Now Microsoft allows you to add guests to Office 365 groups

Microsoft has rolled out a new feature in Office 365 which will make it easier for professionals to collaborate with people outside their organisation.

The new guest access feature enables you to include people outside of your company in an Office 365 group. Access to Office 365 Groups, the group membership service that provides a single identity for teams in Office 365, can be granted by any group owner.

Guests can have access to group conversations, files, calendar invitations, and the group notebook.

"We are rolling out guest access functionality in phases. Once added, guests receive a welcome email, are granted access to group files in SharePoint Online, begin receiving email messages and calendar invites sent to the group, and can access the group in Office on the web and the Outlook Groups mobile application. They also have automatic access to cloud-based file attachments.", said Christophe Fiessinger, senior program manager for the Office 365 Groups team in a blogpost.

Guests can be added or managed by Office 365 users by using Outlook on the web. The guests can leave the group at any time by clicking on the link in the footer of all group emails and calendar invites.

The 'guest access' feature works for both corporate and consumer domains.

Microsoft last month acquired artificial intelligence (AI)-based scheduling service Genee to integrate into Office 365.