Set Up An External Guest User

External (guest) users of your Microsoft 365 tenant can be set up on your Zee Drive subscription and access the sites and document libraries you have shared with them via your Zee Drive network drives.

Users from other Microsoft 365 tenants or users with personal email accounts like @gmail are supported.

Here is a step-by-step guide to set up an external user with an @gmail.com account to access a folder in a document library through a Zee Drive network drive you configure on your Zee Drive subscription.

Set Up The User In Microsoft Entra

1

Navigate to your organisation's Microsoft Entra admin centre and select Invite external user

2

Enter the email address (sending an invitation is not required) click Review + invite to complete the process of inviting the external user to your tenant as a guest. The guest user will now show along with the other users in Entra

3

Now that the guest user is set up in your Entra you can grant them access to the folder in your SharePoint Online document library. Navigate to the folder in the SharePoint document library that you intend to share, click the three dots ... and choose Manage access

4

Click on the Grant Access icon

5

Enter the user name, or if it is not yet searchable by name, then enter the user's full email address. A notification is not required. Then click Grant access

Set Up The User In Zee Drive And Configure The Network Drive

The Microsoft Entra and SharePoint Online configuration is complete. Now to set up the user on your Zee Drive subscription and the mapped drive through which they will access your shared folder.

1

Open your Zee Drive Administration Console, choose Set up or manage users -> set up a new user, and enter the user's email address. Validate and add the user on your Zee Drive subscription. Make a note of their activation code

2

Set up a new network drive and assign an appropriate name to make it clear this is an external share for your company. Proceed through the drive set up wizard and connect the drive to the folder you have shared

3

Create a new Zee Drive group and add the user as a member of the group

4

If you have other network drives that are configured to show for all users, you may want to set up a group targeting exclusion so that the drives will not be mapped for your external user. If you don't do this then the user will see your other drives and receive errors trying to access them. To modify a network drive, from the Zee Drive Administration Console, select the network drive, choose Modify, click Next. Choose the option from the screenshot below and select the group you set up previously. Publish your drive changes

Activate And Authenticate The External User

All the configuration tasks are now complete. Provide the Zee Drive activation code to the external user and direct them to the activation guide to activate their personal computer.

For personal email accounts like @gmail.com, during the activation process, the user will be prompted to request a onetime access code to their email address and enter it in to the Zee Drive authentication popup. Here's how it will look for the user:

If this is the first time the user has connected with your Entra tenant they will be prompted by Zee Driveto accept standard Entra permissions:

The user can now complete the activation of Zee Drive on their computer. After Zee Drive starts up, the network drive you have configured for the user will be mapped and they can access it via File Explorer.

The user is now able to collaborate with you on your SharePoint Online files via a Zee Drive mapped network drive.

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