Forum Discussion
I'm a little confused!
In fact, I have now heard different statements from 3 experts on the subject of "inviting guests outside the tenant".
I'm currently more concerned with how best to let potential customers experience how immersive working works during live demos. If anyone here has a good tip on how to technically involve potential customers in a sales presentation, thank you in advance. I mean participating and not following my stream.
All 3 experts have been part of the private preview of Mesh.
But these statements are very relevant. Some clarification would be great.
First opinion (this is also the one that I represent and have been able to ascertain so far)
It is currently not possible to invite external guests outside the tenant. Microsoft is aware of the problem and will resolve it at a later date. There are comparable examples such as MS-Whiteboard or MS-Loops, where this does not yet work either.
Second opinion (inviting guests via a workaround)
Apparently there is a workaround that allows you to invite guests to Mesh.
But how was not mentioned. I can only imagine that it works via real accounts in the tenant, which are then declared as a guest, but a member of the Azure Directory. Okay, that would be plausible. Can such an account be used by several people at the same time in a presentation? That would surprise me a little.
Third opinion (that would really surprise me now)
In fact, a well-known expert claimed at an event that it would be no problem to invite external guests to Mesh (outside the tenant). We then asked: "Great, why don't you invite us in then?"
The answer: "Unfortunately, that's not possible now due to the short time available!"
I actually have my doubts about this opinion, although I would of course be delighted if it were possible. But since the statement was made by an expert (MVP), the answer made me extremely insecure and motivated me to write this post.
So what is the current status?
At the moment, I still assume that it is not possible to invite guests outside the organisation.
I would be very grateful for clarification as to why these differing views exist, and I'm probably not the only one who would appreciate it. This statement has a decisive influence on the possible use cases that can be addressed with Mesh as it stands today.
LukeOReillyMicrosoft
Holger_Duempelmann , apologies for the confusion. The "first opinion" is the most accurate.
The public Mesh documentation covers the current implementation and limitations here as follows:
"
...Because all users who will be participating in immersive experiences together must have accounts together in the same Microsoft Entra (formerly Azure Active Directory), you may want to consider using a separate tenant if you want to collaborate with people outside your production tenant; guest accounts in Entra do not have access to Mesh experiences. There is no technical barrier to creating user accounts in a production tenant for people who do not work for that organization, but there may be strong business reasons against doing so. However, creating additional tenants will increase complexity for admins and users to manage accounts, may also incur additional expenses for licensing and domain management, and may require additional process within your organization.
"Feedback on the need for "guest access" (I use one term to cover the myriad use cases, please don't assume this choice of words implies future implementation details) has been heard, and the Mesh team is reviewing if/how that can be achieved in future.
- Thank you so much Luke 👌
In fact, I support your opinion that the workaround via a client should be very carefully considered from a commercial and administrative point of view and should only be used in absolutely exceptional cases.
I think it's good that MS is addressing this issue. I also realise that external access (I'll call it guest access now 😊) requires a lot of computing power in the cloud.
If MS doesn't want to offer this free of charge, that's understandable.
Perhaps there are simpler licence models in this case than per user?
Examples:
- per event staggered according to size and time!
- Organiser buys credits for events and can then redeem them
- etc
