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Chat: Guest Became External; Now What?
I work extensively with one particular external. When there’s a specific project, we use the team/channel module of Teams. On a regular basis, we use the chat function. She is a guest user in my AAD; shows as a Guest in the chat screen; and as a Guest has access in the chat module to files, etc.
Now, she has adopted Teams for her own use. In the course of her Microsoft training, she opened a chat with me. I am not a user in her AAD to my knowledge. From my end, she shows as an External in the chat screen. Neither of us have access to files, etc., in our chat channel.
So now her name occurs in two places on my navigation pane in the chat module. In one place, she’s a Guest, with access to files and other apps, but her presence no longer shows as available. In the other place, she’s an External, and her presence shows accurately, and we do not share access to files and apps.
What’s the best practice for dealing with this? I could delete her Guest chat and keep her External chat, which would make sense from her end but we wouldn’t have access to files, etc. Or, I don’t even know what the other options are….
The reason why her presence no longer shows up is because she is very likely using her own tenant when she logs into Teams. Before she had Teams herself, she would log into your team as a guest and 'live' in there. To see files and share docs, one of you needs to be in the others tenant since that is where those documents are stored.
If you want her in yours, she needs to switch tenants to access them. If she will put you in hers, you'll just need to switch tenants when you want to access files she is storing. I hope that helps.
More information located in docs: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/manage-guests
- Laurie Pottmeyer
Microsoft
The reason why her presence no longer shows up is because she is very likely using her own tenant when she logs into Teams. Before she had Teams herself, she would log into your team as a guest and 'live' in there. To see files and share docs, one of you needs to be in the others tenant since that is where those documents are stored.
If you want her in yours, she needs to switch tenants to access them. If she will put you in hers, you'll just need to switch tenants when you want to access files she is storing. I hope that helps.
More information located in docs: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/manage-guests
Hi. Thank you. Your explanation makes perfect sense. Since you're with MSFT, I'll add a comment here about the functionality that's involved.
If Person A and Person B are common collaborators, then they might have various teams in one tenant or the other, depending on the project and the nature of their relationship. But they will also want to chat about upcoming projects; the status of a new employee; availability for an upcoming project; whatever. It is essentially impossible to have those types of "connective communication" (yes, you can use that phrase) when there are parallel and disconnected chat channels. What makes sense for a team does not make sense for chat. In my case, for example, as more of my externals adopt Teams, the chat tab becomes increasingly useless, because they are in their own tenant and I'm in mine.
