Whiteboard sharing within Teams - External users

I've had the same problem ever since ~2022 when Microsoft made some change to the way its OneDrive sharing settings worked. After many complaints and calls to them, what I learned was, reportedly, the ability for Guest users to access Whiteboard teams tabs was "only accidentally working" prior to their OneDrive / sharing mechanisms update, but this was by luck instead of on purpose. This functionality was not a "feature" or "requirement" according to Microsoft. (It was a requirement according to me, but that didn't matter to Microsoft.) So, my nonprofit was out of luck, and our tutoring program had to abruptly switch to using Google Jamboard. This is one of the reasons, along with the absurdly complicated installation and sign-in procedures for the Teams app, that we have been considering abandoning the entire Microsoft platform.

Hello all,

I have been trying to also sort this problem out for the past 9 months and I had it confirmed that this feature has been removed by Microsoft for the whiteboard application, they have not given any reason why this has been done and they are not willing to replace the feature so more people a forced to pay for a Microsoft business accounts to have access or for charge more to business to allow use this feature. The staff member that confirmed this for me was Named "Betty C"

Hi Anna,

thanks for that link , i had already looked through this and tried the PowerShell commands mentioned but still no luck with our external clients accessing the whiteboard itself , on the page you linked to it mentions about whiteboards not being supported for external users

According to the link I provided, whiteboards are not supported for external users and team guests when they are added as a tab in Teams channels and chats. However, external users should be able to temporarily view and collaborate on whiteboards that are shared in a Teams meeting, if you have enabled the following settings:

AllowAnonymousMeetingParticipantsToAccessWhiteboards in SharePoint Online Anonymous users can interact with apps in meetings in Teams

If you have already enabled these settings and still can’t share whiteboards with external users in Teams meetings, then you might be facing a bug or a technical issue. In that case, I suggest you contact Microsoft Business support or report the problem in the Teams feedback.

Hi Paddi

I'm AnnaThomas and I'd happily help you with your question. In this Forum, we are Microsoft consumers just like yourself no one here is a Microsoft employee.

One possible cause is that your whiteboard sharing settings are not configured to allow external access. You need to enable the AllowAnonymousMeetingParticipantsToAccessWhiteboards setting in SharePoint Online and the Anonymous users can interact with apps in meetings setting in Teams to allow external users to view and collaborate on whiteboards in Teams meetings. You can do this by using PowerShell commands or the admin center. For more information, see Manage sharing for Microsoft Whiteboard.

Learn more: https://learn.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/whiteboard/manage-sharing-organizations?view=o365-worldwide

I hope this helps ;-), let me know if this is contrary to what you need, I would still be helpful to answer more of your questions.

Best Regards,

AnnaThomas

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