For Brandon University Owners of Microsoft Teams groups, you can add and manage external Guests to BU Groups. 


This article covers two main elements


1) Guest accounts in Teams - How to Add and How they Work

2) How Guests can access The Teams group


If Guests are looking for more info on basic usage in MS Teams, you can direct them here:



1) Guest accounts in Teams


Guest Accounts are accounts added to a Teams group that do not have a BU-based account. Anyone with a non-BU email address can be added as a Guest Member to a Teams group.  This permits Guest users limited basic access, such as access to chats in the group, participating in video conference calls, and viewing and editing uploaded files to the group. 


NOTE: External Users will have to check to make sure the invitation does not get placed in their Junk Mail / Spam folder.


To add a Guest to a member of a Teams group, you must be a Owner of the group.  Click on the  '...' at the end of Team group name, click Manage Team, then click Add Member.  Enter the non-BU email address of the external user that you wish to add as a Guest.  The Guest will then receive an email notification asked to join the Group.  





The External User can then sign in via

  • using with own Teams login info (if they currently, or previously, accessed another Teams group using their email address) or 
  • by creating a new Microsoft Account (Microsoft will assist the user in doing so if they have never singed in to any Teams group with their email before)



2) How Guests can access The Teams group


If the External User needed to create a new Microsoft Account


If the Guest member had to set up a Microsoft Account, they only need to sign in to their Teams Desktop install or the web portal https://teams.brandonu.ca with the account info. It is important to mention that BU has no access or control over personal Microsoft Accounts, the user is responsible for managing their password and their own access to the account itself. 




For Other External Users who may already use Teams as part of their own Organization/Business


Viewing and Accessing content to each Organization using MS Teams (aka Tenant) stay independently separate from each other.  The Guest user will have to switch the focus of what Tenant they wish to be looking at from within the Teams app. This is done by clicking on the Current Tenant name located to the left of the users initials/image.


Any Guests Tenants that the user is a member of will see the name of the organization, along with the wording (Guests), behind the Tenant name.




The other method is to click the icon with your initials or image, then see if you have the option Accounts & Orgs, if so, you can then switch to which Tenant (and the Teams groups within) to view and interact with.