How to enable the Global Observer feature in Social Squared Online
Beginning with version 4.0.0.0 of Social Squared for SharePoint Online (April 2023), there is a Global Observer feature that can be activated using PowerShell. This feature allows you to specify an email address to be notified of all Social Squared posts and other activity in all Social Squared instances throughout your tenant.
This feature is designed for customers in regulated industries who must provide a means of auditing forum participation. Please be aware that it's up to you to determine whether enabling this feature could be against any sort of union or Worker Council policies.
NOTE: The Global Observer account can be either internal or external, but they must have at least SharePoint Read permission to each site they wish to monitor. This permission could be granted by adding the account to the SharePoint Site Visitors group, or the account could be made a Member of the site. You could potentially use PowerShell (e.g. Add-PnPGroupMember) to add the account to the AssociatedVisitorGroup or AssociatedMemberGroup of each site that contains a SS_Posts list.
The following activities will trigger a notification to the specified Global Observer account:
- New Topic
- New reply
- Edit Post
- Someone is @ mentioned in a post
- Report abuse
- Post needing to be approved by a moderator
- Topic/post approved by moderator
- Topic/post is rejected by moderator
- Post is marked as an answer
To enable this feature, you can use a PowerShell command as follows:
1. In a Windows PowerShell window (or ISE), connect to your SharePoint Online tenant with an admin account (you'll be prompted for your admin credentials or other means of authentication):
Connect-SPOService -url https://YourTenant-admin.sharepoint.com
2. Issue the following PowerShell command, replacing the -Site parameter with the URL of your tenant app catalog site (which may be something like https://YourTenant.sharepoint.com/sites/appcatalog), and replacing the -Value parameter with the email address that you wish to receive the notifications.
Set-SPOStorageEntity -Site YourAppCatalogURL -Key "SSObservingPosts" -Value "SomeEmailAddress" -Comments "Observing Posts" -Description "Social Squared Observing Posts"
If you wish to change the designated Global Observer account later, just re-issue the PowerShell command with a new email Value.
If you wish to disable this feature after it has previously been enabled, use the Remove-SPOStorageEntity command:
Remove-SPOStorageEntity -Site YourAppCatalogURL -Key "SSObservingPosts"
Please note that it will likely take a few moments for any of the above changes to take effect.
Published June 2, 2023