Microsoft Teams users are now able to chat with any other user outside of their organisation.
Teams Connect, which was announced at Microsoft Ignite, is now up and running and works across both commercial and personal Teams accounts.
This means that users can speak across different organisations without needing to switch tenants. Microsoft said the service is rolling out now.
Teams Connect supports one-to-one and group chats, with users able to invite peers by entering their email address or phone number into the Teams search bar.
Users not already using Teams will receive an email inviting them to set up a personal Teams account.
IT admins are also given a range of tools to ensure that cross-organisation chat remains secure.
Admins can enable and disable the ability for users to initiate a chat with external parties and also block incoming messages from accounts not managed by their own organisation.
They can also block external messages for individual users, for example senior management, using PowerShell commands.
Individual users also have control of how Teams Connect is used. When messaged by someone outside of their organisations, users will have the option to accept or reject the chat request, and also preview the first message that’s been sent.
