Products & Services

External Document Collaboration (EDC) for MOSS 2007

Takes Extranet Collaboration to the Next Level

Overview

It is often that an organization which implements the moss 2007 for their internal collaboration
within the organization also needs collaboration with their external parties
(i.e. collaboration with individuals outside the organization). For example:

• Law firms need collaboration with large corporate clients
• Manufacturers need to collaborate with suppliers
• Government agencies and the military need to collaborate with vendors of goods and services.
• Academic institutions need to collaborate with one another.

Each of these types of organizations and many others are executing their day-to-day business processes
through some form of manual or automated external collaboration.

The Challenge

1. How can I provide SharePoint sites for our employees to use to collaborate with our customers,
   suppliers, partners, etc., and be assured that proper security is maintained?
2. How can I keep user accounts and passwords for non-employees in a separate database
   from our internal network user accounts and passwords?
3. How can extranet users have their own personal space to view all the collaboration accessible
   from the various departments and also perform their own password changes?
4. How can I automate the collaboration period in which the access granted and on expiry
   automate the removal of the access from the site documents? Also, how can I perform
   housekeeping of the personal space allocated?

The Solution

External Document Collaboration (EDC) for SharePoint 2007 is designed as feature specifically to help
the SharePoint server administrator overcome these challenges and deploy this collaboration tools
to the extranet in a secured manner.

i.   EDC gives the administrator the option to turn on / off this feature, which is available to the internally
     within the organization.

ii.   EDC allows the internal user to share any document, folder or the whole document library with one or more
      external users outside the organization or with those users who cannot access the organization portal site.

• To share Whole Document Library, a new option is available in the document library settings to allow
  sharing of the whole document library with external users. This is illustrated as follows:

• To share a Single Document, a new option “Share This Document” is available at the document level
  to share a particular document to external users.

iii.   User selection, granting of permission levels and setting of the expiry dates for access are available
       for the sharing option above, and is illustrated as follows:

iv.   Upon confirmation of the sharing arrangement,

• EDC sends a notification email to the person whom the document(s) is shared with, along with access
  details (User ID, password, expiry of the document shared and hyperlink to the personal space allocated
  for the external user)

• EDC sends another notification email to the owner of the document shared with all the details
  on the document(s) and users whom the document is shared with.

1. EDC, by default can be configured to keep the membership information for the external users into SQL
   Membership. It also supports any of the .Net 2.0 supported membership databases.
2. The User credential information is highly encrypted for security reasons and supports recover of
   password and change of password features.

1. The external user will have a separate customized authentication page from the internal users.

2. The login screen above also gives the user the option of recovering passwords. On confirmation
   of the user name and answer of the security question, the password will be emailed to the user.
3. On successful login, the user will get a fully customized personal site with only selected web parts
   to view all the shared documents from the various department site collections.

4. On clicking the hyperlink for a listed document, the user will be taken to the particular
   document/folder/document library.
5. On clicking the “Change Password” link, the user will be taken to the change password screen.

1. EDC, which is implemented with a backend procedure, runs in a defined frequency to check the expiry
   of all the documents shared. It will automatically remove the access of the documents for the external
   user if the expiry period has passed.
2. The link from the external user’s personal site will disappear once the document is expired.
3. The system will send an email notification to the external user if the personal site is not accessed
   for the defined period. The personal space will be automatically deleted if it is still not accessed
   after the email notification.