External User Manager
Business need or problem
In Microsoft Teams, employees can easily invite guest users from outside their organization to collaborate on various topics. But what happens after a project has been finished? After the employee leaves the company? After no-one remembers what the purpose of any given guest user once was?
Business solution
External User Manager provides organizations with a better way to keep control over who has access to their tenants and data, and to ensure compliance in their environment for guest users.
Via External User Manager, organizations can deactivate the out-of-the-box method of inviting guest users to Microsoft Teams. Employees can then invite guests only via External User Manager. Instead of sending out invitations directly, an automatic request and approval workflow is triggered: invitation requests are sent to the team owners or a select group of approvers, who can approve or reject them.
When a request has been approved, the external guest receives an invitation. However, they are not added to Teams directly – first, they are directed to an onboarding and compliance portal. There, guest users are asked to fill in their contact details or any other metadata fields the organization has prepared. The organization can also provide documents to be signed and accepted, such as non-disclosure agreements, communication rules or data protection requirements. Additional useful information in text or video format about the company can be added as well. Signed documents can be downloaded at any time later for verification.
Once guest users have completed the onboarding process, they can join the team.
In order to keep control over who has access to an organization’s tenant, External User Manager offers reporting insights, e.g. on active and inactive guests. In addition, organizations can also access a simple overview list of external guests invited through External User Manager, as well as their respective permissions.
Administrators can create an automatic lifecycle for guests (i.e. an access review) in External User Manager, based on a specified period of time or based on certain triggers like inactivity. With the access review, organizations can regularly check if the guest user still needs to have access or if they should be removed from Teams.
Organizations can also to invite guests directly to Microsoft 365 groups (without Teams).
External User Manager offers a webhook in order to integrate additional third-party tools. It can be installed directly from the Microsoft Teams app store and is ready to go in just a few minutes.
Business value
External User Manager customers achieve improved data protection and better control of their environment. The compliance portal enhances security, while downloading the documents signed by guest users helps with verification issues.
Administrators and controllers notice a reduced workload in controlling guest users.
With the lifecycle feature, organizations can make sure that guests are removed as soon as the collaboration has ended, which helps prevent uncontrolled growth.
External User Manager not only manages guest users in Teams but also in M365 groups.
Success factors
External User Manager is the right choice for our clients as it helps them keep control of guest users in their environment, while still enabling their employees to collaborate with externals. Lifecycles automatically remove inactive guest users or trigger an access review. Employees are able to request invitations for new guest users, which approvers check first.
Our clients' administrators save time every day due to an automated process for guest users. The internal IT departments are now able to maintain their environment with minimum effort. And most important of all, data protection and overall security is greatly enhanced.
