This post follows on from SharePoint Hero Links: What admins/adoption teams need to know? and focuses on the technical difference between legacy sharing links and hero links. To validate what SharePoint is now generating behind the scenes, I adapted my earlier script from Converting SharePoint Sharing Links to Canonical URLs to validate whether Hero link exists or not even there are no unique permissions on the file/folder. The key behaviour change is this: legacy sharing links were typically created only when a user accidentally shared an item (e.

I was recently asked why a business user could not find their own name in a custom Created By filter within a SharePoint search vertical. At first glance this looks incorrect, especially when the user knows they have documents in the result set. However, this behaviour can be explained by how Microsoft Search custom filters are populated and limited. In this case, the custom filter was configured to display the author.

Microsoft’s third-generation sharing experience, Hero Links, introduces a simpler way to manage file-sharing access, with a stronger emphasis on secure defaults and granular permissions. The main administrative point is that Hero Links and legacy sharing links do not follow the same policy behavior. The immediate questions for administrators: What happens to existing sharing links during rollout? Can old links be migrated into Hero Links? How should both experiences be managed in parallel?