How To Effectively Collaborate Externally Using Visitor Sharing

Most organizations using G Suite Google Workspace mostly find themselves collaborating with external partners and vendors that have their own internal systems and how they prefer to work. Honestly aren’t we all comfortable with working with the tools we know and love.: -) but who said that we all have to change to accommodate the other party, well Google Workspace does provide solutions that will help you maintain the way you work and enjoy how you work.

At most times while working with external parties we may want to collaborate on a file be it a Word document, Google document, spreadsheets or a presentation, Fear not! by using Visitor sharing you can now collaborate seamlessly with all your external partners that don’t have a Google account(a G Suite Google Workspace account or a Gmail account)

Visitor sharing means there’s no need for the collaborators to sign up for a Google account. Historically, you had two options when you wanted to collaborate with others in Google Docs. The most secure way required that each collaborator sign in with an email address associated with a Google account and most people had to use their personal Gmail account which wasn’t secure as corporate data ended up residing in personal accounts. A less secure method required that you adjust the access settings to allow anyone with the link to access a file or folder. Both of these methods served as a barrier to collaboration — especially between people who used different office suites, such as Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) and Google Workspace (formerly G Suite).

Now by entering a pin code, the partner who doesn’t have a Google account can collaborate with you on the file seamlessly and you can also revoke access to the file at any time. This will help ensure smooth and secure collaboration with them through :

• Rich collaboration: Including comments, edits, and more — with anyone you need to work with, regardless of whether they have a Google account or not.
• Audit logging for collaboration with visitors, so that all interactions are monitored and recorded.
• Ability to revoke access and remove collaborators as needed at any given time as you so wish.
• Reduced need to download, email, or create separate files to work with external users who don’t have Google accounts.

If you are an item or folder owner or editor, you may choose to give access to the item to external collaborators whom you have their email address by:

• In the Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides, you want to collaborate with people select Share

• Under “Share with people and groups” enter the email address you want to share with.
• As the file owner, you can grant collaborators different rights on what they can do within the document. i.e View, Comment, or edit, by assigning the following rights Viewer, Commenter, or Editor respectively.
• You must choose to notify people by checking the box next to Notify People in order to send a notification email containing the PIN to share the file with an external collaborator that doesn’t have a Google account.
• You may include a short message to be accompanied by the notification email or not. Once done click Send to share.

How to gain access to a shared item

The external collaborator will receive an email with a notification message and a link to access the shared item.

Upon clicking the link, Google will ask the user to verify ownership of the account before accessing the shared file. Google will send a verification PIN to the user's email address after the user clicks on Send.

The user should check their email inbox and look for a verification code email containing a PIN to access the file.

Verification code sent to the user’s email address

The user should copy and paste the pin code in the window containing the file they are trying to access. After verification, they may access the shared folder or file and can now collaborate effectively without the need to have access to a Google account.

Note: The recipient may need to repeat the verification process periodically (typically every 7 days or so) to maintain authenticated access.

Note for Administrators: Google Workspace administrator must allow people to send sharing invitations outside of the organization’s Google workspace domain. While enabling users to send invitations to people outside your organization who are not using a Google Account.