Which identity actually reaches SharePoint?

For Salesforce admins, IT and security reviewers.

The two models

Source: Define an External Data Source for SharePoint Online. Retrieved 21 Aug 2026.

What CloudFiles uses

Internal users authenticate as themselves. Automations and portal users run on a single account-level identity, not per-person credentials.

That's two different security stories inside one product: your everyday user activity is individually attributable, while anything automated or anything coming through a portal shares one identity's permissions. Ask exactly which operations fall on which side before you assume audit attribution covers everything.

Tested directly: what each model actually does to Files Connect

In our own test, the same user ran the same navigation under both identity types minutes apart, with identity type as the only variable.

Under Named Principal, the Salesforce user reached a file their own SharePoint account is explicitly denied. Per User honoured SharePoint's own permissions exactly. The account used as the Named Principal here was itself a tenant Global Administrator, so its reach in this test was the maximum a named principal can have, not a minimum; an ordinary shared account would collapse permissions at least this much, never less.

Source: CloudFiles Files Connect test, Developer Edition, 17 Aug 2026.

Getting a connection working isn't the same as a user seeing anything

In our own test, four separate gates stood between a correctly configured, “Authenticated” data source and a user actually seeing a file, and each failed silently, with no error, warning or empty-state hint anywhere in the UI.

• The Files Connect Cloud permission, missing from a user's or admin's permission set
• A missing per-user authentication record against the data source
• External Data Source Access not granted on the permission set
• The Microsoft-side admin consent gate for the connected app: an administrator testing alone never sees this, because they can consent for themselves silently; every ordinary user is blocked at first sign-in until an admin grants it

Contrast that with the 75 MB upload cap elsewhere in this guide, which names the constraint, the number and the item in its own error message. None of these four gates does.

Source: CloudFiles Files Connect test, Developer Edition, 17 Aug 2026.

What to ask any vendor

• Which operations run under my identity, and which run under a shared or service identity?
• If it's Named Principal, how are SharePoint's own permissions honored, or are they not?
• Does an automation ever silently fall back to the shared identity when per-user auth fails?

What your answer means

Per-user audit attribution matters for every operation, not just interactive use: confirm in writing that automations don't fall back to a shared identity for anything you need attributed.

Doesn't matter, or only matters for interactive use: the simpler shared-identity model for automation is a reasonable trade, not a red flag by itself.

Where this stops

This page settles identity only. Whether external, non-Salesforce users need access at all is its own question; how files attach to records is a separate one, in the guide.