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Grant access to external team members and guests.

Quick reference

Grant Access to Plans

Grant access to a plan for guest members (outside the organization). 

When to use

We need to grant access to guest members whenever we want to add someone who is outside of our organization. That might be a client, a customer, a third-party vendor, or a friend or family member. 

Instructions

There is a distinction in Planner between plan members and guest members. Plan members are people within our organization, who live on the same network and have the same email address domain. It is very simple to add people from within our organization to any plan we create in Planner. 

However, there might be occasions when we need to grant access to our plan to someone who is not within our organization. Maybe we need a third-party supplier to be able to see the plan. Maybe we need a client to be able to view the plan. 

These types of people are not on our network. We can still grant them access to the plan, but they are considered guest members. 

The Catch?

The catch here is that when we add guest members, we don't add them in Microsoft Planner. Instead, we need to add them to the corresponding Microsoft 365 group in Outlook. 

Add Guests to a Microsoft 365 Group

We start this process in Microsoft Planner so we need to ensure we have the plan open and in Board view. 

  • At the top of the plan, click the three dots next to Schedule. 
  • Click on Members. 

This opens up the People section in Outlook and it jumps us directly to the Microsoft 365 group for this plan. This is where we need to add any guest members. 

  • Click on Add members. 
  • Type the external member's full email address. 
  • Click Add. 

The guest member will be added to the group. We know who is a guest member because it will say (Guest) in brackets next to their name. 

Update Planner

Once we have added the guest to the Microsoft 365 group, we need to refresh Planner to update the changes. 

  • Go back to Planner. 
  • Refresh the browser by clicking the refresh icon or pressing CTRL+R. 
  • Click the + icon next to the plan member's photos. 
  • The guest member will now show in the list. 

Hints & tips

  • If the member list does not update immediately with the name of the guest, refresh the browser by pressing CTRL+R. 
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  • 00:03 Earlier on in this course,
  • 00:05 we talked about how we can add members to our project plan.
  • 00:09 And we walked through the process of adding members that exist within our
  • 00:13 organization.
  • 00:15 And I told you that a bit later on in this section,
  • 00:18 I'd be showing you how you can add guests members to your project plan.
  • 00:22 So that might be people like third party suppliers or vendors, or
  • 00:26 maybe even clients and customers.
  • 00:28 So that's what we going to do in this particular lesson, because it does differ
  • 00:33 quite a bit from the way that we add members from within our organization.
  • 00:37 Let's just clarify what we mean by that.
  • 00:39 Somebody outside of our organization is somebody who isn't on our company network,
  • 00:44 and who doesn't share the same email address.
  • 00:47 So if you work at Microsoft, for example,
  • 00:49 everybody in general will have the email address of microsoft.com.
  • 00:53 Somebody who has a Gmail email address is not on your network.
  • 00:57 Now, these people outside of your organization are considered to be
  • 01:02 guest users in Microsoft Planner.
  • 01:05 And guest users have limited functionality when they're working within plans,
  • 01:09 but they do have access to do things like view the plan.
  • 01:13 So let's take a look at how we can add guests into Microsoft Planner.
  • 01:17 Now, you might be inclined to go straight away to the Members' drop-down just here,
  • 01:22 and attempt to add a guest in this way.
  • 01:24 And the guests that I'm going to add is let's say, it's one of my friends.
  • 01:28 Now, we'll say that this isn't a real live person email address.
  • 01:31 This is just a test Gmail account that I've created for
  • 01:34 the purpose of this training session.
  • 01:36 Now, look what happens if I try and type in this Gmail email address,
  • 01:40 it says no results found.
  • 01:42 And if I hit Enter, it's just not going to add them as a member,
  • 01:46 and that's because we need to do this in a completely different way.
  • 01:51 So let's delete out Jen's email address, because if we want to add
  • 01:56 external members, we need to add them to the Microsoft 365 Group.
  • 02:01 Now, the quickest way to jump across to our Microsoft 365 Group is to click
  • 02:06 the three dots in the middle here and select Conversation.
  • 02:09 Once again, that's going to open up Outlook Online and
  • 02:13 jump us straight to the Microsoft 365 Group for this particular project.
  • 02:18 So from here, what we need to do is where we
  • 02:20 have Software Development Project at the top, we can see four members.
  • 02:25 If I click on 4 members, it's going to jump me across into the settings,
  • 02:29 and I can see the current members of this particular group.
  • 02:33 So now, I can click the Add members button on the right-hand side, and
  • 02:37 this is where I can type in the email address.
  • 02:40 So now, it's popping up underneath that if I add this person,
  • 02:44 they're going to be added as a guest, which is absolutely fine.
  • 02:47 So let's select them.
  • 02:49 And it says, you're adding a guest to this group,
  • 02:52 they'll have limited access to group resources.
  • 02:55 And we can also see a little bit more information about guest access on
  • 02:59 the left-hand side.
  • 03:00 So where it says, who is a guest?
  • 03:03 It says, guests are people from outside your organization.
  • 03:06 Guess will get all email messages sent to the group in their inbox and
  • 03:11 can collaborate on files in the group.
  • 03:13 So that's talking about the amount of access they have to this particular
  • 03:17 Microsoft 365 Group.
  • 03:18 So I'm going to click on Add just to make sure that we have Jen added, and
  • 03:23 let's close this window down.
  • 03:24 So I can see Jen Green has been added into the Microsoft 365 Group.
  • 03:30 So now, all we need to do is jump back across to Microsoft Planner.
  • 03:34 And we need to refresh our browser for it to pick up this change.
  • 03:38 I'm using Microsoft Edge, so
  • 03:40 I can click the Refresh icon at the top, or alternatively, press Ctrl+R.
  • 03:44 So let's refresh, and what we should now find is if we go over to the Members'
  • 03:50 drop down, we should see our guest listed with all of the other members.
  • 03:55 And for Jen, she will receive an email letting her know that she's been
  • 03:59 added to this project plan.
  • 04:01 So that's how you can add guests or
  • 04:03 people outside of your organization into a project plan.
  • 04:07 Just add them to the Microsoft 365 Group first, and then refresh your browser.

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