How to Get Microsoft Teams External User Report

Managing external and guest access enables control over internal users collaboration with external participants. It ensures that only required external domains are allowed with appropriate collaboration levels, such as chats, calling, meetings, etc.

External access settings in Teams allow you to manage and control the domains that are allowed to collaborate with your organization. You can search and add the required external users to Teams 1:1 chat page without adding them into the organization teams. It also helps to restrict the users from adding people in blocked domains.

To manage external access in Microsoft Teams,

• Navigate to 'External access' page in Teams admin center.
• You can allow or block specific external domains under 'Choose which external domain your users have access to' option.
• You can also turn off the toggle under 'Teams accounts not managed by an organization' section to prevent users from communicating with people who have personal Teams account.

You can use the following PowerShell cmdlet to block external domains that restrict users from adding people from the blocked organization.

Connect-MicrosoftTeams 
Set-CsTenantFederationConfiguration -BlockedDomains <domain name>

Guest access in Microsoft Teams is enabled by default and external users can be directly added from the Teams itself. These users will be added as guest users and have more capabilities than external access in Teams.

Follow the steps below manage guest access in Teams.

• Navigate to 'Guest access' page in Teams admin center.
• Customize the collaboration settings, such as calling, meeting, messaging, etc., based on the organization's requirements.

Still have questions about the access levels for external and guest access in Microsoft Teams? Check out the simplified comparison in the below table.

In Microsoft Teams, collaboration with external users can be achieved by adding them into the required teams. However, we can also perform external collaboration through shared channels, Teams meetings, file sharing, screen sharing, etc.

This will be helpful for short term collaboration like quick discussion with external clients and avoids the need to create new teams solely for external collaboration.

Shared channels in Microsoft Teams offer a secure and organized method for collaborating with external users without granting them access to all channels within the team.

If you are a team owner, you can create shared channels and add external users in Microsoft Teams. However, you must enable B2B direct connect and configure inbound and outbound access settings in Azure AD to enable collaboration only with the desired external organization via shared channels.

After creating the required shared channels, you can share them with external users using the options below and eliminate the need to switch between organization and guest Teams accounts.

If your users try to share channels with external organizations not configured with B2B, direct them to your request page for shared channel collaboration. This allows discussion regarding collaboration requirements and enables B2B direct connect if necessary.

Teams meeting would be an great option to collaborate with external users for useful cases like client meeting, screen sharing, remote access, etc.

You can follow the steps below to invite external users to Teams meeting.

Note: You can allow or block external users from joining a meeting by configuring 'Participants' settings under Meetings»Meeting settings page in Teams admin center.

Teams users and external users can share and access files by sharing them via Teams channels or chat, if external file sharing is enabled in your organization. However, individuals with external access cannot share local files in one-to-one chats, instead they can share files as links in Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Teams external user activity report helps admins to monitor activities performed by the external users in Microsoft Teams. It shows guest users’ Teams usage and allows admins to find and remove the inactive guest users from the required teams.

You can get the Teams external users' activity count and comprehensive activity details from both admin centers: Teams admin center and Microsoft 365 Purview portal.

Microsoft Teams admin center allows you to monitor the activities performed by users within teams. However, it does not allow filtering only the external user’s activities and provides the number of activities performed by users without detailed information on each activity.

You can get Teams external users activity report by following the below steps:

Note: Utilize the "External domain activity" report in View reports section to monitor chat activity between users in your organization and external users. It shows all the external domains and number of users in your organization communicating with guests through 1:1 and group chats.

You can use Office 365 audit log search to access detailed information about Teams user activity. However, you need to manually specify each activity to initiate a search.

You can follow the steps below to view the detailed user activities in Microsoft Teams.

Note: Similar to Teams admin center, you cannot filter the external users' activities directly from the search results. Also, switching between two admin centers and manually filtering the Teams external users in reports can be quite time-consuming.

• With AdminDroid’s "External User Activities" report, you can effortlessly monitor all types of activities performed by Teams external users in your organization.
• This report includes all types of operations performed by external users and allows you to promptly identify the unusual activities in Microsoft Teams.

AdminDroid’s advanced alerting allows you to receive timely alert notifications on external user activities in teams.

As an admin, gaining comprehensive insights into Microsoft Teams external users is crucial for managing efficient collaboration with partners and clients outside the organization.

While the Teams external user report provides necessary details of the external users, it lacks the quick overview of external collaboration insights that analytics can offer for your organization.

You can view the collaboration activity in the Teams admin center dashboard. However, this section only provides information on the number of teams with external users and a list of external domains your users are communicating with in Teams.

Access complete analytics on external user activities in Microsoft Teams through AdminDroid. It offers detailed insights such as the number of external users per team, membership count of each external user, and external domain associations, all in one place for a thorough understanding of your external collaborations.

• Along with the built-in charts, you can add different types of charts by comparing the required parameters.
• You can also 'Customize' these existing charts to access more granular data based on your specific requirements.