M365 Changelog: Chat with users with Teams personal accounts

MC296208 – Updated January 04, 2022: Microsoft has updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Chat with Teams will extend collaboration support by enabling Teams users to chat with team members outside their work network with a Teams personal account. Customers will be able to invite any Teams user to chat using an email address or phone number and remain within the security and compliance policies of their organization. 

Will roll out on web, desktop and mobile.

Key Points:

• Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 88381
• Timing: begin roll out in early December and expect to complete in mid-January (previously mid-December)
• Control: Admin control via PowerShell and Teams admin center
• Action: Review and assess for your organization.

How this will affect your organization:

With this update Teams users in your organization will be able to start a 1:1 or a group chat with Teams users who are using their personal accounts and vice-versa. IT Admins will have the option to enable/disable this at a tenant and individual user level with two possible controls:

1. Control to enable or disable the entire functionality. If disabled neither users in your organization and users in their personal accounts will be able to chat with each other.
2. Control to define if Teams users with a personal account can start a chat or add users from your organization to a chat. If disabled, only users in your organization will be able to start a chat or add users with their personal accounts.

Note: Settings will rollout default on.

What you need to do to prepare:

If you would like to opt-out from this functionality you would be able to do so via the Teams admin portal under the External Access section. Optionally you could use PowerShell commands to opt-out all users or individual users from this functionality. 

Settings to update:

Tenant level: CsTenantFederationConfiguration

• AllowTeamsConsumer
• AllowTeamsConsumerInbound

User level: CsExternalAccessPolicy

• EnableTeamsConsumerAccess
• EnableTeamsConsumerInbound