The GDPR
highlights the need for protection of personal data held by organizations. To
be able to do this Microsoft inverted a lot in new features and functions like the
Office
365 Security & Compliance Center or the GDPR Assessment.
One of the
backend systems helping to fulfill those regulations is the SharePoint Online
Search Service. In the SharePoint Online Search schema, we can find two managed
properties focusing on sharing and access from outside of your organization.
ViewableByExternalUsers and ViewableByAnonymousUsers
Both had
the same setting: Query, Retrieve, Refine
and Sort. So we can use them to
create some reports based on search queries.
Personal overview
Office 365
let every user search in his SharePoint Online sites, OneDrive for Business
files and also in Emails for content. In this scenario Email is of topic. But
using this search function at the landing page of Office 365 a user can create
a personal overview of content he shared to externals or anonymous.
To do this
a user needs to fill in the following query in the search box at the Office 365
landing page:
ViewableByAnonymousUsers=true
In this example,
I search for documents located in SharePoint Online sites or in my personal
OneDrive for Business which are shared based on an anonymous guest link.
Using the query
ViewableByExternalUsers=true shows me the files shared with
external users through a sharing link that requires them to log in before they
can view the file.
This gives
a user an overview of documents he has shared from his OneDrive for Business
with externals or anonymous. Because the URL is generic you can use this link
for all your users and every user get his person overview: https://www.office.com/search?auth=2&home=1&q=ViewableByAnonymousUsers%3Dtrue
Also you
can use this link to create a tile in the Office 365 App Launcher as described
in the article: Add
custom tiles to the app launcher
The result may look like this:
Team Site overview
Microsoft integrated a new out the box reporting
capability in every Team Site. The article: View
usage data for your SharePoint Online site is showing all details you need
to know. There is also a new tab called “Shared externally”.
The article
says: List of files you have access to
that have been shared with users outside your organization through a sharing
link that requires them to log in before they can view the file. Files shared
with anonymous users or files available to users with guest permissions are not
included.
To get a
list of files shared anonymous in this Team Site we can again use the query: ViewableByAnonymousUsers=true followed by a path filter like for
example: path:https:\\yourTeamSiteName.sharepoint.com.
Using Search Center to get
an overview
As an administrator,
you can also use the search center to get an overview of anonymous shared content
or about data and also SharePoint Online Sites them self, shared to externals.
The queries are basically the same and you can extend them with additional
keyword queries properties.
For example,
search all Office 366 Groups external users can access:
ViewableByExternalUsers=true contentclass:sts_site WebTemplate:GROUP
(Because of security trimming in SharePoint
Search the user who runs the query needs access to all Team Sites to gets an
complete report.)
Of cause
there are also options archiving this using PowerShell
for Office 365 Groups or using Reports
in the Office 365 Security & Compliance Center. Using the SharePoint
Online search gives you the power and flexibility to integrate all managed
properties as metadata in you report like for example ViewsLifeTime, LastModifiedTime,
CreatedBy or ModifiedBy. In addition you can easily scope
your report to only show documents using the IsDocument=true query parameter or to focus to
special Site Templates like WebTemplate:GROUP to only show Office 365 Groups Team Sites etc.
Using PowerShell to get
the report
Using
PowerShell to get results from SharePoint Online Search also offers the option
to save the report as an *.csv file. To call SharePoint Online Search API using
PowerShell and save the result to an *.csv file you can follow the steps explained
by Prasham
Sabadra in his article Office
365/Sharepoint Online - PowerShell Script To Call Search API And Get The Result.
This example
is based on his description. The report is showing all external shared content
and sites in an Office 365 Tenant and is saving the result to C:\Temp\ViewableByExternalUsers.csv
# add references to SharePoint
client assemblies and authenticate to Office 365 site - required for CSOM
Add-Type -Path "C:\Program
Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server
Extensions\16\ISAPI\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll"
Add-Type -Path "C:\Program
Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server
Extensions\16\ISAPI\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.dll"
Add-Type -Path "C:\Program
Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\16\ISAPI\Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Search.dll"
#Specify tenant admin and
URL
$User =
"Admin@yourTenant.onmicrosoft.com"
#Configure Site URL and User
$SiteURL =
"https://yourTenant.sharepoint.com"
#Password
$Password
="yourPassword"
$securePassword =
ConvertTo-SecureString -String $Password -AsPlainText –Force
$Creds = New-Object
Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.SharePointOnlineCredentials($User,$securePassword)
#client context object and
setting the credentials
$Context = New-Object
Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.ClientContext($SiteURL)
$Context.Credentials = $Creds
#Calling Search API - Create the
instance of KeywordQuery and set the properties
$keywordQuery = New-Object
Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Search.Query.KeywordQuery($Context)
#Sample Query - To get the last
year result
$queryText="ViewableByExternalUsers=true"
$keywordQuery.QueryText =
$queryText
$keywordQuery.TrimDuplicates=$false
$keywordQuery.SelectProperties.Add("LastModifiedTime")
$keywordQuery.SelectProperties.Add("ViewsLifeTime")
$keywordQuery.SelectProperties.Add("ModifiedBy")
$keywordQuery.SelectProperties.Add("ViewsLifeTimeUniqueUsers")
$keywordQuery.SelectProperties.Add("Created")
$keywordQuery.SelectProperties.Add("CreatedBy")
$keywordQuery.SortList.Add("ViewsLifeTime","Asc")
#Search API - Create the instance
of SearchExecutor and get the result
$searchExecutor = New-Object
Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Search.Query.SearchExecutor($Context)
$results =
$searchExecutor.ExecuteQuery($keywordQuery)
$Context.ExecuteQuery()
#Result Count
Write-Host $results.Value[0].ResultRows.Count
#CSV file location, to store the
result
$exportlocation =
"C:\Temp\ViewableByExternalUsers.csv"
foreach($result in
$results.Value[0].ResultRows)
{
$outputline='"'+$result["Title"]+'"'+","+'"'+$result["Path"]+'"'+","+$result["ViewsLifeTime"]+","+$result["ViewsLifeTimeUniqueUsers"]+","+$result["CreatedBy"]+","+$result["Created"]+","+$result["ModifiedBy"]+","+$result["LastModifiedTime"]
Add-Content $exportlocation
$outputline
}
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