Configuration Required for Sharing Feature in SharePoint 2013

Some of you may have noticed the new Share button in SharePoint 2013. Without going into great detail, the Sharing metaphor is plugged in throughout SharePoint as a means for anyone to request and grant access, for themselves or someone else. If you are logged into a site where you are not a site collection administrator though, you may notice that the Share button is not visible. What you need to know is that the Share option doesn't appear for non-administrators unless you configure two things in Central Admin...System Settings...Configure outgoing e-mail settings:

  • Outbound SMTP Server - Sharing uses emails for notification for the various parties involved
  • From Address - can be any value, doesn't need to be real, but if you don't have this set to a non-blank value then the Sharing options won't show up. I don't know if this will be the case at RTM or not.

Sharing brings some pretty nice features into SharePoint 2013 so it's worth spending a little time on it to get to know it better.