Microsoft Teams Guest Access

Guest access in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams allow for collaboration with external organizations, including:

• Posting messages in the Team chat
• File sharing
• Meetings access

A guest in Microsoft Teams is anyone who is added to a Team that is outside the team's organization. At UD, guests include people added to a UD Team with a non-UD email address. If you have been added to a Team at another organization, you are a guest for that Team.

• Must have a Microsoft account account associated with the address that is granted access to a Team.
• Must belong to an organisation that allows their members to access Team sites outside their organization.

The University of Delaware does not block incoming or outgoing guests access in Microsoft Teams. This article includes help for

• when you have granted a non-UD guest access to a Team.
• when you have been granted access to a non-UD Team.

Note: For technical reasons, UD alumni cannot be added to a Microsoft Team with their @udel.edu email address. Alumni must be added as guests with a non-UD email address that is a Microsoft account or is licensed to use Microsoft o365.

I’m from UD. I added a guest to my Team, but the guest can’t access the Team.

UD Team owner steps:

• If the guest did not receive the invitation to join the Team, ask the guest to check their spam/junk email folder. 
• Try sending the guest a direct link to the site: click the three dots to the right of your team site, and chose Get link to team. Send the link to the guest. 
• Verify the guest has a Microsoft account associated with the email address that was granted Team access.
• Verify that the guest is trying to access the Team by signing in with the email address that granted Team access.
• Have the guest verify with their IT department that their organization does not block access to external Team sites.

Guest steps:

If the guest received the invitation, has a Microsoft or o365 account associated with the email address that was granted access, and the guest's organisation does not block access to external Team, then the guest should try these troubleshooting steps:

1. From within Teams, select the external organization. To do this, click the account icon from the upper right, and chooses "University of Delaware - o365 (Guest)" from the drop-down menu. 
2. Try an alternative method of accessing the team. For example, if you use the desktop Teams app, try accessing the UD Team site in web browser, or vice-versa. If you normally use Google Chrome to access Teams, try Firefox, Bing, or Safari to access the Team.
3. Clear the Microsoft Teams cache, and then try accessing the site.

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I have been granted access to an external Team site but cannot open it.

Troubleshooting steps:

• If you did not receive an invitation to join the Team, check your junk-email folder, and ask the external organization to verify that your @udel.edu email address was added for guest access to the Team.
• Make sure that you sign in to the external team with the same email address that was added for guest access.
• Ask for a direct link to the Team site. The Team site owner can get the link by clicking the three dots to the right of your team site, and chose Get link to team.
• From Teams, make sure to select the external user organization from the drop-down: click your account icon from the upper right, and chooses "Name of External Organization - o365 (Guest)" from the drop-down menu. 
• Try an alternative method of accessing the team. For example, if you use the desktop Teams app, try accessing the UD Team site in web browser, or vice-versa. If you normally use Google Chrome to access Teams, try Firefox, Bing, or Safari to access the Team.
• Ask the person who granted you guest access verify that their organization does not block guest access to Teams.
• Clear the Microsoft Teams cache, and then try accessing the site.

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Still need help? 

Contact the UDIT Support Center. Include in your request:

If a guest you added cannot access your Team site:

• The exact name of the Team site that the guest is trying to access.
• The email address of the guest, and the name of the guest's organization. 
• Description of where the access fails (for example, guest was added but did not receive invitation to join team).

If you can't access an external site for which you are a guest:

• Name and email address of person who added you for guest access, and the name of the external organization.
• Specific information about where the process fails, and what attempts have been made to correct the issue (did not receive the Team site invitation, received an error message, etc).
• The client that is being used to try to access the team (Google Chrome, Teams desktop app, etc).