⚠️ This article is intended for IT administrators at partner organizations, and not users. If you are a user at a managed client and would like assistance inviting external users to Teams, please reach out to us at care@osmosis.net.

Overview

As an IT administrator, your users may occasionally want to collaborate with users at external companies with Microsoft Teams. By using the B2B Direct Connect functionality in Entra, you are able to restrict which users are able to be invited to Shared Channels at a partner organization.

Setup/Configuration

If you have been directed to this page because a partner organization would like you to allow your users to be invited to their Team(s), you only need to set up a minimally-permissioned Outbound relationship in the Entra portal. The steps to do are:

Add the partner organization

First, add the partner organization with which you would like your users to participate in shared channels:

1. Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center using a Security administrator account.
2. Select External Identities, and then select Cross-tenant access settings.
3. Select Organizational settings.
4. Select Add organization.
5. On the Add organization pane, type the full domain name (or tenant ID) for the organization and press Enter.
   • For organizations managed by Osmosis, the full domain name for the tenant will always match the company's email domain name. We will provide this information to you in our contact request as well.
     
6. Select Add.
7. The organization appears in the organizations list. At this point, all access settings for this organization are inherited from your default settings.

These steps are outlined by Microsoft here.

Allow your users to be invited

1. In the Microsoft Entra admin center, select External Identities, and then select Cross-tenant access settings.
2. Select the outbound access link for the organization that you want to modify.
   • This will be the partner organization added in the previous section.
3. On the B2B direct connect tab, choose Customize settings.
4. On the External users and groups tab, choose Allow access and set an Applies to of all users.
   • If you would prefer to only allow specific users/groups to collaborate, you can specify them here instead of "all users".
5. On the External applications tab, choose Allow access and Select external applications.
6. Select Add Microsoft applications.
7. Select the Office 365 application, and then choose Select.
8. Select Save, choose Yes to confirm, and close the Outbound access settings blade.

After 6-12 hours, the users you specified from your organization in step 4 will be allowed to receiveve invitations to Teams Shared Channels from the partner organization.

These steps and more are outlined by Microsoft here.

Questions?

If you have any questions about this process, please book a Teams meeting with an implementation specialist here:

https://schedule.osmosis.net/b2b-direct-connect-meeting

We're happy to answer any questions you may have, or provide assistance to establish a B2B Direct Connect Relationship.