While in session, Guest Filled Name is displayed correctly:
But, in version history, It is simply displayed as Anonymous:
As well as in audit trail…
It is either a bug, or there should be an option to keep the name the Anonymous Guest filled.
Or, another option would be to get the link name as Identifier of the Guest ( to avoid impersonation, better audit entries ), such as:
This is true as of Workspace Community 12.5 with Docs 7.4
Hello @msilveira
We’re checking described situation, I will update this thread when we have something to share.
another option would be to get the link name as Identifier of the Guest ( to avoid impersonation, better audit entries ),
To be honest, this part of message isn’t really clear for me. You can add external link from Sharing settings or specify a portal user. But you cannot specify a person which is not a part of the portal here. Please clarify if I misunderstood this part of message.
Update: we have added your idea to internal tracksystem. We have started working on it. Thank you for pointing us to this situation.
What I mean is: Once the filled name issue is fixed. Anyone could “impersonate” any name theoretically. I believe this should be fixed anyway.
My “feature idea” is to either add an optional extUserName field for the external link, where the “Author Name” is then fixed, and the link user is unable to change it.
So, when I share a file with bob, I create a link and fill the “optional extUserName” as “Bob walker” and send this link only to him - Now I know this link will force bob’s changes to be shown with his name.
But I also want to share this file with “John Smith”, so I create another link and fill the “optional extUserName” as “John Smith” and send him this second link - forcing his changes to be logged as “John Smith”.
I believe these changes would make OO even better at GPDR compliance.
Another option would be to make the “link description” ( which already exists ) become the “Author” of the document changes. Like I filled in the previous “Sharing settings” as “John Smith - Company A”. Thus, every shared external link description would become the Author of the document changes. There could be a on/off button for this: When ON, then the user of the external link would not be able to change its Name, when OFF, the user should be prompted to fill his name - like it already does.
But this idea is only for external links. Internal/portal links should rely on the portal user Identity.
BTW, I believe the audit trail of these external links are not very accurate… but that’s another issue and I’ll start another post here, once I confirm these issues.
Thank you for your ideas. I believe we have to focus on mentioned mechanism (“keep filled Guest name in document history and audit trail”) first. However I cannot provide you with any guarantees of release timeframes or in what form we implement this idea at the moment.
Thank you one more time!