Microsoft Teams: How to Enable Guest User Access?
Requirement: Allow guest users in Microsoft Teams.
How to Enable Guest User Access in Microsoft Teams?
Microsoft Teams is a great platform for collaborative work. In some cases, you may need to enable guest access for people outside your organization so that they can still participate in conversations and projects. Guest user access is a great way to allow temporary access to your teams for people outside your company. They will have limited access to your team’s resources, but they’ll still be able to contribute positively to the conversation. Guest users will be able to participate in chats and meetings, but they won’t be able to edit or share documents. This blog post will show you how to enable guest user access in Microsoft Teams. Let’s get started!
Guest access must be enabled at the tenant level in Teams. Let’s take a look at how to enable guest user access in Microsoft Teams from the Microsoft Teams Admin center:
- Login to Microsoft Teams Admin Center at https://admin.teams.microsoft.com/
- In the Microsoft Teams admin center, select “Users” >> “Guest access” link from the left navigation pane.
- Under “Guest access” switch on the “Allow guest access in Teams”. Adjust other settings to control what a guest can/can’t do as per your requirements.
This turns on the guest user access globally on Microsoft Teams. You can verify the guest access by:
- Opening any teams in Microsoft Teams >> Click on “Add Member”.
- Enter any account outside your domain. You should see Add “Email” as a Guest suggestion.
As soon as you add the guest user, they will receive an email invitation to your Team, and They click on the invite to log into their Microsoft 365 account (or create one if they don’t have a Microsoft Live account).
Guest access allows users outside your organization to become more or less native team members to make calls, participate in chats, set up meetings and access shared files. Team owners or members can add guests on an individual basis.
External access or federation enables collaboration with an external user from a specified external domain to find, chat, call, and send meeting invitations to people in your organization. These federated users from outside can’t access your internal Teams activities or resources.
Enable Guest Access in Microsoft Teams using PowerShell
Let me show you how to enable guest access in Microsoft Teams using PowerShell. I assume you already have the Microsoft Teams PowerShell module installed in your client machine. If not, Install Microsoft Teams PowerShell Module.
#Connect to Microsoft Teams
Connect-MicrosoftTeams
#Enable Guest Access
Set-CsTeamsClientConfiguration -AllowGuestUser $True -Identity Global
Are we done? No! For the guest user to access Microsoft Teams and its resources, You have to make sure:
- Guest Access is Turned-ON for Microsoft 365 Groups – Microsoft 365 Group: How to Add an External User?
- External Sharing is enabled for SharePoint Online Tenant and for the Associated site – How to Enable External Sharing in SharePoint Online?
Last but not least: External collaboration settings under “External identities” in Azure Active Directory overrides any sharing settings that you configure in Microsoft 365. So make sure it’s set to allow guests! Microsoft Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-US/microsoft-365/solutions/collaborate-as-team
