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If you need to collaborate with guests across documents, tasks, and conversations, we recommend using Microsoft Teams. Teams provides all of the collaboration features available in Office and SharePoint with persistent chat and a customizable and extensible set of collaboration tools in a unified user experience.
In this article, we'll walk through the Microsoft 365 configuration steps necessary to set up a team for collaboration with guests. Once you have configured guest access, you can invite guests to teams by following the steps in Add guests to a team in Teams.
Note
Shared channels offers a more seamless experience than guest accounts when collaborating with other Microsoft 365 organizations. Shared channels allow you to collaborate with people outside your organization using Teams channels without the need for external participants to sign in to your organization. We recommend you review Plan external collaboration to see if shared channels is a better options than collaborating with guests for any given scenario.
This video shows the configuration steps described in this document.
Sharing in Microsoft 365 is governed at its highest level by the B2B external collaboration settings in Microsoft Entra External ID. If guest sharing is disabled or restricted in Microsoft Entra External ID, this setting overrides any sharing settings that you configure in Microsoft 365.
Check the external collaboration settings to ensure that sharing with guests isn't blocked.
To set external collaboration settings
Note the settings in the Collaboration restrictions section. Make sure that the domains of the guests that you want to collaborate with aren't blocked.
If you work with guests from multiple organizations, you might want to restrict their ability to access directory data. This prevents them from seeing who else is a guest in the directory. To do this, under Guest user access restrictions, select Guest users have limited access to properties and membership of directory objects settings or Guest user access is restricted to properties and memberships of their own directory objects.
Teams has an on/off switch for guest access and various settings available to control what guests can do in a team. The Allow guest access in Teams setting must be On for guest access to work in Teams.
Check to ensure that guest access is enabled in Teams and make any adjustment to the guest settings based on your business needs. Keep in mind that these settings affect all teams.
To set Teams guest access settings
Once Teams guest access is turned on, you can optionally control guest access to individual teams and their associated SharePoint sites using sensitivity labels. For more information, see Use sensitivity labels to protect content in Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 groups, and SharePoint sites.
Note
It might take up to twenty-four hours for the Teams guest settings to become active after you turn it on.
Teams uses Microsoft 365 Groups for team membership. The Microsoft 365 Groups guest settings must be turned on in order for guest access in Teams to work.
To set Microsoft 365 Groups guest settings
Teams content such as files, folders, and lists are all stored in SharePoint. In order for guests to have access to these items in Teams, the SharePoint organization-level sharing settings must allow for sharing with guests.
The organization-level settings determine what settings are available for individual sites, including sites associated with teams. Site settings can't be more permissive than the organization-level settings.
If you want to allow file and folder sharing with unauthenticated people, choose Anyone. If you want to ensure that all guests have to authenticate, choose New and existing guests. Choose the most permissive setting that's needed by any site in your organization.
To set SharePoint organization-level sharing settings
The default file and folder link settings determine the link option that's shown to users by default when they share a file or folder. Users can change the link type to one of the other options before sharing, if desired.
Keep in mind that this setting affects all teams and SharePoint sites in your organization.
Choose any one of the following link-types, which will be selected by default when users share files and folders:
To set the SharePoint organization-level default link settings
To set the permission for the sharing link, under Choose the permission that's selected by default for sharing links.
Optionally, choose an expiration time for Anyone links.
The next step is to create the team that you plan to use for collaborating with guests.
To create a team
We'll invite users later. Next, it's important to check the site-level sharing settings for the SharePoint site that is associated with the team.
Check the site-level sharing settings to make sure that they allow the type of access that you want for this team. For example, if you set the organization-level settings to Anyone, but you want all guests to authenticate for this team, then make sure the site-level sharing settings are set to New and existing guests.
To set site-level sharing settings
Guest sharing settings are now configured, so you can start adding internal users and guests to your team.
To invite internal users to a team
To invite guests to a team
Note
Guests with a work or school account can only be invited by using their User Principal Name (UPN) (for example, adele@contoso.com). Inviting guests by using EAS ID, or other email formats, is not supported.
Best practices for sharing files and folders with unauthenticated users
Limit accidental exposure to files when sharing with guests
Create a secure guest sharing environment
Create a B2B extranet with managed guests
SharePoint and OneDrive integration with Microsoft Entra External ID
Events
Microsoft 365 Community Conference
May 6, 2 PM - May 9, 12 AM
Skill up for the era of AI at the ultimate community-led Microsoft 365 event, May 6-8 in Las Vegas.
Learn moreTraining
Module
Manage access for external users. - Training
Work with external users in Teams and the access controls from different places, including Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft 365, Teams, and SharePoint admin centers.
Certification
Microsoft 365 Certified: Teams Administrator Associate - Certifications
Demonstrate skills to plan, deploy, configure, and manage Microsoft Teams to focus on efficient and effective collaboration and communication in a Microsoft 365 environment.