Collaborate with another organization via teams

Question

Hello,

Please i need your help on this issue.

We are trying to collaborate with another organization via teams and their status is not visible do you know where to enter their domain name to allow their organization to view ours?

Internally we can see each other's status away available etc and send and receive chat ok

When we try and contact one of their customers who they need to work with, we are unable to chat with them or see their status.

The person externally we are trying the chat to is a guest in our organization as they use SharePoint.

Answer 1

@James James

This scenario is usually related to Microsoft Teams’ external access (federation) settings. Although you can see status information between colleagues within your tenant, for external users (even if they’re added as guests) the proper domains have to be allowed for presence and chat to work seamlessly.

Here’s what you need to check and configure:

1. External Access Settings in Teams Admin Center:

 • Sign in to the Microsoft Teams admin center.

 • Go to Teams settings > External access.

 • Ensure that external access (federation) is enabled.

 • Under “Allowed domains,” add the domain(s) of the organization with which you want to collaborate. This permits chat and presence information sharing between your organization and theirs.

 • Note that if “Block all external domains” is selected or if the partner’s domain is not explicitly allowed when you have an “Allowed domains” list configured, then users from that domain won’t see presence or be able to chat as expected.

2. Guest Access vs. Federation:

 • There’s a distinction between guest access and federation. When a user is added as a guest (for example via SharePoint sharing), some aspects of presence might not work as they do for fully federated users. Guest accounts have a different set of permissions, and their experience can be limited compared to internal users.

 • If the external person is a guest in your organization, ensure that your guest access policies (under Teams settings > Guest access) are also configured to enable the desired communication features.

3. Cross-Tenant Considerations:

 • Both organizations need to allow federation with each other if you expect to see each other’s presence. Confirm that the partner organization has also configured their Teams admin settings to allow your domain.

4. Additional Checks:

 • Verify that any Conditional Access or firewall settings are not blocking the required Teams services.

 • Confirm that both organizations are running compatible versions of Teams and that any custom policies (such as policies restricting instant messaging or presence) are not interfering with the external communications.

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