Sharing documents and folders with users outside of your organization

You can securely share documents and folders that are stored in your content repository with users outside of your organization. You can also allow other users to share your items.

About this task

When you share documents and folders with external users, those users can then view, download, and modify the documents and folders, depending on the privileges you grant them.

You can also set an expiration date when sharing items. If you want to view a list of all the documents and folders that you have shared, you can do so in the Share view of your desktop.

Note that in order for you to share an item, you must have the Manage permissions or Share permission.

When using share, the following behavior applies when adding a document and uploading a new version:

Add Document: When not using an entry template, the major version option is not available to the user. The document is added as a major version when the repository configuration is set up to use major version as the default. When using an entry template, the default value of the major version and whether the option is made available is controlled by the entry template.
Upload New Version: The major version option is not available. The document is checked in as a major version if the released version is the current (latest) version. For example, if the document's current version is 3.0 then the version becomes 4.0. If the current version is 3.1 (released version is 3.0 but the latest version is 3.1) then the version becomes 3.2.

When sharing folders, you can allow external users to edit the folder and subfolder properties, edit all of the documents in a folder, upload new documents, and add folders. You must have the Owner permission on the folder to grant the Edit Folder and All Documents permission.

Note that the Edit All option requires the following three permissions: Edit Properties, Create subfolder, and Add to folders. An owner without the Edit Properties permission cannot grant the Edit Folder and All Documents permission, and an owner without the Create Subfolder permission cannot grant the Edit Folder and All Documents permission.

You can also grant the Select Documents to Edit permission to the folder under the following conditions:

You have Owner permission on the folder or Author permission with Share on the folder.
You have Owner permission on the document or Author permission with Share on the document.

You cannot grant edit privileges to a document under a folder share if you've already done so under another folder share or have shared the document directly. Also, you cannot share a document if you've already granted edit privileges under a folder share.

If you want external users to add documents using entry templates, you must grant the external users Read access to the entry template and the content class used by the entry template, and then associate the entry template to a folder. To ensure that the entry template is used when an external user adds a document to the folder, you must associate the entry template directly to the folder that will be shared, not a parent folder. For more information, see Associating entry templates with folders.

Prior to IBM® Content Navigator 3.0.6, email notifications to a share recipient were in English. You can now reconfigure the Share plug-in for the repository to add support for more languages. The email notifications that are sent when sharing an item are in the language of the sharer.

Procedure

To share a document or folder, complete the following steps:

Select the document or folder that you want to share, right-click, and click Share.
In the Share dialog, look up the name of the external user recipient. The eligible users are provided for selection as you type. You can enter more than one recipient.
Add a subject and a personal message to explain the shared content.
For a document, set the View, Download and Edit permissions.
For folders, you can set Edit Folder and All Documents to allow users to edit the properties of all folders, edit all documents, upload new documents, and add folders. You can also set Select Documents to Edit and select specific documents for which you want to grant users the permission to view, download, edit properties, and upload new versions.
(Optional) For documents and folders, you can set an expiration date. Note that after the expiration date passes, the shared item is no longer visible to the recipient. If no expiration date is set, the recipient has access to the document indefinitely.
The best practice is to set an expiration date at the time of the share. At a later date, you can also add or change an expiration date on a share. If you do not set an expiration date and the share is no longer needed, the issuer or supervisor must delete the share manually.
After you complete all the settings, click Send.
To view what you have already shared or what others have shared:
1. From your repository desktop, click on the item's Properties and then click the Share tab.
2. Click Shared by Me or Shared by Others to see details about the shares.
Tips and additional information for working with Share items

If you re-share a document or folder with a user for a second or subsequent time, the user does not receive another notification of the share. However, the changes you make to the view, download, and edit permissions or expiration details are updated on the share.
The database activity increases, and response time lengthens as the number of contained documents and subfolders increases when sharing a folder with external users. Sharing a folder with over 1,000 documents and subfolders is not recommended since the user may encounter notable delays and may impact other users’ experience.

If you select an expiration date for a shared document or folder, the system automatically removes the privileges to the document for the external users when the share expires. Otherwise, the share has to be manually revoked when the document no longer needs to be shared.

When a document that was granted edit privileges under a folder share is moved out of the shared folder, the share recipient will no longer see that document in the shared folder but will still have edit privileges on the document. It is recommended that the document be removed from the folder share when it is moved outside of the folder in order to revoke edit privileges. Administrators can locate documents that have been granted edit privileges and moved outside of their respective shared folders using ACCE. For more details, see the FileNet P8 information: Best practices for external sharing.

What to do next

If you want to allow other users to share your documents or folders, see Allowing other users to share your items.