We developed a SharePoint/Teams solution for a large construction group in Austria to efficiently manage over 3,000 construction sites per year. One highlight: ‘Share with Everyone’, which enables secure, anonymous sharing and ensures the principle of Zero Trust. The digital construction projects includes, among other things:
- Project rooms: Automatic provisioning of construction files based on different templates for different divisions such as building construction, civil engineering, etc.
- SAP integration: Automatic synchronization of orders and invoices into the construction files incl. PDF indexing.
- Integration of 3rd party applications: such as planed radar, photo or weather app
Extension of the standard SharePoint feature "Share with everyone"
A highlight is the new “Share with Everyone” feature, which ensures control and security when sharing data from construction files anonymously.
Challenge: The customer did not want to activate anonymous sharing for all construction projects and also needed control over who shares which documents. Many CISOs (Chief Information Security Officers) face the challenge that anonymous sharing is often uncontrolled and insecure across all site collections. This can lead to uncontrolled growth and increase safety risks. However, with our solution, even a CISO can sleep soundly, as the principle of Zero Trust is guaranteed.
Implementation:
- A new site collection /sites/share: Only on this is anonymous sharing enabled.
- SPFx Extension: Which adds a new “Share with Everyone” menu item in each document library with each construction file:
- SPFx interface: after selecting one or more documents (folders), clicking “Share with Everyone” will give you an additional interface where the user has to enter email addresses and expiration times.
- Azure Function: After clicking Share, the selected documents or folders are copied to /sites/share via an Azure Function. There we automatically generate the anonymous link and make it available to the user:
- Logging: We log all activities in a central SharePoint list to ensure traceability
This solution enables the customer to share documents from the construction files anonymously in a secure and controlled manner, without having to open the entire platform for anonymous sharing.
Conclusion
Our SharePoint solution shows once again how we meet the complex requirements of our customers with innovative and tailor-made solutions. Discover how we can also optimize your digital processes.