Guest access in Microsoft Teams

Guest access in Teams lets you and your team collaborate with people from outside your organization by granting them access to group conversations, files, calendar invitations, and the group notebook. 

A guest is someone who isn't an employee, student, or member of the University of Windsor; they don't have an active UWin Account. For example, guests may include partners, vendors, suppliers or consultants. Anyone who is not part of the University of Windsor can be added as guest in Teams by the Team Owner. All you need is your guest's name and e-mail address.

When a guest is invited to join their first team at the University of Windsor, they receive a welcome e-mail message. This message includes some information about the team and what to expect now that they're a member. The guest must accept the invitation by selecting Open Microsoft Teams in the e-mail message before they can access the team and its channels. This process adds a guest account for them to the University of Windsor Azure Active Directory. Once there, they can be added as guests to other teams by selecting their name form the list rather than going through the full process of creating guest account.

Alumni Access

Our current licensing agreement with Microsoft does not provide for Teams licenses for alumni accounts. Alumni accounts are granted access to Outlook Online only, but not Teams or any other Microsoft 365 apps. Using their @uwindsor.ca accounts, alumni can join and participate in Teams meetings, including the meeting chat, but they are not able to use the Teams desktop app to access individual teams (i.e. participate in channel conversations or access files). However, while alumni cannot be added to teams using their @uwindsor.ca e-mail address, they can be added using their external e-mail address as guests which gives them almost the same level of access as regular members of a team. 

Adding Users as Guests

Please note that you have to be the owner of a team in order to add guest users. To add someone as a guest to your team, follow these steps:

1. Open your team inside Microsoft Teams app and click on the three dots next to the team's name. Select Manage Team from the menu.
2. In the Members section, click on Add member button located in the upper right corner. If you do not see this button, it means that you are not this team's owner. Only team's owners can add and remove members.
3. Type in person's external e-mail address.
   If a guest account already exists for this e-mail address in our Azure Active Directory, you will see it displayed with the label "(Guest)" after the name. Select it and click on Add. You can skip the rest of the steps.  
   If a guest account does not yet exist for this e-mail address, then click on Add {e-mail address} as a guest.
   
   
    
4. Do not click Add just yet. Instead, click on the pencil icon to add proper display name for this person. Replace userid with proper display name and click the checkmark icon. In the example below, tester1 should be replaced with John Testerski
   
   
    
5. Ensure that display name is correct, then click on Add button.
   
   

For more information, please view this demonstration video:

;