Microsoft Teams enables standard chat between work and personal accounts

The new shared chat feature in Teams that Microsoft announced at its Ignite conference last month is now available to desktop, web, and mobile users. The new feature brings Teams for work and Teams for consumer chat interoperability, and it will be enabled by default according to the Microsoft 365 Admin center.

The Shared Chat feature builds on the existing remote access capability in Teams that allows users to chat, call, and set up meetings with anyone outside their organization. This release provides the ability to invite Teams personal account users using a phone number or email address, while keeping communications secure and within organizational policies.

It’s important to note that some organizations may want to disable this setting for all users or individual users in their tenants, as it could potentially lead to data loss, spam, and phishing attacks.

To disable this feature, IT admins need to go to the Teams admin center and click Users >> Remote Access. Finally, uncheck the “People in my organization can communicate with Teams users whose accounts aren’t managed by an organization” toggle. There is also an option to prevent consumers from contacting people with a work account.

The Shared Chat feature is gradually rolling out to all Microsoft Teams, so it may not be available to everyone right away. Microsoft Teams is already interoperable with Skype for consumers, so adding Microsoft Teams personal accounts to the mix makes sense. Microsoft Teams for consumers is already built into Windows 11 with the new Chat app, and the fact that this app lets consumers interact with Teams users in organizations is a pretty big deal.

Source: onmsft