Team Visitors group (Read permissions)

[Alexandre Ivanov]

In a SharePoint site attached to a Team, Team Owners group gets Full Controll permissions level, and Team Members group gets Edit by defaul (can be changed to either Full Controll or Read). Then there is Read permissions level that is not assosiated with any Team groups.

Will the Teams app have an option to add users as Visitors (in addition to Owners and Members) in the future?

[#2]

You can potentially do this in the SharePoint site linked to the Team

[#3]

Yes, that can be achieved by opening the site, going to Advanced sharing settings, opening New Team Visitors SharePoint group, and finally adding people to it. Setting up a shortcut on the home page of the site would ease the burden for users, but they would still have to remember to go to two different places to manage the same set of permissions levels.

I find Team's approach to managing permissions very intuitive and convenient, but think that it's incomplete without Visitors (Read) component.

[#4]

I've been thinking about this also, and I can't think of any good use cases for 'Read' level permissions in a chat room. Isn't that just watching a text version of a video or Skype Meeting Broadcast at that point? Aren't chat rooms meant to be collaborative?

[#5]

I agree. There is probably no practical use for Read-only permissions in conversations. My primary concern is with content stored in a linked site.

In the first screenshot (Site permissions), in my original post, there is an option to change permissions level of Members group to either Full Control or Read. After switching from Edit to Read, members of the group can still participate in conversations and navigate file directories, but loose ability to upload/delete content.

That's precisely how I would like Visitors group to behave. Allow unrestricted participation in conversations and provide view/download access to content.

[#6]

We have a specific ask to allow a generic account (shared device) access to monitor a Teams channel so it can be displayed  on a large monitor in the NOC.  We don't want to give the generic account a license or potentially allow that Username to post content without accountability.  Read only on the team would be perfect. 

[#7]

Could a read only team chat be used as a sort of private "twitter" feed ? 

[#8]

yes- that's it- we don't use Yammer her- failed adoption in the past makes it a non-starter. so looking for a work around...

[#9]

Did this ever go anywhere?  I have exactly the same use case.  I don't want employees to be able to delete content (it's for DR/BC Team) but I do wan them to be able to read all of the content and add their thoughts to the chats etc.  @Alexandre Ivanov

Mick 

[#10]

@Mick Vollmer  I totally agree. Having successfully used well structured Share Point deployments, the "read only" role of Visitor should be available directly from within Teams.

When you click on the Advanced link in the Share Point view of a Team, you'll see that all three standard groups are there: Owner (full), Member (edit), and Visitor (read).  And yet, Teams only allows use of Owner and Member.