My client is a Guest User in our Microsoft 365 account and cannot use document links

Support has now ended for Legacy Collaborate.

To upgrade to New Collaborate, refer to Upgrading to New Collaborate.

Issue

When sending documents to your clients via Collaborate, the client receives an email which includes a secure link to OneDrive for each of the documents. The client clicks on the link to access the document, but the link does not take them to the verification screen.

Cause

The email address may be a guest user in your practice’s Microsoft 365 account.

Creating a secure link to share a document via FYI Collaborate will not work for existing users within a practice's Microsoft 365 account. This means you cannot use Collaborate with a guest user of Microsoft 365 within your practice.

If you have already shared documents with an email address using the native OneDrive/SharePoint features, the user may have been added as a guest user. To be able to use Collaborate with that email address, any guest user account will have to be removed before you send a document link.

Note: Consult your administrators before removing users from Azure to ensure that their removal has no further implications.

Resolution

To remove the email address as a Guest User from the practice’s Microsoft 365 account, follow these steps:

1. Click on this link to access the Guest User list in Microsoft Azure Directory
   Note: This will need to be done by a user with Microsoft 365 Administrator permissions.
   
   
2. Locate the guest user you need to remove and place a checkmark in the box beside their name.
   
   
3. Select Delete user on the top ribbon.
   
   

Once the guest user has been removed, you will be able to send them an email utilising the functionality of FYI's Collaborate document links.

If you wish to confirm the removal has been successful before sending it to the client, you will need to:

1. Create a new email using the Share function.
2. Select Draft in Outlook to enable document links to be created.
3. Open the client's folder in OneDrive FYI - Clients
4. Navigate to the shared documents
5. Click Manage Access
6. Confirm that the user has now been added underneath Links giving access.

You can also further test this by copying the document link and pasting it into an incognito window. You should see the prompt to verify your identity and not see an error ‘That didn’t work…’

We also suggest a review for any other clients that may be Guest Users in Azure to prevent this issue from happening to others. Of course, there may be clients that cannot be removed from Azure for other reasons, meaning that Collaborate document links will not work for them.