External participants can't view Chat & Poll in Channel Meeting

[bharat_tank]

Hello, We are hosting Townhall using MS Teams. Wherein employees from 2 different  Office365 tenants (for example - domain1.com, domain2.com ) joins the call.   

Since the Teams call was scheduled using Domain1.com, however Domain2.com is already set as a trusted domain in Domain1.com in the Admin portal::

Problem encountered - 

1. Domain2.com employee being shown as External to the Organization (which is fine)

2. But this is resulting in Domain2.com employee - unable to view Chat (which is urgently required for the Q&A)

3. Also all the Poll questions posted in Chat, Domain2.com employee are unable to participate in the Poll.

Looking forward to your support please. Regards Bharat

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hi @bharat_tank

As opposed to a channel meeting, set the meeting as a private meeting (non channel specific) and then the attendees should be able to see the chat and polls given they are joining from Teams. If you need it specifically to be a channel meeting then add them as guests and get the external attendees to switch into domain1.com's tenant then this should work

Let me know how it goes, but hope this answers your question

Best, Chris

[#3]

@Christopher Hoard

Hello Chris,

Thank you for your reply and guidance.

When you say "private meeting (non channel specific)" - Do you mean to say MS Teams meeting scheduling using Outlook Calendar or You are referring to any other settings.

The only reason to opt for Channel based Townhall was - 

* keeping all the content at one place

* Getting the option of Chat & Poll for Domain1.com & Domain2.com, however Domain2.com had to switch their profile to join this Townhall and not everytime the joining works well and lot many time MS Teams freeze.

Looking forward to your inputs and willing to explore that option, as options not working during Townhall becomes highly embarrassing.

Regards

Bharat

[#4]

@Christopher Hoard 

Thank you Chris for your reply & guidance.

Regards

Bharat

[#5]

@Christopher Hoard 

This does work; however the thing that's frustrating and wastes valuable meeting time fussing around is this (below).

Baseline:

1. add people outside your org as guests to a team
2. schedule a channel meeting in the team for the future

Scenario A: when it's time for the meeting, the outside user:

1. Opens MS Teams app
2. Switches to correct organization
3. Navigates to team and channel
4. Joins meeting from channel
5. Meeting chat works for them!

Scenario B: when it's time for the meeting, the outside user:

1. Joins the meeting from their calendar (as most people do)
2. More often that not they show as external even though they have been invited and accepted invitation to join as guest.
3. Meeting chat does not work
4. Solution: ask them to leave the meeting, and join using steps 1-5 from Scenario A.

Wish: Microsoft would recognize (in Scenario B) that the user actually is a guest --  automatically and without any user intervention. In other words, no special instructions needed.

In the meantime if anyone knows a better way, please do share!