Setting Up Office 365 Extranet

     While trying to configure a 2016 hybrid SharePoint environment, I wanted to explore the features of a O365 Extranet. Having never set one up before, I turned to Microsoft for articles on how to simply set it up. I found many articles on what they were and why they would be useful, even pitfalls to avoid. However, I never came across a step by step guide, or if I did, it seemed like it was written pretty early in the lifecycle and Microsoft had already made changes to the product that made the article null and void. So, I ended up spending vast amounts of time getting my environment set up and configured as securely as possible. It is possible that I am spoiled as Extranet Collaboration Manger for On Prem takes about 10 minutes using the helpful wizard. What you find below are the notes of the steps that I took. Hopefully you find these instructions and are able to get your o365 extranet configured in much less time than it took me!

     I should note that before enabling external sharing for SharePoint, you'll have to make sure it's enabled for your Office 365 tenant as a whole. This can be found under the Security & Privacy tab of your Settings menu within your Tenant Admin Console. There, you can control external sharing globally first.

1. From the Tile screen click on admin
2. Next click on Security & privacy link in the left Nav

Allowing Site Sponsors to View Registrations and Invitations List

“Extranet Collaboration Manager”, or ExCM, was designed to leverage SharePoint’s native permissions levels, and, in a few cases, add some additional security capabilities that can help an organization to better secure and govern SharePoint usage in an extranet scenario.  One of these additional features is ExCM’s Site Sponsor feature.

An ExCM Site Sponsor is a special permission level that can be granted to any user (internal or external), regardless of the SharePoint permission level that user has.  Once granted the Site Sponsor permission, the user is able to manage a pre-defined set of external user accounts in a given extranet site.  (Read more about the ExCM Site Sponsor feature here.)

In many cases a Site Sponsor is able to do everything she needs to do by simply using the out-of-the-box settings.  However, one thing that a Site Sponsor cannot do out-of-the-box is see the list of Extranet Invitations and Extranet Registrations for her site.  This is because both of those lists are automatically maintained by ExCM at the Site Collection level and by default require Site Collection Administrator permissions.  Sometimes we are asked how this can be “tweaked” so that Site Sponsors can see these two lists. 

Below are the steps you can use to set up your Site Sponsor to view the Registrations and Invitations for a site collection:


From your Windows Explorer, open your “SharePoint Designer” program.



Once your SharePoint Designer is open, click on “Open Site.”

Setting up Anonymous Registration

When dealing with Extranets, the primary job of a Farm Administrator is to make sure their Extranet is set up with the proper security to only allow users who are part of the organization or who are invited to have access to an extranet site collection. They are the “Gatekeepers” of your Extranet.

“I am the Key Master... are you the Gatekeeper?”

(Ghostbusters 1984)