Getting Started - Creating a team accross two tenants

[bw-ipim]

Hi all,

I m new to Teams and looking to deploy it in our organisation. We have 10 in our office on DomainA/TenantA and 10 in another office on DomainB/TenantB (for regulatory reasons). We would like to set up a common team to chat, and have a few questions:

1. As I understand, OfficeA can be the 'host' and invite those users from OfficeB into our team (Let your Teams users chat and communicate with users in another Teams organization). Has anyone tried this?
2. I created a new team as a test, but it has ended up creating a new group, email address, etc. associated with that team. What is the purpose of this? I have not used O365 groups so am not familiar how this ties in with the rest of the ecosystem.
3. After staff leave, we typically convert their mailboxes to shared mailboxes. They are hidden from the global address books, but for some reason they show up on Microsoft Teams. Is there any way to prevent this? We need to keep the user accounts active in order to maintain the shared mailboxes, but would prefer not to have all these names appear in the user list for teams.

Apologies for lumping a few into one, but very much appreciate anyone who can help.

Thanks,

Ben

[#2]

Hi Ben,

1. Yes you can invite the other tenants users as guests - see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/guest-access

Having guest users is a common scenario and many of us here on the TC have several tenants we work in!

2. Here is how to add a Team to an existing Office 365 group

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/add-a-team-to-an-office-365-group-24ec428e-40d7-4a1a-ab87-2...

If you create a team and don’t link it to an office 365 group it’ll create an office 365 group,

3. Refer to this article about users leaving the business

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/skypehybridguy/2017/09/01/microsoft-teams-what-happens-to-a-term...

Hope that helps and that I answered your questions. If I did please like and set as the solution. If not let me know what more you need. Hope to answer more of your questions soon!

Best, Chris

[#3]

1: Yes you can either just use the chat feature to have communication between the tenants, share files via OneDrive etc..To invite users between tenants you invite them as guests in your team. They will now be able to have access to all resources like channel conversations , team files ,tab etc..

See here for more information: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/guest-access

2: This is by design! There is always an underlaying Office 365 group that get created when creating a Team. This is used for membership , files via SharePoint ( A teamsite gets created with a 365 group as well) etc.. Please read here about Office 365 groups and Teams:

https://www.avepoint.com/blog/microsoft-teams/office-365-groups-vs-teams/

3: Teams should honor any GAL policys: See here

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-scoped-directory-search

Adam

[#4]

Didn't see you there :)

[#5]

No worries Adam! Same here! :white_heavy_check_mark:

[#6]

Thanks guys, appreciate the quick replies! Will have a look through those articles.

When it comes to former staff, there are 4 currently showing on my "Suggested Contacts". These are all shared mailboxes, and for all I have selected "hide from address lists" on the Exchange admin center, but they still show. Any ideas?

Rather than guest access, I was looking to invite those in our other office to join our team, using their existing Office 365 E3 accounts, if that makes sense?

Another question: is there any way I can disable SharePoint / OneDrive when it comes to Teams? We use Box exclusively and don't want to end up with multiple concurrent file repositories. I have added Box to Teams but haven't been able to find any way of disabling SP/OD.

Thanks

[#7]

Hi! 

"Rather than guest access, I was looking to invite those in our other office to join our team, using their existing Office 365 E3 accounts, if that makes sense?"

- This is the guest function :)

"is there any way I can disable SharePoint / OneDrive when it comes to Teams?"

disable SharePoint / OD licenses for users in the admin portal ->users ,  or use powershell

adam

[#8]

With the suggested contacts if this is in Outlook these will cache if you have emailed them previously. You can begin typing them again and when autocompletes delete them. If they still show in the GAL it can take up to 24 hours to come off. So I would check tomorrow, you can always redownload the address book in Outlook which may help.

Best, Chris

[#9]

Thank you Chris! I missed this point..you have to delete the autocomplete records right? These don't have anything to do with the GAL itself

if it's in GAL: Also turn off cached mode  - open close and open outlook then turn on cached mode if you use it - or just download the GAL again

As @Christopher Hoard said, it can take som time updating this automatically

[#10]

They are talking about the type ahead in Teams not Outlook :P. For Teams it's basically cache, you have to wait awhile for it to clear out. Check web version / mobile and see if it's still there. If so might have to sign out and in on the desktop client, and or even go a step further and delete the cache manually to force the clear out. But always start with web client.

[#11]

Thanks! I’ll make an implicit assumption it is Teams next time someone mentions suggested contacts in the context of mailboxes :face_with_tears_of_joy: :white_heavy_check_mark:

[#12]

Lol! Agree

[#13]

Thanks Adam. Sorry for the delayed reply, trying to sort this out while travelling.

I had followed the instructions here to connect the two tenants, which I believe is different to guest access:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/let-your-teams-users-communicate-with-other-people

Both tenants now have external access enabled and each has the other domain as 'allowed'. However when I run Teams and go to 'add members' I can still only add users in my own organisation.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

[#14]

Thanks Chris. Tried deleting from Outlook cache but the addresses still show up on teams. One of the users left in April, so haven't emailed them since then, and took them off GAL after converting to a shared mailbox. This isn't a big problem, but would be nice to remove them if I can find a way.

[#15]

Read the page again, and it says it does require guest access to be enabled, my bad. Will see if this helps and will report back soon.

[#16]

Hi,

In the Teams and Skype admin centre make sure that external communications and guest access are enabled.

Let us know how it goes.

Best, Chris

[#17]

Hi!
You seem to have mixed up federation and guest access! Sorry if I’m wrong but I’m given mixed signals here :)
The link you pasted is federation - when you communicate between different tenants! We mean good ol chat here ( think S4b)! - this has nothing to do with collaboration within a certain team! This is the chat button on the left panel in the teams client..
For this to work you need to enable external access on both sides and the allowed/blocked domains if necessary!

You are also saying you want to “add members”! It sounds like you want to add external people to you team? (Guests)
In this case the guest options mentioned in this thread need to be enabled as well!

Adam

[#18]

Thanks Adam. Get what you mean. What I am trying to do is get OfficeB onto the team for OfficeA, so we can communicate in the same channels (and chat).

External access, allowed domain and guest access are all on.

Even though I've enabled all the relevant settings, I go to "Add member" type in the user's email address, but I get "we couldn't find any matches". Any ideas on how I can get this working? Perhaps I need to wait a little longer since I've just enabled a few hours ago?

[#19]

It could be propagation but how about logging out of Teams and all apps and closing them then logging back in? That may resolve it.

Best, Chris

[#20]

Ok! Then we agree this is guest access :)
As @Chris Hoard said, if you set something to ON, there is some time to wait!
Just make sure that both teams and group guest access is set to ON!

And of course! Merry Christmas!!

/adam