MichelWhen implementing guest access for Microsoft Teams not all was clear for the users and even more for the external users. So, I created an infographic to explain it a little bit more:
As you can see, there are no problems if you have an Office 365 account, a Microsoft account, a Google account or a Yahoo account. External users are let through nice wizards to get access to your shared Team. But the confusion starts when you invite an external user with not one of those account types. They are getting stuck on creating the Microsoft Team account. At that point you must instruct the external user that he or she must create a Microsoft account with the exact account the invite mail was sent to. This is not automatically done. As soon they created that account they have access to the Team.
The access flow in detail
Let’s go through the access flow in detail, let’s start from the moment an external user gets the invitation mail. The external user is probably going to hit the purple button (I’m sorry for the Dutch language in some of the pictures ?):
And now he or she is getting the question to create a Microsoft Teams account (if they are not already connected of course):
This seems like the user is setting up a Microsoft account, NOT, he or she is setting up a Microsoft Teams account!
I’m not going in into the technical details about azure AD and stuff to explain this.
Take notice, the account (email address) filled in must be the same account (email address) as the invention mail is sent to!
After filling in the form Microsoft is going to send the user a verification code by mail:
After the verification code is entered, the user must review the permissions:
(Wow, this looks like a classified FBI file ?)
After the user accepted the permissions, he or she is redirected to the Microsoft Teams website. On this site he or she can hit the ‘Open Web app’ button (Ignore for now the message to open the Teams Client app).
If everything goes as it should go, the Team opens where the user is invited to.
But if not and the user gets the following message, he or she has probably no Microsoft account.
And this the confusion part. Let’s switch over to a live conversation:
Guest: “I have just created an account to access Teams and it is not working?”
Admin: “Yes, you have created an account for Microsoft Teams, but for real access you probably have to create another account!”
Guest: “Another account, are you kidding me!”
Admin: “No, but let’s try something first, close the browser and go back to your invitation mail and hit the purple button again.”
Guest: “Ok done, but I still get the same error page.”
Admin: “Now you are the lucky one to create another account!”
Guest “Lucky me, what to do (sigh).”
Let’s switch back to follow the steps to create a Microsoft account.
The external user must to go to: https://login.live.com
He or she must enter the account (email address) where the invitation mail is sent to:
If that account doesn’t exist the user gets the following message:
If not, the account is already connected as a Microsoft account. In this case something else is wrong. I didn’t find a worthy solution when this happens. Let me know if someone found a solution in this case.
The user must select the link ‘get a new one’ and the create account window is shown:
Enter a password:
Enter your first and last name:
Enter your country and birthday:
Microsoft sends again a verification code that must be entered:
Let’s check if the external user is real person:
And now the account is ready:
At this moment the external user should have access to the Team by selecting the purple button within the invitation mail.
I hope Microsoft is changing this process in the future to make it a lot smoother!
You can download the infographic here:
