Sometimes you will want to collaborate with people that are outside of your organization. Normally you will be doing this by back and forth email conversations, managing attachments, and double-checking to make sure you're always clicking the "Reply All" button.
Today, let us look at ways to add Guests to your Teams. Guest users will have fewer permissions but they will sill be able to still do a lot of the same actions that your other team members can.
Note: You can only add guests using the desktop app or the web application version of Microsoft Teams.
What can Guest Users do in Microsoft Teams
Let us start by looking at what guests can do when they get invited into your Teams. Guest users who are granted access can do the following:
- Create a Channel
- Participate in a private chat
- Participate in Channel conversations
- Share a channel file
- Can edit or delete their own posted messages
- Can be invited by any work or school Microsoft 365 account
As you can see, there are lots of capabilities for the guest user, so they should be able to do everything they need to collaborate and get their work done.
Note: This list is based on the default settings in Microsoft Teams. Depending on your organization's preferences, these options may be disabled by your Teams administrator.
How to add a Guest to your Teams
Adding a guest to your Teams is a simple process, once you have confirmed a few prerequisites:
- Check with your Administrator if your organization allows guests.
- Does the guest you want to invite have a Microsoft 365 school or work account? (If they do not, they will be directed to create one for free)
To add guests, start by going to your teams' group, and then find the team to where you want to add the guest.
You then either right-click, or select "More options" on the team that you want to add to.
Under the menu, select "Add member".
You will get a pop up asking you to supply the guests email address.
Note: if you receive an error saying “We did not find any matches”, this means that your organization does not allow guests.
After you have added the guest users, you will be able to edit the guest information. We recommend that you do this now, otherwise, you will need the help of your Teams Administrator to change it in the later.
Once you have entered a name for your new guest user, click on the check button to complete the process. And you are done!
Work together with Guest Users
As you can see, it's really easy to invite users into Teams, and get work done all in one place. If your guest users are new to Microsoft Teams, we've written this handy guide when joining Teams Virtual Meetings.
Now that you'll be doing even more of your collaboration within Microsoft Teams, it's now time to stay focused! Learn how you can manage your Teams notifications and make sure that you and your guests stay productive.