Until today, if you had a group chat in Microsoft Teams which contains external (for your Microsoft 365 tenant) users you were unable make a group call. To do so you had to set up a Teams meeting, invite the individuals and bring these together in the scheduled or ad-hoc Teams meeting. This will find gladly an end very soon based on Microsoft’s 365 roadmap feature ID 103042. This month (January 2023) the feature is rolling out.
![](https://3k09.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/image-3.png?w=1024)
It seems like it is already arrived in my tenant. The difference is that I can now click on the phone button. This wasn’t available previously for federated group chats or group chat’s containing external attendees.
![](https://3k09.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/image-5.png?w=1024)
After clicking on the phone button a call is initiated and rings the group chat’s attendees.
Discover similar Microsoft Teams blogs here.
![](https://3k09.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/image-4.png?w=780)
In the call you can now see that there is an external user. Although it looks almost like a meeting it is not, at least it was not initiated as meeting but started via a common Microsoft Teams (group) chat including an external chat participant.
Additional resources
- Microsoft’s 365 roadmap feature ID 103042
- Add or invite people outside your Teams org to a chat – Microsoft Support
- Use guest access and external access to collaborate with people outside your organization – Microsoft Teams | Microsoft Learn
Senior Technology Consultant at abtis
Reference
Kleefeldt, E., 2023, Calling in group chat with external users in Microsoft Teams, Available at: https://erik365.blog/2023/01/16/calling-in-group-chat-with-external-users-in-microsoft-teams/ {Accessed on 14 March 2023]