Introducing Collaborate to your Clients and Sample Email for Practices

We recommend introducing your clients to Collaborate before you commence using this functionality.

Our suggested best practice is for you to use the next meeting with your clients as an opportunity to take them through the process for receiving shared documents and to make sure they add the no-reply@sharepointonline.com email to the safe sender list in their email.

We have drafted a sample email below that outlines the secure process for clients and potential issues they may encounter. Please feel free to use this sample as a draft for your client communication.

This information can be set up as an Email Template. Or you can also set this up, for example, as a PDF and include this as an attachment in the email that you send either before or when you share a document. You can also refer your clients to our help article of any initial issues they may have - Troubleshooting initial issues with Shared Documents or Shared Folders.

Sample Email

Dear {{ Salutation }},

We have recently decided to change our approach to the way we email documents to our clients. Rather than attaching a document directly to an email, we will now use secure hyperlinks to link documents inside the body of the email. 

This new system is safer, ensuring your documents remain secure, private and only accessed by those intended.

To ensure that this change is as seamless as possible, we would like to step you through the change:

1. You will still receive an email from us as you always have. The change being there will no longer be an attached document but rather a secure link inside of the email body. Only the recipient (the email address it was sent to) can open the link.
2. Once you click on the secure link, you may be prompted to follow the verification process to ensure you are the intended recipient (for security purposes).
   
   For the verification process:
3. Enter or verify your email address. This email address must match the email address that the email was sent to.
4. Click Send Code.
   
   
5. You will receive an email with the verification code.
   
   
6. Enter the verification code into the secure link screen and click Verify.
   Note: Clicking ‘Keep me signed in’ will prevent you having to use a verification code to access documents in the future.
   
   
7. The document opens.

To minimise any unnecessary delays in accessing your secure documents, we suggest that you add the verification code email address - no-reply@sharepointonline.com - to your safe senders list. This will ensure that these emails are not treated as junk email and are received directly in your Inbox.
Need to know how to do this? Outlook users and Gmail users.

The access and verification process are Microsoft functions. If you have any initial problems accessing the documents that are shared with you, please click this link to the FYI help article  - Troubleshooting initial issues with Shared Documents or Shared Folders.

We appreciate that this process is not as simple as opening an attachment in an email. However, we believe that given the increasing need for vigilance with cyber security this measure has our client’s best interests front of mind.

Should you have any further questions or experience issues that cannot be resolved from the information above, please contact our office.

Kind regards,

{{ AuthorName }}

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