Communicate with an external Skype for Business user

[Harrison Hersch]

In MS Teams, how do I communicate with a Skype for Business user not in my directory? Someone in another company? In Skype for Business, we just input their email address. Doing that in Teams under people, doesn't seem to ever result in anyone. I've already turned on globally the guest access feature of Teams.

[#2]

You cannot do this yet, it's Skype federation and it's on the roadmap. I think the federated chat by end of this quarter is that item but not sure. I know it's being worked on and you cannot do it yet. https://skypeandteams.blob.core.windows.net/artefacts/Skype%20for%20Business%20to%20Teams%20Capabili...

[#3]

Now if they have Teams instead of Skype for Business in that other organization you can invite them as guest to your Team and then they can Chat/Team Chat with you on your instance.

[#4]

How can you invited them as a guest user if they don't have an O365 license? This is baffling to me how we can use Teams and Skype to replace our web conferencing system.

[#5]

You can't yet, they are working on it. It's coming, it takes time to develop.

[#6]

Is this fixed yet? We can't seem to invite external users

[#7]

Are you talking about external SfB users or just external users for Teams? You can invite external users in Teams. But you have to enable it in a few places. First you need to enable external users support in Teams (Office/Microsoft 365 admin center > Settings > Services & add-ins > Microsoft Teams: Settings by user/license type - change to Guest and change it to On and Save). This will enable new Teams (old one won't be affected) to be able to invite existing external users. If you want to invite completely new external users, you can first add them manually in Azure admin center or you can enable Office/Microsoft 365 admin center > Settings > Security & privacy > Let users add new guests to the organization. Also note, that after changing these settings, you might need to wait 1-24 hours for them to take effect (yeah, that's how modern cloud services operate..).

[#8]

Btw, those external users must have a Microsoft ID (could be personal one).

[#9]

Thank you. We are guest enabled already.

Currently through SFB, we communicate outside of our org with other SFB Users.

If we go to Teams soonish, we'd want to be able to still communicate with those SFB external users. Is that working in Teams yet?

[#10]

Teams to Team yes as long as both Tenants have latest build, don't think it's 100% just yet thou. Not sure if it works from one tenant Teams to another Skype for Business. If you are Skype for business and want to send me your Sip ID I can try it from my Teams.

[#11]

FYI for others curious, the Test worked from my Teams chat to his Skype for Business endpoint.

[#12]

How did you do it? Did you just type his SfB id on the TO: filed of the chat window?

I'm trying this and I get  "we could't find this person. Try another e-mail address.

[#13]

You and or they don't have the presence update most likely. I don't think it's 100% pushed yet. If you want to message me your primary e-mail / sip address I'll test with you as well since I have the updates. If it doens't work you don't have them, if it does they most likley don't, and or they don't have the option to communicate with external folks turned on in the new admin center.

[#14]

Thanks, I'll get back to you tomorrow.

[#15]

Any update on this?? I've got external federation enabled.. Have dozens of external contacts in S4B, however cannot find them in Teams.  This is very cumbersome and is in no way a Skype replacement right now.  I'm even on the Developer preview!!

[#16]

Hi, any update on this ?

Seems we are still not yet able to add external users (through Skype federation) in the chat of Teams

[#17]

Any update?

[#18]

You can enable external communications, which in turn will allow you to chat with people on external Skype for Business and Teams. However, it's not always that simple to keep track off and some people don't get it to work at all. 

For now, my tests have been fine.

[#19]

STILL DOES NOT WORK!!

[#20]

Was there any update to this at Ignite? OR is it the case that MSFT is trying to push everyone onto Teams ASAP and therefore there is no need for this functionality? It seems the MSFT answer is to invite the external user to a Team, and then do chat 1:1 or in a channel in Teams?