Overview
SharePoint is a web-based collaborative platform that integrates with Microsoft Office. SharePoint is primarily used as a document management/storage system and when integrated with Beekeeper, can allow your employees to instantly gain access through the Beekeeper App!
By using Beekeeper's Document Library, your employees can browse and view files of png, jpg, gif, pdf, xls, xslx, doc, docx, ppt, and pptx type that are 10MB or less. Once configured by an administrator, employees can use their mobile device to directly view these files without having to download or save them locally! You can find the setup instructions in our SharePoint Integration Installation Guide article.
Please note:
Please check our corporate site if this feature is available in your subscription plan.
The integration only works with drives from SharePoint sites. We cannot synchronise documents from a SharePoint page directly.
Additionally, please be aware that we do not support on-premise SharePoint versions.
How to Use
1.) Access Integration Folder
Integration folders are visible by the SharePoint logo on the folder icon.
2.) Browse Content
All files and sub-folders of the connected SharePoint folder will be visible in the Dashboard of the Document Library. A SharePoint label in the navigation bar indicates that the files in the folder come from SharePoint.
3.) Change Files
A link to the mirrored SharePoint folder helps you quickly make changes to the files and folders in SharePoint. Additionally you can change the configuration to link to another folder in SharePoint. Once set up, any change made to a document in SharePoint will be automatically updated for all employees accessing that document in Beekeeper.
FAQ's
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Are all files mirrored?
As most non-desk end-users don’t have wifi at their workplace, documents need to load fast and not drain a private data package too much. Due to this, the Document Library has a limit of 10MB per file. Larger files will not be mirrored in the Document Library. The supported file types are the following: png, jpg, gif, pdf, xls, xslx, doc, docx, ppt, pptx. This ensures that users can easily read the files on their mobile phone. Files that don't satisfy this condition will still appear but they will not be accessible.
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Are the actual files from SharePoint copied over to Beekeeper?
No. The integration makes the document visible using a link that goes straight to SharePoint.
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What is a Marketplace app?
The Beekeeper Marketplace offers lots of different integrations to third party systems and other standalone extensions for Beekeeper. Each of these apps can be bought and installed separately to extend the value that Beekeeper brings to you.
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Can I also sync files back to SharePoint?
No. SharePoint remains the master system. This reduces the likelihood of duplicates appearing and makes it clear to everyone where documents should be managed.
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What changes for the user? Do they see if a file or folder comes from SharePoint?End users will not see a difference between documents stored on Beekeeper or mirrored from SharePoint. But they will benefit from the fact that they’ll always have the latest version of the documents at their fingertips.
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Why does the Beekeeper token need Read All/Write All access to SharePoint sites and files, when users can only read the documents put up on Beekeeper?
We decided to go for a solution that would offload the files into Beekeeper with a temporary access, instead of passing them through our service directly. This is a much more efficient and faster way of implementing an integration, and especially because it is key for documents to be up to date, we decided to go for that route with the SharePoint Integration.
In order for us to offload those files, we have to generate temporary URLs so these files can be listed in Beekeeper (the URLs are temporary, the listing then obviously remains for users to read those files). The Bot account in this configuration is actually more of an application we need to establish the connection to SharePoint. This Bot/application implements listing of folders or files in Beekeeper and makes them available through this temporary URL.
The reason why this Bot/application therefore needs such high access rights is because the generation of temporary URLs is only possible with “Write All” access. That being said though, this specific Bot/application has been created specifically for the SharePoint Integration, is only usable with access to the Graph Library from Microsoft (in your account) and will not delete, create, move or access any other information than those you provide, as these operations have not even been implemented in the Bot/Application.
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Who is responsible for setting up the connector?
The Sharepoint integration is a self-service feature and the customer needs to configure it themselves. Customers can request help from a CSM/CSE but they will be charged for this service. Providing that the customer agrees to additional costs the Customer Success Manager or Customer Success Engineer will set up the integration by using the SharePoint credentials to the site you would like to share folders and files from on Beekeeper. They will set it up using a JSON file containing the credentials. When the setup is complete, you can create the integration folders yourself.
Our CSMs and CSEs undergo a special contractual obligation because they deal with sensitive customer information. As such, the credentials you share with them are protected within the realm of their responsibilities. That being said, the only right our Bot has is to get the information from the folders you select. We have not implemented any other possibility for the Bot to read or write information into SharePoint - the only operation we implemented in the integration is to generate temporary URLs.
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Why do we have to grant Admin consent for Beekeeper in step 8?
Our Bot needs to dock to Microsoft’s API so it can generate the temporary links as we implemented them for the integration. Since it can only do so with Write All access, we do not have any alternatives to this step here. However, as also mentioned above: the only “rights” (that are also mentioned by Microsoft on the screenshot on page 8) implemented on the Beekeeper side is for this bot to generate temporary URLs per file or folder - the Bot/application is not able to do anything else.
From the Microsoft Graph API documentation: If you are calling the Microsoft Graph Security API from a custom or your own application, the Azure AD tenant admin must explicitly grant consent to your application. This is required both for application-level authorization and user delegated authorization.
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Is there any reporting or logs easily available to tell when a document has been accessed and by whom within Beekeeper’s native document library and SharePoint shared document folders?
As we don’t store the SharePoint shared folders and files on our servers, there is currently no possibility for any reporting or logs to tell when and by whom a document has been accessed within Beekeeper’s Document Library.
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What technology and governance is used to generate the secure file drop sharing for the SharePoint credentials?
We are using the secure cloud management software Box so you can share your SharePoint credentials with us. Box operates under strict data privacy and industry compliance requirements.
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We are releasing the DriveID with the integration, so wouldn’t that mean any third party could use a static URL to access any folder belonging to that drive?
No. To get access to the SharePoint data (files and folders), a user needs to have an account with all the necessary permissions in SharePoint. Having the DriveID will not grant you automatic access to the files and folders.
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