How can we make Microsoft Teams better?

← Public

Guest Access

Collaboration is a core element of how we work which requires the creation of extended teams on a project or long term engagement. Whilst the majority of our teams are internal staff, there is still a critical element of any project that requires the inclusion of our clients and/or external vendors. It is imperative that Microsoft Teams allows for the easy (but secure) inclusion of external parties for the length of any project or engagement.

This is why historically products like Groups etc. have not been adopted as widely as we would hope. If the tool only allows for 60-70% of a team to participate, it breaks. If a tool does not allow 100% of those who need to be involved to participate equally, if breaks and our users and clients have far too many alternative solutions that they can easily adopt (Slack etc.) to quickly and efficiently do their jobs.

Finally, making external parties sign up for a Microsoft account (such as Hotmail) to authenticate against any collaboration service does not work, and better approach is required and needed.

8,131 votes
Sign in
(thinking…)
Sign in with: Facebook Google
Forgot password?
Create a password
Signed in as (Sign out)
Close
Close

We’ll send you updates on this idea

Angela Sze shared this idea  ·   ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…  ·  Admin →
completed  ·  Warren responded  · 

The #1 requested feature for Microsoft Teams is now here!

We’re starting to roll out the ability to add anyone as a guest in Microsoft Teams. This means that anyone with a business or consumer email account, such as Outlook.com, Gmail.com or others, can participate as a guest in Teams with full access to team chats, meetings and files.

For more info, check out https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/Collaborate-securely-with-anyone-in-Microsoft-Teams/ba-p/165941

Thank you all for your feedback and support!
-Warren

Show previous admin responses (8)

765 comments

Comments are closed An error occurred while saving the comment
  • Aaron Marks commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    In addition to AAD accounts, please enable support for all Social Auth scenarios that are supported by AAD B2C; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MSA, etc. It should default to AAD (make it big so that users ideally chose this), next allow then to pick a social auth, finally, allow them to create an account, but stop them from trying to create an (MS) account if the email address matches an AAD account. <-- this will result in a great UX that will really help Teams be successful.

    Also, please ensure that switching between teams is seamless. Do it at least as well as Slack

  • Manuel Marhold commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Hi Suphatra,
    we tested the guest access with a partner company. I have to say that we are both a little bit disappointed.
    He invited me as a guest. So now I have two “accounts” where I have to switch between them. Also, I don’t get any push-notifications for the “other” account, I only see a number-mark after a while (don’t know how much time it takes until I get the info).
    And I cannot change my account on my mobile device.

    We both think that it should be like this: when he invites me to one of his teams, I can join and see them as a time in my list of teams. Maybe the teams are grouped by company (you call it "account"), so I have them in one list. I can flag them as favorite, follow them and chat with the partners employees. Finally, I get push-notifications and can use it on mobile device, because it is like an own team. And for chat: it would be grate to create a chat with all participants of both "accounts", so when we have 3 people and they have 5 people, we can create a chat with all 8 people, but not with non-invited people.

    I think this feature is neccessary and sould be enchanced. And for sure no need of O365 account for that.

    Kind regards,
    Manuel

  • Matej Kastner commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Hallo Suphatra, as mentioned by several people already - guest access should be for anyone - please put out restriction to school/work accounts and include any microsoft account to be able to join. Thx

  • Christopher commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Maybe it is a first step, when you can use a regular MS-Account alternatively to a Company- or School-Account.

  • Tallis commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Until Guest Access is available without an O365 account, my current broker teams around the world will continue using Slack. Further, it needs to be easy for guest to sign up and in.

    For example, my team estimates about an 80% failure rate when external guests are invited to SharePoint. It is not clear to them, and if they already have a Microsoft account, they end up linking the invite to the wrong account, etc.

  • Patrick commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    I was only able to add a guest by sending the invite to their @domain.onmicrosoft.com email address? When I sent it to there @domain.com, Teams kept logging them into their tenant when they clicked on the invite. Is this the expected behavior?

  • Anonymous commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    So I added a two personal email addresses to azure AD as guests to try this out. One has a home subscription to office365, this account works just fine, this is a custom domain. The other is a gmail account and even though it's a guest in Azure AD it does not work. how can we get a detailed chart of what does and does not work?

  • Andreas commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    It's been a month now so at the very least some kind of time frame for MSA guest accounts and mobile guest access would be nice. Be as rough as you want/need with it but give us something, 1-4 weeks, 1-2 months, < 6 months, < 1 year?

  • Martin commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Is there any timeframe for the true guest access to MS Teams? It's useless without it.

  • Simon Rayfield commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Having waited for this for months so our external vendors could connect into us the release is terrible and just doesnt work. Very limited and of new use really, especially given many copanies dont use O365 at all. Back to Slack then it looks like

  • Joe Collins commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    The announcement message release a few weeks ago on the inclusion of Guest access to Teams was very positive however it FAILS to blatantly point out that it is ONLY available if the guest is Already has a MS Live, school or work account. We STILL cannot invite a true guest like we can in sharepoint. It should send the invite and include instructions for the guest to create a MS account if they don't already have one.

1 2 … 5 7 9 … 38 39

Forum Home

Reference Information for Teams

Public: Guest Access

Categories

Feedback and Knowledge Base

(thinking…)

More Teams Information