have you ever wondered how to send teams messages to external users in today's Tech tip we will show you how Microsoft teams is a great platform for team collaboration and communication with this tool you can chat oneon-one with members of the team or chat with multiple members in a group or over a channel however it's important to note that the people you can talk to are always limited to those in your organization but if you want to include Outsiders in your teams Microsoft teams provides two methods for this guest access and external access both of these modes have to be enabled by a team admin or owner from the Microsoft teams admin Center let's take a closer look at the external access external access users are defined as users who have an email address on a different domain than what Microsoft teams is configured for for example if your organization has emails configured on the domain my teams.com then only users who have emails on this domain can be added to the team to enable external access you need access to the team admin account in the name of the domain you want to add a user from Once you have access to the team admin account visit the Microsoft teams admin Center or the org wide settings then add external access click add domain enter the domain you want to add and then click done now you're ready to add the external users to Microsoft teams open the Microsoft teams app go to the chat tab click the conversation button enter the email for the user you want to chat with select search externally and send the message note that the external user must sign up for Microsoft teams to be able to chat with you it's important to understand the difference between external and guest users an external user has far less access to your Microsoft teams compared to a guest user a guest user can join meetings view channels in a team send messages over channels and communicate with other team members an external user on the other hand can only chat with the Microsoft teams team member who has added them and can only participate in one-on-one chat with the user they cannot join a meeting or view team channels in conclusion external access offers far fewer features compared to guest access an admin may enable it to allow team members to easily talk to people outside of the organization however if this feature is not enabled you will not be able to talk with external users while signed in with your company's Microsoft teams account thank you for watching and we hope you now have a better understanding of Microsoft teams and external access thank you for joining in on today's Tech tip and we'll see you next time