If your Microsoft external sharing setting or guest access setting is not permissive, one of the following messages will appear in ShareGate Protect to alert you:

The external sharing setting in your Microsoft 365 admin center doesn't allow sharing links. We'll only automate guest reviews.

The Groups setting in your Microsoft 365 admin center doesn't allow guests. We'll only automate external sharing link reviews.

The external sharing setting in your Microsoft 365 admin center doesn't allow sharing links or guests. Reviews can't be automated.

This usually happens when you activate the External sharing review policy but your Microsoft organization-level settings are too restrictive.

Your Microsoft external sharing setting, guest access setting, and sensitivity labels can impact your ability to use the ShareGate external sharing and guest access management features---including the External sharing review policy, the Ask owner(s) feature, and reviews for sensitivity tags.

When a review notification is sent to the team or group owner, the review dashboard will only include the content available to ShareGate. For example, a review may only contain guests but not external sharing links.

If your Microsoft settings do not allow for either external sharing or guest access, the review notifications will not be sent at all.

The action you take to resolve this issue depends on the cause. You can find a summary of the solutions we suggest for each situation here:

Update your Microsoft external sharing settings to be less restrictive.

The Microsoft External sharing setting must be set to Content can be shared with anyone for external sharing links to be created in Microsoft and to be detected by ShareGate.

For more information on how-to, see the Microsoft article Manage sharing settings - Change the organization-level external sharing setting.

You can use ShareGate's features to review guest access and external sharing links when this update is made.

Update your Microsoft guest access setting to allow people outside of your organization.

The Microsoft guest access setting, Let group owners add people outside of your organization to Microsoft 365 Groups as guests, must be unchecked.

For information on how-to, see the Microsoft article Manage guest access in Microsoft 365 Groups - Manage groups guest access.

You can use ShareGate's features to review external sharing links and guest access when this update is made.

If your Microsoft settings do not allow for external sharing links or guests, ShareGate cannot send reviews to owners. The External sharing review policy, Ask owner(s) feature, and reviews for sensitivity tags will not be available to use.

Update your Microsoft external sharing setting and guest access setting. See above for more details on how to modify both.

After you've made changes, you can use ShareGate to review external sharing links and guest access.