It’s seamless to collaborate with people outside your organization who use Teams or Teams for personal use. Take the following steps to make sure you're safe when joining a chat or meeting with people outside your org.
Accept or block a message request in a one-on-one chat
- When you accept, the sender can send you messages in Teams. They can also view your status.
- When you block a person, they can't send you messages in Teams. They also can't view your status.
- If your phone number has been added to an organization’s extended directory, you can't review the organization's privacy policy on the accept/block page.
Note
It’s easy to unblock people outside your org.
Accept, block, or delete a message request in a meeting or group chat
If you’re invited to a meeting, forwarded a meeting invite, or are added to a group chat by a user outside of your organization, you’ll go through a few steps to ensure your security.
Note
You may see the option to leave the chat or delete the chat depending on your admin setting.
- Select the sender's chat, and then select Preview messages.
- Select Accept or Delete. Accepting the message request automatically opens the chat. If you choose to delete the chat, you’ll see a pop-up window with the option to Block the person.
You can join a meeting regardless of whether you decide to accept, delete, or block a request from outside your org. However, your choices affect how you can use meeting chat.
- If you select Accept before joining a meeting, you have full access to the meeting chat.
- If you choose Delete before joining, you see an error message in the chat screen and no chat history is available.
- If you choose Leave before joining, the message box and reactions are unavailable in the meeting chat pane. But you still see all your past chat history up to that point.
- If you Block the person who sent you the invite before joining, you see an error message in the chat screen and no chat history.
Learn more:
Leave or remove someone from a group chat in Microsoft Teams