External Sharing in SharePoint and OneDrive is changing: What You Need to Know

In an ongoing effort to create a more secure environment by default, Microsoft is introducing an important security update that will affect how external users access content shared through SharePoint and OneDrive. Starting July 1, 2025, any links shared with external users before your organization enabled Microsoft Entra B2B integration will no longer work. This change applies to all organizations that have already enabled or will enable SharePoint and OneDrive integration with Microsoft Entra B2B (Most organizations I have looked into so far). External users trying to use old links will see an error message saying the organization has updated its guest access settings. To regain access, the content must be reshared. Highlights of how the change affects organizations who have enabled B2B: All external sharing will require guest registration. External users must be added as guests in your Microsoft Entra directory. Access will be managed through Microsoft Entra B2B Invitation Manager. T...

Hah! Never trust the E1 provider

Here is a little problem I ran into after deploying a Sonus 1000 SBA/SBC at customers branch office in Singapore.

The customer had a couple of faxes connected to the old PBX, but instead keeping the analog equipment, they went for a fax service "in the cloud". This is simply done by redirecting incoming calls to the faxes to a number at the provider, the fax is received and forwarded as an email to the destination.

We tested the service by calling from internal lines to the service. This all seemed to be going well (we heard fax tones in the other end, when calling). I set up a redirecting rule in the SBC (A transformation rule) and started testing. But the call never got through. it was immediately dropped after leaving the SBC. According to the logs, we received the following cause code: "Cause No. 28 - invalid number format (address incomplete)"


I immediately tried calling the external provider from a user attached to the SBA, and got through. Quite puzzling.

That's when it was time to dig out the LX tool, and start comparing the working and the non-working calls. And true enough, there was a slight difference between the calls.

Here is what I found on the working calls:


I compared this to the non-working redirected calls:


Now wait a minute, I never told the Sonus to add a numbering type or plan. This called for an investigation of the originating incoming call:


Lo and behold; The incoming call has the type and plan set. And when the call was returned back to the PSTN, these values were all wrong. To solve this situation, I simply manipulated the plan and type in my original transformation rule:


The carrier didn't care about the calling plan and type, as long as the called plan and type was "unknown" they excepted all calls.

The moral of this blogpost? Never trust the trunk provider, and always invest in equipment capable of tweaking all aspects of a call setup ;)