How to Add or invite people outside your org to a chat in Microsoft Teams
A one-to-one chat with anyone outside of your Teams organization is made possible with External Access for Teams.
This includes both one-on-one conversations and new or existing group conversations for those using Teams for personal use.
First things to know
- You can invite someone without a Teams account to join the chat with their entire chat history included. They’ll receive an invitation to create an unmanaged Teams account.
- Chats can be joined by people from different Teams orgs without sending invites.
- In order to participate in a chat, users must accept a chat invitation. There are only a few options available when chatting between a managed Teams org and a Teams for personal use account.
- By default, External Access is enabled, but it can be disabled or restricted by an organization’s admin, for example, blocking certain domains or addresses.
- Chats with external participants are labeled externally at the top. In one-to-one and group chat participant lists, any external participants will also have an identifying label.
- In Teams and Skype for Business, a person’s status indicator is always displayed, in Teams for personal use only after accepting a chat invitation, and in Skype it is not displayed.
One-on-one chat with someone outside of your organization
Any user of Teams, Teams for personal use, Skype, or Skype for Business can be added or invited to a one-to-one chat.
Notes:
- Any Skype or Teams user can accept or reject chat invitations. It is also possible to block any communications they send you.
- When searching for someone who uses Teams for personal use, you can use a phone number.
- You can only use plain text in a Skype or Skype for Business conversation.
- To start a new chat, select Chat and New chat on the left side of Teams.
- To invite someone to chat, enter their email address or phone number.
The name of the person you’ve invited before should be selected if it matches.
You can also search externally for the company’s email address if there isn’t a name match.
- In the text box at the bottom, type your message and then click Send.
Tip: Prior to sending the message, you can format it in the chat by choosing a formatting option.
Add someone who uses Teams outside of your org to a group chat
You must use Teams for personal use or Teams for business when you add people outside your organization to your group chat.
Start a new group chat and add participants
- Adding more than one person to a one-to-one chat follows the previous steps.
- Messages can either be typed or groups can be named (optional).
A group chat can be expanded by adding participants
A chat that already includes at least one external access participant can only be added to an existing or ongoing chat that already includes at least one external access participant. In the event that you do not, you will be prompted to create a new group chat with all the participants inside the company and any external members that you intend to invite.
- In order to add participants to an existing group chat, you must choose or be actively involved in that chat.
- Under your profile picture on the upper right side of Teams, you will find the option to View and add participants, and then you will be able to click on Add People.
- Choose if and how you would like any chat history to be included before typing any email addresses or phone numbers below Add.
Select the names under Add if they match your search, and then click Add. The group chat will now include those people.
Choose Search [email address of person] externally if there aren’t any results for the person’s name (no results found).
- In the text box at the bottom, type a message and then click Send to start or continue the chat.
Tip: Select one of the formatting options at the bottom of the chat before sending a message if you would like it to be formatted before it is sent (optional).
More things to know
- There are a number of features that external chat participants can take advantage of. They can edit and delete messages sent, edit the delivery settings, format messages, use emojis, stickers, and GIFs to convey a variety of messages, use @mentions, and display their status in a chat. Despite this, they are not able to share files or attach files, and they are not able to use tabs or apps.
- Usually, all participants in a chat can view the profiles of other participants in the chat.
- Your org may be blocking some external orgs or external access capabilities, or they may be blocking some of your org’s access capabilities.
- Up to 249 other organizations can participate in an external group chat.
- Despite the fact that all of the external participants have left the chat, an external chat will continue to remain external.
- You are subject to the policies of the organization that you join when you join an external group chat within that organization. The shortest retention policy will also apply, which is a setting that determines how long a conversation or message will be kept, which is how long they will be kept.
- If all of the members of the organization where the chat was created are removed from the organization where the chat was created, then the chat becomes read-only.
- In External Access chats, there is no data-loss prevention (DLP) or information barrier to prevent data loss.
Please see Manage external access in Microsoft Teams or contact your admin if you want more info about External Access.