Forum Discussion
Adding external users to teams
The big "sale" at MS Ignite 2017 for Teams was the ability to add external guests to your team. In session after session this was demonstarted. Even at their booth at the exhibit hall, I went to ask questions to confirm setup and usage. I was exicted as we have been waiting for this feature. I get back to my office and attempt to set it up and it will not allow me to add external users nor receive external emails to the team. I have gone through all the steps I can find, even ran through a hands on lab a second time. Opened multiple tickets with Microsoft Support and they said it is not possible to add external users, nor received external mail inside a team. Can any one give me guidance on how to make this work?
20171018 Update - my teams are not allowing for O365 users to be added either (not just gmail accounts). However have gotten further, seems to be a certain way you must add to the group first then to the team in order to trigger the "welcome" email. Working with Microsoft support engineer and still researching but have gotten further. Please reference Christopher-Graves response, he is the closest yet to understanding and finding a solution. Roadmap as of an update yesterday shows "guest" in testing and development - odd.
I've started another thread on a particular issue where we have seen inconsistent behaviour when adding guests to the Office 365 Groups with Teams functionality:
- Those teams (groups) created from the "Teams" tile do not send a Guest welcome email to guests added via the email/members conversation area
- Those teams (groups) created from Outlook and then upgraded to have "Teams" DO send a Guest welcome email to guests added via the email/members conversation area
We have guest access enabled for Office 365 Groups but not the Teams front end.
See the full conversation and respond here if interested:
26 Replies
So it seems to be a consensus that Teams doesnt work with a gmail account. If that is the case how can I reactivate Skype to allow me to do meetings with non domain users? When I open Skype it forces me to Teams?
Did they take away non domain users from Skype as well. How do i got back to Skype?
- First of all you can invite any address to a teams meeting! Best experience is if they have an org account but its completely possible!
Second you can invite any address as a guest to your team! Including a gmail
These two are completely different things though..meetings and guests
Seems your org switched over to teams so you have to talk to your admins about thisI cannot send an invite via Meetings to gmail. I cannot add gmail users to the team.
I tracked it down to this, and now have to open a ticket with Microsoft to get changed.
Org-Wide settings - Teams Upgrade - Coexistance Mode
I am the Admin. This was an auto upgrade by Microsoft that wasn't initiated by me.
screenshots attached - External access enabled.
Hi, Becky Martin.
You may want to refer to the Office 365 roadmap page. Unfortunately, I don't see any references for external or guest at this time. It does say the following in when I clicking "Add more people" and attempted to use a hotmail account.
Note: Guests need a work or school account in Office 365.
Fred,
As of yesterday the roadmap shows "in development and testing".
However, Christopher-Graves is correct. It will work, but is a combination group/team problem to resolve. I have gotten further in this process but still not complete at this time, same problem as Christopher my "welcome" email isn't sending, even from groups. At this time this holds true even for guest with Office 365 accounts - so researching. Will post more as I find resolutions.
- Are your external users office 365 users?
Did you enable guest access?No they are not 365 users, but gMail accounts. Which again this was one of the selling features they pitched at Ignite. In the demos they demonstarted with both gMail and Yahoo email accounts.
Yes I did enable guest access via the admin center.
- That is your problem. Non office 365 accounts are not supported yet.
