Forum Discussion

Copper Contributor

Jun 16, 2022

Solved

Shared channels and B2B direct connect

With Shared Channels rolling out i'm starting to promote this in my organization as an admin. What i don't understand is why you have to allow b2b direct connect for Shared Channels. This is not...

B2B

microsoft teams

Shared Channel

ChristianJBergstrom
Jun 16, 2022
Hello, these are two separate things. A guest user is added to your org. Azure AD as an user object. With cross-tenant access settings and Direct connect you're configuring a trust with the other organization which in turn means that a guest account isn't created. So when adding a guest user to a team that user has access to all the channels (not private if not added) but when adding a direct connect user that account has access to that specific channel only. With guest access you have to tenant switch to access the other org. Teams team but with shared channels the other org. channel will appear in your own org. team navigation field. So, Guest access is more "seamless" than direct connect as you have to work with the other org. admin to set it up.

ChristianJBergstrom

MVP

Jun 16, 2022

Hello, these are two separate things. A guest user is added to your org. Azure AD as an user object. With cross-tenant access settings and Direct connect you're configuring a trust with the other organization which in turn means that a guest account isn't created. So when adding a guest user to a team that user has access to all the channels (not private if not added) but when adding a direct connect user that account has access to that specific channel only. With guest access you have to tenant switch to access the other org. Teams team but with shared channels the other org. channel will appear in your own org. team navigation field. So, Guest access is more "seamless" than direct connect as you have to work with the other org. admin to set it up.

MichaelKroon
Copper Contributor
Aug 23, 2022
Hi ChristianJBergstrom , thanks for your explanation. The way this works makes technical sense, but from a user perspective I get the following question: How can someone from an external organisation join Teams in my organisation in both ways you described: as a Guest seeing all channels in one Teams group, but also as a member of a Shared Channel in another Teams group? Would they need two separate email adresses for that?
- ChristianJBergstrom
  MVP
  Aug 23, 2022
  MichaelKroon No, the latter part explains it. "With guest access you have to tenant switch to access the other org. Teams team but with shared channels the other org. channel will appear in your own org. team navigation field. "
  
  So when using guest access you have to leave your own organization and switch to the other partner organization to access that team. With direct connect and shared channels you don't have to switch as the channels are populated in your own "teams view".
  - MichaelKroon
    Copper Contributor
    Aug 23, 2022
    Thanks ChristianJBergstrom , ..and this should work simultaneously as well i.e. the user accesses, by switching organisations, one Teams group in my organisation as Guest, and another Teams Group's Shared Channel in my organisation through his own organisation's Teams? In other words: can the user be Guest (through Azure AD collaboration) and External participant (through Azure AD direct connect) with the same email address at the same time?
    
    If so, we cannot get that to work: we need to remove the user from our Azure AAD before being able to Invite them to our Shared Channel.
Martijn2302
Copper Contributor
Jun 16, 2022
Hi Christian, thanks for your explanation. It makes more sense now.