Collaborate with guests in a Viva Engage community
External collaboration is a key ingredient for the success of any organization. Viva Engage guests allow you to call in experts, such as consultants or vendors from outside your organization. Users can invite guests to a community and quickly start a rich conversation by sharing access to files and other community resources. This ease-of-use makes external collaboration one of the most used features in Viva Engage today.
Note
Native Mode is strongly recommended for reasons of security, compliance, and Microsoft 365 integration. For more information, see Overview of Native Mode.
There are two methods for working with external users. The structure of your Viva Engage network determines which method you use. If your Viva Engage network is aligned to Native Mode, you can use the Microsoft Entra Business-to-business (B2B) framework. If your Viva Engage network is not aligned to native mode, you can use the Viva Engage-specific guest framework.
Comparison of guest experiences
| Viva Engage community aligned to Native Mode |
Viva Engage community NOT not aligned to Native Mode |
|---|---|
| Guests are powered by the B2B guest framework | Guests are powered by the Viva Engage guest framework |
| External users can be added as guests to any Viva Engage community | External users can be added as guests only in external communities |
| Only community admins can add guests to a community | Group members can add guests to external communities |
| Guests can be added to communities in Viva Engage networks hosted in both the United States and EU Geo regions | Guests can be added to external communities in Viva Engage networks hosted in the United States. Viva Engage communities in EU Viva Engage networks can't host external communities' regions. |
| Simplified guest modes: External users can be added as guests to Viva Engage communities. The scope of access for guest mode is the community boundary. | Three guest modes are supported: thread-level guests, community level guests, and network-level guests with access scoped to a Viva Engage thread, community, and network respectively. |
Learn more about guests and external networks
The Viva Engage guest feature allows organizations to call in experts such as vendors, suppliers, or consultants from outside the organization. Viva Engage networks aligned to Native Mode use Microsoft Entra Business-Business (AzureAD-B2B), a secure, compliant external collaboration framework, to power guests To learn more about AzureAD-B2B guests in Viva Engage, visit Work with Microsoft Entra B2B guests in Viva Engage communities.
To work with external users, if your organization isn’t using native mode, you can create an external group. You must create the group as an external group--you can't change an existing internal group to be an external group. To learn more about guests in non-native Viva Engage networks, visit Work with external groups in Viva Engage networks not aligned to native mode.