External Collaboration in Microsoft Teams

• Teams supports several types of participation by individuals outside of an organization without the need for additional licenses.
• These options can help organizations work with outside vendors, contractors, partners, and customers and reduce the need for competing services.
• Not all features are available to external users, and granting access to some features requires additional configuration by both host and guest organizations.
• Extra planning and implementation efforts are needed to address increased security, compliance, and management requirements.

Teams, Microsoft’s hosted platform for collaboration and unified communication, provides options for users within an organization’s Microsoft 365 tenancy to work with users in other organizations or tenancies via chat, audio or video calls, and Teams meetings. With additional configuration, these guests can be added to teams in the host tenancy, enabling ongoing collaboration within team channels, SharePoint file libraries, and Teams apps that extend beyond the basic document-sharing capabilities. Any or all of these options can be enabled within an organization’s Teams tenancy, and organizations will likely need to “mix and match” to meet different needs and scenarios.