Adding external users to teams

[Becky Martin]

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.

[#2]

Are your external users office 365 users?

Did you enable guest access?

[#3]

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.

[#4]

That is your problem. Non office 365 accounts are not supported yet.

[#5]

So what they were demoing at Ignite is not currently active but coming? I talked to their engineers at the event booth who told me it was ready to go now? Is there somewhere I can see when this will be active? How would I know?

[#6]

Are you sure they were talking about Guess Access in Teams? As Pieter has mentioned, Microsoft accounts are not supported yet (and no ETA about when they will) in Teams

[#7]

I don't think there is an ETA available. You might want to keep an eye on Microsoft teams uservoice an this community site

[#8]

Yes they showed adding a gMail account to a team so that it could collaborate.  From talking to the engineers, once you invite the gmail account they are sent a link setup a free live account for this collaboration (I think, going back through the demos now to review that part). But it was some of the biggest discussions at MS Ignite was non 365 users being able to be added to Teams.You did have to enable guest access as described here, but I have done that:

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Manage-guest-access-to-Office-365-Groups-7c713d74-a144-4eab...

[#9]

Well that is a  bummer, this is the first time they have shown something at MS Ignite that wasn't already up and running.  Thanks Pieter

[#10]

Yes, it is very confusing for the time: "https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/guest-access"

What is a guest?

A guest is not an employee, student, or member of your organization. They don't have a school or work account with your organization.

Who can be added as a guest user?

Only users who have an email address corresponding to an Azure Active Directory or Office 365 work or school account can be added as a guest user.

[#11]

Becky,

    Just to clarify, Groups or Teams? The link you shared to enable it is for Groups (which is an underlying feature of Teams).  You can add non-Office 365 external users to groups (albeit they don’t have access to everything in the group), but like other have said, for Teams anything other than an Office 365 account for external access to teams isn’t available yet.

Just wanted to make sure you weren’t confusing Teams and Groups as the external access ability for the two of them is different.

[#12]

Ben,

Yes I am trying to get them in "teams" and the way they explained it at the conference was that the setting for "groups" would have to be enabled for outside access BEFORE being able to add them to the team. Thus the "groups" reference.  As I said this was a new feature that was supposedly just made active right before the conference which was the last week of September.

[#13]

Yeah...sorry, whoever told you it was available for non-Office 365 accounts was mistaken.  Here is the article on setting it up/using it from just prior to Ignite.  It clearly states in the FAQ that it's only for Work and School accounts right now - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/guest-access?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US.

We're all hoping it comes to non-Office 365, but for now all we can do is wait unfortunately.  Sorry you got the impression and were told it was available now for any type of account.

[#14]

Yes, apparently so as that is what all my research as well as others have told me. Disappointed but guess I will go back to waiting for the feature.

[#15]

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 

[#16]

You said "The link you shared to enable it is for Groups (which is an underlying feature of Teams)"

I don't think that Office 365 Groups should be described an underlying feature of "Teams".  To me "Teams" is a front end interface to Office 365 Groups with additional functionality such as Group Chat.

So for me it is less confusing to explain Teams as a front end with its own features rather than describe groups as an underlying feature.

[#17 · Accepted solution]

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:

1. Those teams (groups) created from the "Teams" tile do not send a Guest welcome email to guests added via the email/members conversation area
2. 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: 

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams/Guest-welcome-email-for-Office-365-Groups-cre...

[#18]

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.

[#19]

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?

[#20]

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 this