Can External Users Participate in a UTD Teams Meeting?

Purpose

This guide is only needed if an external user needs to participate in a Microsoft Teams meeting. This can be done by simply inviting them to the meeting with their full email address.

Guest access allows teams to collaborate with people outside UTD by granting them access to existing groups and channels in Teams. Anyone with a business or consumer email account, such as Outlook, Gmail, or others, can participate as a guest in Teams with full access to team chats, meetings, and files.

Note: A guest is not an employee, student, or member of UTD. They do not have a school or work account with your organization. For example, guests may include partners, vendors, suppliers, or consultants.

Explanation 

When guests join a team, they receive a welcome email message. This message includes some information about the team and what to expect now that they’re members. The guest must accept the invitation by Opening Microsoft Teams in the email message before accessing the team and its channels.

The following table compares the Teams functionality available for UTD team members and guests.

Capability in Teams

UT Dallas Teams Users

Guest users

Participate in a private chat

Yes

Yes

Participate in a channel conversation

Yes

Yes

Post, delete and edit messages

Yes

Yes

Access files shared in a channel

Yes

 

Yes

Share a channel file

Yes

Yes

Share a chat file

Yes

Yes

Add apps (tabs, bots, or connectors)

Yes

 

Create meetings or access schedules

Yes

 

Access OneDrive for Business storage

Yes

 

Discover and join a public team

Yes

 

View organization chart

Yes

 

Use inline translation

Yes

 

Become team owner

Yes

 

 

UTD Team Owner Adding a Guest to a Team

  • Open the team’s chat, click on the three-dots button (…) and select the add member icon as shown below.

Teams tab under Microsoft Teams app with options to manage the team including Adding members.
 

  • Enter the full email address of the guest user and select the pop-up that says Add *email address* as a guest.

Screen with field to search and add members.
 

  • You may want to select the pencil icon beside the name and enter a name for the guest other than their email address.

Screen with pencil icon to add the name of the member instead of their email id.
 

  • Select Add, then Close.

Screen to click the Add button to add the members.

Note: Adding the user may fail the first time you select Add. If it does, do the process one more time, and it should let you add the guest. If it gets stuck, click the Esc button, and try again.
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Details

Article ID: 280
Created
Mon 11/22/21 12:47 PM
Modified
Wed 7/3/24 8:20 AM

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Microsoft Teams is a powerful team-based collaboration tool that provides group chat, channeled conversations, instant messaging, live document collaboration, audio or video calls, and meetings (from one-on-ones to fully-featured audio/video conferences).