Microsoft Teams - How to Add and Manage Guest Users

Add a guest to your team

Guests must have an Office 365 work or school account. If the guest doesn’t yet have a Microsoft account associated with their email address, they will be directed to create one for free.

To add a guest to your team in Teams:

1. Select Teams   and go to the team in your team list.

2. Select More options  > Add member.
   
   

3. Enter the guest's email address. Anyone with a business or consumer email account, such as Outlook, Gmail, or others, can join your team as a guest.

   Note: If you receive a "We didn't find any matches" error while trying to add a guest, your organization doesn't allow guests. 

4. Add your guest's name. Select Edit guest information  and type a friendly name for them. Be sure to take the time to do this now—you’ll need the help of an IT admin to do it later.
   
   

5.  Click Add. Guests will receive a welcome email invitation that includes some information about joining Teams and what the guest experience is like. 
   
   Now that all that's done, the next thing you're going to do is set guest permissions.

Note: When you add a guest, only their name gets added to their profile card. To add or change other info (such as phone number or title), you'll need to contact your IT admin.

Identify guests on a team

To see if a team has any guests, just look below the heading where the team name shows up.

You can tell if someone is a guest by looking anywhere their name appears—the word “Guest” appears after it. You can also see everyone’s roles in the Members tab of a team. Go to the team name and select More options  > Manage team and then Members.

Switch guest accounts in Teams

Go to the accounts menu to the left of a profile picture at the top of the app, then pick the team or guest account you want. For example, if you are a normal Keene user, you will need to select the University of New Hampshire guest account.

Guest Capabilities

Every member in Teams has a role, and each one has different permissions. 

• Owners
  Team owners manage certain settings for the team. They add and remove members, add guests, change team settings, and handle administrative tasks. There can be multiple owners in a team.

• Members
  Members are the people in the team. They talk with other team members in conversations. They can view and usually upload and change files. They also do the usual sorts of collaboration that the team owners have permitted.

• Guests
  Guests are people from outside of your organization that a team owner invites, such as partners or consultants to join the team. Guests have fewer capabilities than team members or team owners, but there's still a lot they can do.

Note: File permissions for members and guests reflect whatever your admin has set in your SharePoint settings. These can only be changed by your admin.

The following table shows the capabilities available for each role:

Need more help?

LinkedIn Learning - Microsoft Teams