Guest User Access? Will it be delayed until 2023?

[AbandonwareMSProject]

Hi, I was wondering if there might be any news in regard to enabling guest users to view 'Project for the Web'-projects?

Surely this must be a click of a button for the developers to implement? I don't see the reason why that functionality doesn't already exist. It has obviously been deliberately blocked/restricted for some reason. The only thing I can think of is that Microsoft wants to force more/new users to subscribe. But just as you are able to share any type of document or resource saved on Sharepoint/OneDrive with external users, it would make sense if you could do the same with a link to a Project (on the web)

I have been following the Microsoft 365 Roadmap since last year, waiting for this functionality to be implemented ("developed"). 

On 21 July 2021 this was added (ID 82106): Add guest users & assign tasks to them. Guest users can view projects shared with them.

The "GA date" at the time was October 2021. This was later delayed to December 2021. Then January 2022. Then February 2022.

And what happened in February? The developers were probably getting a bit embarrassed delaying this every month, so they deleted ID 82106, and then they created a near-identical new ID with "GA Date: April 2022":

This is the current ID (91686): Add guest users to your projects to allow them to view project information. 

When comparing the two (82106 vs 91686), it is also slightly worrying that the "& assign tasks to them"- part has disappeared. Perhaps the wording is just a bit sloppy. But if not, not only are we nearing a year's delay - but half of the "promised" functionality has disappeared. Hopefully that is not the case. 

That's all for my rant. At the moment, the company that I am working at are sadly using an Excel spreadsheet on Sharepoint for all our project management (as we need to be able to share with external users). Looking forward to being able to let guests at leasts view our teams' project plans in the future (April - hopefully, unless this will be delayed again). Without that "Project for the web" remains pretty useless for project planning and collaboration.  

[#2]

To clarify why this is such a big issue; these are the steps that you currently need to go through each time you want to share a project with a new person (as of today; Mar 31, 2022):

1. Go to the "Microsoft 365 Admin Center" (this needs to be done by an admin/owner)
2. Create a new user for whoever you would like to share a project with. Most external collaborators (industry partners, etc) probably do not want to receive a completely new Microsoft account for the sole purpose of accessing a project. So in many cases this is where the whole concept fails...
3. Send that person the login info (username/password) for their new account, which again - they probably do not want to have in the first place
4. Purchase a Project Plan license, and assign it to the new user
5. Add the newly created user to the project that you would like to share (Open project --> Add as "Group member")
6. Send the URL link for the project, to the new user. And ask them to sign in with their new login. Then sit back and wait while they fail to do so - as they are probably already signed in with their work/university Microsoft account. And most everyday users do not quite grasp that they need first need to sign out of their main account, and then sign in again with their newly created Microsoft account (which only exists for accessing Project for the Web), before they can click on the URL link that leads to the project.
7. Rinse and repeat steps 1-6 if wanting to share a project with several people