They will mostly read news on the Sharepoint/Intranet. Most of the documents will be pdf-files so there is no real need for an Office license.

Best regards, Mårten

Answer 3

Hi Marten,

Thanks for your query in this community.

Based on my test results, the user who don't have SharePoint Online license could access to the SharePoint site without issue.

You just need to share this site to their email address and grant them with correct permission level.

Share a site

In you scenario, I would like to confirm if those user have their corresponding UPN in your Tenant? Or they are just using their Outlook/Gmail account? Either will do. But please notice, if they do not have the Office Online license or Desktop Office license, they won't be able to open the documents in the SharePoint document library. So in short, they might have limited access to some features provided in SharePoint Online.

You can also refer to the Subscription options and SharePoint Online Enterprise external users section in the following article:

SharePoint Online Service Description

It's not necessary to add those users to Azure AD manually, per my experience, if you share the site to them, they will be added to the guest user in Azure AD (If user doesn't have an User Principe Name) once they open the site in their mailbox. 

Regards,

Alex Chen