Issues inviting non-Office 365 guest to Teams on iOS with an @iCloud.com email address

Steel Contributor

Use Case - Inviting non-Teams, non-Office 365 guest user to Team.

 

User is attempting to redeem an invitation sent to join our Team on her iPad (an @icloud.com domain email address). User is not currently on Teams, nor does she have the app installed, nor is she a member of any Active Directory, and she doesn't have an existing Microsoft account. 

 

1. User received invitation email

2. User clicks on the "Open Microsoft Teams" button in email

3. Mobile Safari launches, user is prompted to enter a verification code sent via mail, which she does successfully.

3. Browser displays the welcome to teams starting page, with an option to "Download the Teams App".

4. User taps button, and rather than being directed to the app store, an OSX pkg file is downloaded to her iPad, which of course cannot be used to install the app on her device.

5. Now she's stuck in some endless loop of trying to go back to the redemption link which now fails with lots of other indecipherable errors related to logging in with the "wrong account".

 

I don't know why I thought that by now this guest invitation flow would be seamless and functioning, but it's a mess, at least for this use case which I can't believe is all that uncommon. 

 

Can anyone recommended a less error prone way to on-board this type of totally new (to Teams/O365) guest user on an iOS device?

 

Bob

 

 

6 Replies

@MTSBob 

 

I have this exact same issue and it really needs to be resolved asap with all the telework that is going on because of Covid19.

 

Come on microsoft. sort this. its pretty fundamental stuff......

 

@MTSBob I'm having this exact identical issue with an iOS user.  Constantly stuck in a loop with this pkg attempting download.  Even though I've logged into the teams.microsoft.com site using their credentials on a PC, the app on the iPad still forces the "redeem" option and then the loop continues.

 

Is it a Safari issue?

all the above

 

This is the most convoluted sign in process I’ve ever experienced. I already have an account. I got an invite to join a Team. I try clicking on the link in my iPad and it takes me to a Safari page that insists on “signing me up”. I tried everything to get the link to work on the iPad. Finally went to my MacPro (no camera) download the Mac software, registered a new account, accepted the team invite which I could only get to work by creating an entirely new password. Then I went back to the iPad, logged out. It won’t let me see the new account but my old account login offers the new Team as an option (?????). When I click on that it AGAIN asks me to sign in (I’m already signed in). So I do it again. It bumps me to Safari where it insists I have to login again. Then It says “open in the app”. YES! But the link does not work because it thinks I'm on a Mac. At this point you may be wondering why so many people are using Zoom?

I don't think it is an MS problem in the end.

I solved the seemingly endless loop by copying the link that opens in Safari on the iOS device and pasting it into a better browser - in my case Chrome on the iPad.

That link then does work, doesn't result in the option to download a .pkg file and properly sets up the Teams app to work correctly.

I've tested this on two separate devices and found this to be the answer on both occasions in the last few days.

@larkim 

 

Thanks...that did indeed work. THANK YOU!

I also got all this to work seamlessly on my iPhone but it still failed to acknowledge the setup on the iPad.

 

Not sure I agree about the source of the issue. After all, Safari is the default. Jumping to Chrome is not the intuitive solution I would expect.

 

I think this is a Teams app issue and a terribly convoluted way of joining another Team. I would think I would get an invite to join a Teams meeting. That would be accompanied by an access code. I'd open my Teams app, enter the code and voila! No browser jumping required.

@FPS_Cathy__Fish  I've been testing the whole guest TEAM meeting thing on all platforms, and agree that it is way too obtuse for an end-user especially.   But it isn't great when setting up spontaneous meetings either... when the organizer joins a meeting and attempts to add a user,  it just creates a link that then has to be pasted into a  new email created in Outlook.  Organizer then has to re-type the email address for the message and paste the link into the body of the email,  then switch back to TEAMS.  

 

If the end-user has an existing TEAMS account they won't be able to join a TEAMS meeting on another domain or o365 tenant, unless they have an account on that tenant (and they'll have to switch accounts).   The crux is they must join the meeting as a guest.  They may not be presented with the guest option if they have cached TEAMS credentials....  That is, what I think accounts for the loop.  If they open a private or anonymous web browser, that will open without any previous knowledge of the meeting, and they can then join as a guest, put in a name, be admitted to the lobby and then be admitted to the meeting.   Web client doesn't work with Safari.  (so, not helpful on the Mac),  or IE on Windows.  
As someone suggested elsewhere.... the web invitation should simply include a conference ID so that a user can join with that (like Zoom, or Gotomeeting).