Guest access in Microsoft Teams lets you and your team collaborate with people from outside your organization by granting them access to group conversations, team meetings, SharePoint files, calendar invitations, and the group notebook. Admins can invite required external users and as a guest member in the required teams.
Teams guest access features and capabilities controlled by different levels of authorization settings. In this article, we will explore how to enable (or ensure) guest user access settings at various levels and how to add guest members to teams.
- Ensure Guest access settings in Azure AD External collaboration
- Enable Teams Guest access settings
- Enable Microsoft 365 Groups Guest access settings
- Ensure SharePoint sharing settings
- Add guest users as a Team member
- How to make Private Chat, Calls and Meetings with External users
Ensure Guest access is not restricted in Azure AD External collaboration settings
The B2B external collaboration settings in Azure Active Directory controls the Guest sharing at the top level. If guest access is restricted in Azure AD, this setting overrides any external sharing settings that you configure in Microsoft 365. Follow the below steps to check the external B2B guest settings.
- Go to Azure AD portal.
- In the left navigation pane, click Azure Active Directory.
- In the Azure Active Directory pane, under Manage section, click External Identities.
- In External Identities page, select External collaboration settings and ensure the required guest access is configured.
Enable Teams Guest access settings
Follow the below steps to check and ensure the Teams guest access is enabled and check the required guest settings are configured.
- Go to Microsoft Teams admin center.
- In the left navigation pane, expand Org-wide settings and click Guest access.
- Ensure that Allow guest access in Teams is set to On.
- Enable the required additional guest settings, and then click Save.
Note: It may take up to 24 hours for the Teams guest settings to become active after you turn it ON. So, if you enabled it now, please wait few hours, and check back in teams (ex: add guest members, make private chat, or call with external user).
Enable Microsoft 365 Groups Guest access settings
Teams uses Microsoft 365 Groups for team membership. The Microsoft 365 Groups guest settings must be turned ON to add external users as a guest member in Teams. Follow the below steps to ensure the guest access settings are enabled for Office 365 Groups.
- Go to Microsoft 365 Admin center.
- In the left-side navigation, click Show all, expand Settings, click Org settings.
- Under Services, click Microsoft 365 Groups.
- Ensure that both settings (Let group owners add people outside your organization to Microsoft 365 Groups as guests and Let guest group members access group content) are checked.
- If you made changes, then click Save to apply the changes.
Ensure SharePoint sharing settings
Teams uses SharePoint site to store files and lists. The SharePoint organization-level external sharing settings must be enabled to provide access to guest members for these items in Teams. Follow the below steps to set SharePoint organization-level sharing settings.
- Go to Microsoft 365 Admin center
- In the left-side navigation, click Show all, under Admin centers, click SharePoint.
- In the SharePoint admin center, on the left-side, expand Policies and then click Sharing.
- Ensure that Anyone or New and existing guests is set to SharePoint external sharing.
- If you made changes, then click Save to apply the changes.
Add guest users as a Team member
Once you have ensured the above Guest sharing settings are configured, you can add guest users as a team member from Teams client and Teams admin center. Follow the below steps to add a guest member to a team.
- Open Teams client
- Locate the team in which you want to add a guest user.
- Select More Options (… three dots) next to the required team.
- Click Add member.
- If the guest user has already been added to your tenant directory, simply search by email and add the user to the team. If the guest user does not already been added in the tenant directory, just type their email address in the search box and you will see the option to add the user as Guest as shown in the below image. Click on the “Add user as Guest” option and click Add to invite the user to the group.
Note: If you received a “We didn’t find any matches” error as shown in the below image after entering the complete guest email address, either Teams (or organization-wide) guest access not enabled -or- you have recently enabled Teams guest settings. You must wait few hours to add members to the team after enabling guest access in Teams.
Alternatively, you can add guest users directly to the tenant directory and add guest members in the team’s associated group from Azure AD Portal. Refer to this post: Azure guest users and add guest members.
How to make Private Chat, Calls and Meetings with Guest and External users
Follow the below steps to use Teams private chat to collaborate with users who are outside your organization.
Note: The external users should already use either Teams or Skype for Business at their end.
- Open Teams client (Web or Desktop).
- In the left side pane, click Chat button.
- In Chats section, click New Chat button.
- Type the external user’s email address and choose to search externally.
- If the user uses Microsoft Teams, then you will get the search result as shown in the first image (Refer to the below image).
- If the user has Skype for Business account, then the search result looks like the second image.
- If the user account is already added in your tenant directory as a guest user and uses teams, then you will see the third image as result.
Note: If you do not find the user after the external search, the user may not use Teams or Skype for Business at their end, or your Office 365 service does not allow you to chat with external people.
Once you have started a private conversation with an external user, you can make voice and video calls and easily do screen share operations.
Meeting with external or guest user
While creating a Teams calendar meeting schedule, type the complete email address of the external user in required attendees and you will see the option to invite the external to join the teams meeting as a guest user.
Add guest user and team member from Azure AD portal »
Guest Access and External Access in Microsoft Office 365 »