External Access

External Access

The External access settings controls how users outside your SharePoint environment (aka your Microsoft 365 tenant) can interact with a form.

There are 4 different feature configuration options:

1. External Submissions
2. External Collaboration
3. External Sharing
4. External Access Settings

External Submissions

This feature provides the following options.

• Enable external submissions
  Allows users without access to your tenant to submit form data.
• External submission link
  A unique anonymised link to the form is generated by Sintel Apps after the form design is saved and this link can be shared with users.
• After external submission redirect to
  Permits customers to define a custom page that users are redirected to after submission.
• Show captcha for external submissions
  Customers can protect their externally facing forms with a captcha.

How it works

1. When a user opens the unique anonymised link our Microsoft Azure App endpoint service renders the form layout for them.
2. When they save the data the Microsoft Azure App endpoint service takes that data and saves it to the relevant list in the relevant site of the customers tenant. This is only possible as the Sintel Apps External app registration has access to the destination location.
3. Due to the anonymised form link, no client related information is available to the user i.e. the tenant, site or list.
4. External Submissions are protected by captchas to help prevent against spam, bots and malicious attacks.

External Collaboration

This feature provides the following options.

• Enable external collaboration
  Allows external users to edit existing forms.
• Send confirmation email to submitter
  Sends an email with a secure link allowing the external user to access the form again.

Note: Customising the email template used for External Collaboration Confirmation emails is not currently supported.

External Sharing (Preview / Limited)

Some external sharing options are visible but marked as not supported yet. These settings should remain disabled unless advised otherwise.

External Access Settings

These settings apply only when external users access the form.

People Picker Behaviour

• Control whether user-related information is visible to external users
• Defaults to Hidden for security

Widget Visibility

• Control visibility of widgets such as Workflow History
• Defaults to Hidden for external users

Relationship to External Access Permissions

External access behaviour in Sintel Apps is governed by the platform’s permissions model. External and anonymous access must be explicitly enabled using a separate application, ensuring it is always a deliberate and controlled decision by a tenant administrator.

For a full explanation of how internal and external permissions are structured, including how and when external access should be enabled, see: Configuring External Access Permissions

Key points to be aware of:

• External access is optional and separately configured

• It requires explicit admin consent

• Internal user permissions are never elevated or changed

• External access can be enabled, controlled, or removed at any time

These settings work alongside External Access Settings to ensure that, even when external access is enabled, sensitive data (such as person fields) can still be restricted appropriately.