Provisioning a team with hundreds of guest users

[JernejP]

Hi,

I was wondering how would I go about provisioning a team that will have hundreds of guest users?

I looked at PowerShell and School Data Sync, but it's only possible to add members within the organization. Is there a way to add 13.000 guests (in an origination with about 250 employees), without having to add them individually? It's an EDU tenant.

Thanks

[#2]

Hi,

If the guest accounts are actual guest accounts within Azure AD, are you then able to select them? As that way they should essentially be alongside your actual internal Azure AD identities for selection.

I was thinking if you could then add them as Members to the group that backs the Team?

Thanks

Henry

[#3]

@JernejP 

We have used PowerShell, PnP and the Microsoft Graph API to do this in various projects in various ways. 

If it is just one team with hundreds of users then use PowerShell to create the users as guest users in Azure AD then add them to the Team using the Microsoft Graph API.  Bear in mind as soon as you add the users they get an invite to your AD and have to sign up and also there is a 5 to 1 ratio of external to internal users allowed for licensing purposes. 

Andy Hodges | ThinkShare | www.thinkshare.uk

[#4]

@HenryPhillipsNimbitech  - I tried adding them as guest users, but remembered something. It won't be just 100 users, it will be about 13.000 users in a team with about 250 full-time users. This wouldn't work then, would it?

[#5]

@Andrew Hodges 

I inquired further and got the specifics: 250 full users and about 13.000 guest users that will need to be added. Is it still possible to do?

[#6 · Accepted solution]

Hi @JernejP - I am afraid that won't work on two fronts.

250 licenses is only going to cover you for 1250 Guest users as per the 1:5 ratio. Unless you have more licenses and that is just 250 licensed users for this one Team.

And at present you can only add 10000 users to a single Team.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/limits-specifications-teams

Thanks

Henry

[#7]

@JernejP 

From a licensing point of view at the moment no. EDIT: You can purchase more. 

Also there is currently a limit of 10,000 members per team. 

From  the perspective of adding them to AD a script would do it but a word of warning that you would need to provide quite a bit of support to those 13,000 users, from experience the sign up process if very convoluted and has many scenarios, quite a few users will not sign up and need help. 

Andy Hodges | ThinkShare | www.thinkshare.uk

[#8]

@Andrew Hodges  & henryarphillips365

We would split this into multiple teams (so for example 30 teams), and all 13.000 users would be divided between them, so the 10k limit would not be reached. So the option would be to get more licenses and do Guest AD access?

[#9]

Hi @JernejP 

Yes, to cover you for the amount of Guest users working off of the 1 licensed user to 5 Guest users principle.

And then utilise the methods suggested by @Andrew Hodges in terms of not having to do it manually.

Thanks

Henry

[#10]

@JernejP 

I was looking into this further last week and the Microsoft documentation has been updated. It now states that the 1:5 limit only applies for Azure AD P1/2 features. If your guest users are not using any of these features such as conditional access and MFA then there is no limit.  If they are using these features then the 1:5 limit exists where an Azure P1 license means you can use any Azure P1 features at a 1:5 ratio, same with P2 features. 

Sorry about the confusion, the only constant in Microsoft 365 is change.