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SharePoint is a platform that has been enhanced over the years to support a broad range of use cases. Organizations can use SharePoint to build Intranet type web applications, Public-facing WWW sites, Extranet type web applications, Business Intelligence solutions, and more.
Not all of the out-of-the-box features of SharePoint are intended to be used in every use case. For Extranet use cases, there are several user interface (UI) elements and features that are primarily intended for Intranet use cases and therefore we recommend removing them from your Extranet web applications.
The Intranet-intended features that we recommend that you remove from your extranet web applications are:
Below are instructions for removing each of these UI elements from your extranet sites.
The User Profile Service is a feature that Microsoft first added to SharePoint in the 2003 version. It was originally intended to enable Company Directory type of applications and Portal personalization type of features. Over time, companies have found other uses for it as well and Microsoft has added features to it, but none of the features that have been added have made it work well in extranet scenarios where the external users are not internal employees and therefore do not have accounts in Active Directory. This is the primary reason we recommend not using the User Profile Service with your extranet web applications - it is not designed to work with extranet user directories.
It is easy to "disconnect" your SharePoint farm's User Profile Service from your extranet web application(s) while leaving it connected to your Intranet web application(s).
First, navigate to Central Administration > Manage Web Applications:
Select your extranet web application and click Service Connections in the ribbon:
In the Configure Service Application Associations dialog, create a custom configuration and deselect the check box by your User Profile Service application:
Once you click OK, you can navigate to an extranet site and will see that the Newsfeed, OneDrive and Sites UI elements no longer appear on the page:
In an extranet scenario, external users are typically "invited" to join a site using ExCM's "Invite Users" feature, rather than using SharePoint's "Share" feature:
The ExCM Invite Users feature is much more robust than SharePoint's Share feature in that it sends out an invitation to an external user that invites them to register for the extranet site using your company's pre-designed registration form. Also, the invitation is recorded in a SharePoint List in the site as well as the registration, once they register.
So, to keep end users from becoming confused, it is recommended to follow these steps to remove the Share icon from your extranet sites:
Navigate to Site Settings > Site permissions:
In the Permissions tab click on Access Request Settings:
Uncheck the box next to "Allow access requests" and then click OK:
Now, log in to the site as a non-owner, and you should see that the Share icon has disappeared:
To remove the Follow Icon:
Navigate to Site Settings > Manage Site Features:
Find the "Following Content" feature and deactivate it:
You will get a warning about deactivating the feature. Go ahead and click Deactivate this feature:
You should now see that the Follow icon has disappeared from the page:
The Sync icon shows up when there is one or more Libraries in a site that are set up to allow synchronization with client software such as the OneDrive for Business client.
To remove the Sync icon, you will need to turn of the "Offline Client Availability" setting on each library in your site (including the Site Pages library as described in the note above).
Follow these steps to turn off Offline Client Availability:
Navigate to your site's document library (or Site Pages library) and then to its Settings page. Then, click on the Advanced Settings link:
Find the Offline Client Availability setting and select "No" and then click OK:
Now, the Sync Icon should disappear from the home page of the site (if you did the above procedure for the Site Pages library).
If you have completed all of the steps in this article, the home page of your extranet site should have no links (other than the Edit, Full Screen and Site Actions links) on the home page when logged in as an external user:
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