In Teams support, we often receive questions from customers seeking help when working with Guests – especially from new tenants. You can guess how excited we are to see Guest Access be enabled by default in Teams for new tenants starting on February 8, 2021. This default behavior follows the rest of the Office 365 suite where Guest Access is already enabled, so this should empower new tenants to collaborate with greater ease, while also still supporting the same deep controls to adjust guest settings to fit individual organizations’ needs.
With this being a support focused blog, let's talk about some things that customers may have questions about related to Guest Access being enabled by default.
The biggest question is – what is going to happen?
- Until February 2021, guest access is still turned off by default. You must turn on guest access for Teams before admins or team owners can add guests. After you turn on guest access, it might take a few hours for the changes to take effect. If users see the message Contact your administrator when they try to add a guest to their team, it's likely that either guest access hasn't been turned on or the settings aren't effective yet.
- After February 2021, guest access in Microsoft Teams will be turned on by default for new customers & existing customers who haven't configured this setting. When this change is implemented, if you've not already configured guest access capability in Microsoft Teams, that capability will be enabled in your tenant. If you want guest access to remain disabled for your organization, you'll need to confirm that the guest access setting is set to Off instead of Service default.
If you are signed into your M365 Tenant Admin Portal as an Admin you can also review the information in Message Center Post 234252.
Additional Frequently Asked Questions
Q: When will these changes impact my tenant?
A: The changes will start to roll out beginning February 8, 2021 and should complete within about a week.
Q: My tenant has Guest access enabled, but I don't want that. How can I turn off Guest Access in Teams?
A: Follow these steps:
1. Sign in to the Microsoft Teams admin center.
2. Select Org-wide settings > Guest access.
3. Set Allow guest access in Microsoft Teams to Off.
Q: I already have Teams and Guest Access is enabled, will anything change?
A: No, you will continue to have Guest Access and no action is needed.
Q: I'm still having trouble with Guest Access, what should I do?
A: Admins can run the Teams Guest Access support diagnostic (shortcut cmd Diag: Teams Guest Access). Learn more at Self-help diagnostics for Teams administrators - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Docs
More Information
Read more about the Guest access change at Simplify an inclusive meeting experience by enabling Guest access as the default - Microsoft Tech Community and Turn on or turn off guest access to Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Docs
Learn more about Guest access settings in Teams in Guest access in Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Docs and Collaborate with guests in a team | Microsoft Docs
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