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Can I give an external user access to log in to our Teams and use chat?
We have a class of user who is an employee of a 3rd party but works in our org in a role similar to some of our employees. They use a computer provided by their employer, and log in to that employer's domain. We don't need to create an AD / AAD account for them in our org for any reason, except that we want them to have access to Teams chat.
How can I allow them to log in to Teams for our tenant using their external email account, allowing them access to Chat with users in our org and to any Teams that we add them to?
Steve Whitcher No, the guest account must be a member of at least one Team. Imagine if some users should only access a file or SharePoint site and if all of them could chat to each other 🙂
As others stated, the guest needs to be invited to at least one Team. After that, they will be able to chat with other members (or guests) of that Team using the Chat function, but they will not (in my experience) be able to Chat with other users.
- That's too bad. We use a lot more 1:1 chat than we do Teams conversations, and that's really what we need these non-staff users to have. Is there no way to do that without creating a user account for them in our domain?
- I'm no licensing expert, but maybe you could assign them a Teams license? Or, if they are from a specific domain (e.g.: gmail.com), you could set up federated authentication. Again, I'm no expert on that, so I can't tell you how to do it. This page may help: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/manage-external-access
- ThereseSolimeno
Microsoft
Hello Steve Whitcher Please see these online references for instructions on how to add a guest to your tenant:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/add-guests
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/manage-guests
- Thank you. I didn't know if Guest access allowed users to use Chat functionality outside of a Team. So if I add a guest to azuread but do not add them to any teams, would they still be able to use Teams for 1:1 instant messaging with our staff?
Steve Whitcher No, the guest account must be a member of at least one Team. Imagine if some users should only access a file or SharePoint site and if all of them could chat to each other 🙂
