Extranet Directory Web Part

In some extranet scenarios, it may be beneficial to provide a landing page for external users and display a directory on the page of all of the extranet sites that the external user has permissions to access.

 

An example might be a construction company that has multiple projects underway and a subcontractor has been given permissions to the extranet sites for the specific projects they are assisting with.  With the Extranet Directory Web Part added to a landing page, the subcontrator can see a list of project sites they have access to and click on the links to navigate to the sites.

 

The Extranet Directory Web Part can be used for any scenario where you need to display a security-trimmed list of the extranet sites an extranet user has access to.  Here is a screenshot of the web part in action on the home page of the Adventure Works Extranet:

 

Extranet Directory Web Part

 

Important Prerequisite:  The Extranet Directory Web Part relies on SharePoint's native Search index.  For results to be displayed in the web part, SharePoint Search must be properly configured and running in your farm, and the user will only see the extranet sites where they have been given permissions to access.  The results that are diplayed will be as current as the last successful search crawl of your farm.

 To add the Extranet Directory Web Part to a page, follow the steps below:

 

  1. On the page that you would like for the Extranet Directory Web Part to be displayed, click the Edit link:

    Extranet Directory Web Part add on a page
  2. Position the cursor where you would like the web part to be displayed, and then select the Insert tab in the ribbon and click on Web Part:

    Extranet Directory Web Part configuration
  3. In the web part gallery browser, select the Extranet Category and then click Add:
     
    Important Note:  If you don't see an Extranet category as shown below, it is because the site was originally created with ExCM 2013 R1 and is still using the R1 Extranet Feature.  If that is the case, you will need to deactivate and re-activate the Extranet Site Collection Feature for the site before the web part will be available.  If you need help locating the Extranet Site Collection Feature, review the screenshots on this page.

    Extranet web part - Extranet Site Directory
  4. The web part will be inserted on the page, but you may find that some sites are displayed that are not extranet sites (for instance, in the screenshot below, the Intranet site is being displayed):

    Extranet Site Directory initial view
  5. The reason you may see sites that are not extranet sites, is because the search index contains information about all sites that you have access to, regardless of whether they are extranet sites or not.  To restrict the list of sites that are displayed to only extranet sites, you can use the Inclusion Path and Exclustion Path settings in the web part's configuration settings.  For instance, if you only want to show the Adventure Works Extranet web application and its other site collections and sites, you would enter the URL of the web application in the Inclusion Path setting and click OK:

    Extranet Site Directory configuration
  6. In this example, the end result would be that the sites shown are restricted to the web application with the URL https://extranet.sharepointsolutions.com, which is the Adventure Works extranet web application:
Troubleshooting Tip: If the Extranet Site Directory web part is not showing any results you can troubleshoot this by navigating to a global search page in your SharePoint extranet and entering this string into the search box and look at the results returned: contentclass:STS_Web contentclass:STS_Site. This is the exact query string that the Extranet Site Directory web part sends to the search engine and uses the results returned to build its site directory tree. So, if you don’t get any results from entering this query manually into your global search, then you won’t get any results in the web part either.
The query string above is a standard SharePoint query string that will return a list of Site Collections (STS_Site) and Subsites (STS_Web) for the web application that you are doing the search from.  It will only return results for Site Collections and Subsites that the searcher’s account has permissions to at least view.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              If the query is working correctly and the Extranet Site Directory web part still does not show the results then the thing to try next would be to test with a different browser and/or different users to see if there is any change. Also, the web part makes extensive use of client-side Javascript, so if you have any particular restrictions related to Javascript in your browser, that could be a problem.  

 

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