External contact

[hward2020]

New to teams and struggling to add any external contacts.  I read previous posts but can't seem to locate where I can make this an option!  Any help would be appreciated.

[#2]

Hi @hward2020

Thanks for your question. You need to ensure you or your admin enables external access within your environment. Please see article here

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/manage-external-access

If that is enabled, go to Chat > Contacts > Select ellipsis (...) and add users. You should be able to add external Teams users and chat with them privately 1 on 1

To note
- Once you enable external access in your environment this can take up to 24 hours to work so it is recommended to wait for this time

- Chat contacts are different from Call Contacts at the current time, call contacts (by selecting Calls on the left hand nav bar > Contacts under Speed Dial, are pulled from Outlook but can be added via Teams
- External contacts are different from guests, which are guests in your actual Teams. For that see article: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/guest-access-checklist

Hope that helps, let me know if you have any more questions

Best, Chris

[#3]

Another thing to check, make sure your upgrade mode (coexistence mode) for the user trying to initiate these chats is set to Teams only, otherwise you cannot do external chats from Teams.