Guests in Microsoft Teams

Team owners can add external users and WVU users outside their organization as guests.

Add a guest to a team

1. Click More Options (…) next to the Team name.

2. Select Add member.

3. Enter the guest’s email address. If they have an @hsc or @mail address, you can look them up in the Outlook Address book.

4. If needed, select the pencil icon to edit the guest’s name.

5. Click Add.

6. The guest will receive an email from Microsoft Teams with the subject "You have been added as a guest to West Virginia University in Microsoft Teams." Ask guests to check their Junk folder if they don’t see this email.

   • If a guest doesn’t have a Microsoft account associated with their email address, they will be directed to create one for free.

7. The invited guest must click Open Microsoft Teams within the invitation to accept it.

8. Once the guest has accepted the invitation, they will receive an email with an access URL specific to them. Make sure the user saves this URL in their bookmarks for future access. It may take a few hours before the guest has access to the Team.

9. Team members will see a message in the General channel announcing that a guest has been added.

What can guests do on a team?

Guest can participate in the team via messaging and meetings, along with uploading and editing documents that have been added to Team channels like other members.

Guests can’t sync files within the Team to their local computers using the OneDrive client and are restricted to the teams they are added to; they can’t search for other teams within the WVU tenant or share files in a one-on-one chat.

View Microsoft's Team Owner, Member and Guest Capabilities page to learn more about what guests can and can't do in Teams. 

Switch between teams for separate organizations

Guests who need to switch between Microsoft Teams tenants for separate organizations can use the local Teams client to access one organization and the web client to access the other.

Guests can also switch between their Microsoft 365 tenants to use different instances of Teams. For example, HSC guests may need to switch between their HSC instance of Teams to access the WVU instance of Teams where they were added as a guest. To switch instances, click your profile photo in Teams then select the organization from the list of tenants you have access to.

Troubleshooting

• Guest didn’t receive a team invitation email:

  • Double-check the email address the team invitation was sent to. If you added someone from HSC you can look up their email address in the Outlook address book.

  • Have the guest check their Junk folder.

• Guest doesn’t have access after they’re added to a team:

  • It may take a few hours for the guest to have full access.