Collaborate and share documents with external parties
business context
MS Sharepoint and MS Teams, which is based on Sharepoint for documents, enable documents to be shared and edited simultaneously . This was initially restricted to internal employees and was expanded to include external users on January 21, 2025. External users are all users whose email does not end with @Bellevue.ch, @Bellevue-AM.de or @Adbodmer.ch.
Sharing documents on SharePoint with external parties
concept
Each SharePoint site or team (MS Teams) has its own guest group. This is managed by IT.
A guest is then basically authorized, but initially has no access to anything in the Sharepoint site or team. This differs from Bellevue employees, who have access to everything in the site/team with the authorization.
The authorized users (normally Bellevue employees) then decide what to share with guests within the site/teams.
What is shared with whom can be seen in a report that the site admin can create.
Shared documents can be edited by external users/guests in the browser , but cannot be downloaded or edited in the dedicated native application. This would require the removal of another security measure that also applies to Bellevue employees.
process
Only IT can set up external users as guests for Sharepoint sites and MS Teams. To set up a user as a guest, send an email with the following information to IT-Support@bellevue.ch:
- First and Last Name
- E-mail address
- company
- contact person at Bellevue (sponsor)
sharing documents
After the guest account is created, the external user will receive an email asking them to accept the invitation. At this point, they will not have access to any folders/documents.
This only happens if an existing Bellevue user actively shares it in their OneDrive or Sharepoint (right-click on a file/folder) and select “Share”:
control
Which documents have been shared with whom is logged and can be requested via a report by the site admin. More information:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/sharing-reports
