The Microsoft 365 (M365) environment makes it easy to share documents with external parties. However, you can inadvertently overshare! To avoid a case of TMI, it is important to build safety measures into your collaboration processes. 

If you are sharing content externally using M365, you will be directly or indirectly working with SharePoint Online and possibly Teams and OneDrive, which use SharePoint Online.

Getting your external sharing controls and processes just right is a more serious matter than just tweaking your external sharing settings, although that is certainly important.

I was reminded of the need to close down a sharing loophole when being provided access to a document from an external party. I was able to display the location the document was shared from and review and update the metadata. I suspect this wasn't necessarily intended.

Changing metadata, such as the approval person, might trigger a different recipient for approval, circumventing a process. Custom metadata can also be exposed. Perhaps a budget column or even content in the comments column could give me information the content provider would prefer I not see.

If that is enough to scare you into emailing documents instead of co-authoring them, then think again. The document properties attached to the document can also carry forward some of this information and should be wiped first in many situations. Also, you don't want to wipe those properties on your master document, as that just creates different problems. 

For heavy duty document collaboration use-cases, TEAM IM might recommend our  specialized collaboration solutions built around M-Files. We make it easy to securely share and collaborate on content across a variety of scenarios and levels of trust. We can connect this directly to your Teams view to combine both worlds.

If your collaboration use cases are relatively light, you still have options to plug these gaps within M365. Often, it is a combination of technology, process, and education that helps create the optimal solution.

Sending content out externally can be further protected using Microsoft's Azure Information Protection capabilities, which is a topic for another day.

For the situation, setting up sites (or libraries) just for sharing will demarcate and isolate internal content and their metadata safely and securely. This may require duplicating the original document during the collaboration process, but that can be automated easily using Power Automate for user convenience and better information and process control.

It is also possible to strip metadata from the document properties. The manual way is to go to the File Menu on the document and locate the Info section.  From there, click the "Check for Issues" button and choose the Inspect option, and you can remove the document properties and personal information if required.

The main takeaway from this Insight is to realise that the more you open up your systems to reap the benefits of external collaboration, the more you need to stay on top of your information security. TEAM IM can help with reviewing and plugging those gaps utilising the tools at hand, as well as providing comprehensive solutions to meet specific use cases. Don't make your sharing turn into a case of oversharing and TMI. We are here to help.

About TEAM IM

TEAM IM is an experienced solution company that advises, develops, implements, supports, and manages enterprise grade process, information and content management systems. For more than twenty years, TEAM IM has acted as a trusted advisor to our clients through our offices in Australia, New Zealand, Europe and the United States. Our mission is to assist our client to get the most out of their investments in technology. Whether our clients are large government agencies or corporations, construction firms, accounting firms, heavy industry, or smaller organizations, we strive to deliver demonstrable business benefits and generate real return on investment for our clients.

Our products and services offer solutions to transform your business by automating and modernizing your operations. We work hand-in-hand with our clients to understand their goals and create and execute multi-year, continuous improvement plans. Our mission is to support and manage every solution we deliver, so we take care to design long term, future proof, maintainable solutions. We work with best-in-class technology partners that we have carefully selected to ensure we can execute our plan and achieve our clients continuous improvement goals.

Our products and solutions encompass Advisory Services, Implementation Services and Managed Support Services. We specialize in Business Process Automation and Optimization, Content Platforms and Content Services and we are also a leader in Mobile App/Field Services software development and Digital Workplaces. We have industry-specific solutions for the Construction and Accounting Services sectors, and cross-industry solutions for Accounts Payable, Contract Management, App Modernization, Field Services and File Sharing.

At TEAM IM we are passionate about delivering outstanding outcomes for you, our clients.