[G Suite] Reports show 'External Shares' even though it's supposed to be disabled

[Garacesh]

Solution has been found

Leaving this here in case someone else digs it up in the future.

 

The issue is to do with sharing files with groups that weren't created by the admin. Even though these groups had our domain address (e.g. Y8a1_Smart_board_Game_Systems_and_Control_Electronics_teachers_16a1ae92@ourdomain.gtld) they still show up as external shares.

 

To quote the response I got from support:

I was able to confirm that for some reason users have been sharing some content with what seems to be Groups that were not created using the G Suite account. For example a Google Slides file called $FielName was shared on October 9th with [email protected]. This email address even though it ends with the domain name, was not created through the Admin console and because of that is recognized as an external address but because it ends with the domain name, it still allows the sharing to happen.

 

While investigating I found a few other email addresses such as [email protected] and [email protected] which were used for sharing other files in the past. Please confirm if these email addresses are valid and if not it will be necessary to use the user accounts to remove the unwanted sharing with these email addresses. I hope this information is useful.

 

So the issue is to do with sharing files in Google Classroom. For some reason they still count as 'external'.

 

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Original post

 

So we've started pushing forward with G Suite and looking at the File Sharing Activity in Reports drops me this highlight:

This says there's been 33 external shares this week, and looking back at the graphs there's supposedly been considerably more.

I've checked the Drive settings, and it's definitely set to internal only for the entire domain. I've double-checked and the permissions are definitely being inherited by all users.

Yet in the reporting list, I can see users have shared files externally, apparently.. One teacher and my test account.

And if I jump back to the dates where there were more, there are kids names showing up.

 

So my suspicion is it's possibly a couple of things..

Maybe it's to do with choosing to share a file via a link. That might count as external sharing. But that shouldn't be able to happen.

The only options in that menu are for sharing within the organisation.

My other thought is maybe it's to do with passing work back and forth in Classroom, but I'm not really sure.

 

Anybody had this one before?

Edited November 6, 2017 by Garacesh