Microsoft Support - Owner, member and guest capabilities

 

Every member in Teams has a role, and each one has different permissions. 

  • Owners
    Team owners manage certain settings for the team. They add and remove members, add guests, change team settings, and handle administrative tasks. There can be multiple owners in a team.
  • Members
    Members are the people in the team. They talk with other team members in conversations. They can view and usually upload and change files. They also do the usual sorts of collaboration that the team owners have permitted.
  • Guests
    Guests are people from outside of your organization that a team owner invites, such as partners or consultants to join the team. Guests have fewer capabilities than team members or team owners, but there's still a lot they can do.

The following table shows the capabilities available for each role:

Capability

Owner

Member

Guest

Create a channel

X

X

X

Participate in a private chat

X

X

X

Participate in a channel conversation

X

X

X

Share a channel file

X

X

X

Share a chat file

X

X

 

Add apps (such as tabs, bots, or connectors)

X

X

 

Can be invited via any work or school account for Microsoft 365

 

 

X

Delete or edit posted messages

X

X

X

Discover and join public teams

X

X

 

View org chart

X

X

 

Add or remove members and guests

X

 

 

Set team permissions for channels, tabs, and connectors

X

 

 

Change the team picture

X

 

 

Add guests to a team

X

 

 

Auto-show channels for the whole team

X

 

 

Control @[team name] mentions

X

 

 

Allow @channel or @[channel name] mentions

X

 

 

Allow usage of emoji, GIFs, and memes

X

 

 

 


Compare external and guest access

The following tables show the differences between using external access (federation) and guests. In both cases, people outside your organization are identified to your users as being external.

Things your users can do

Users can

External access users

Guests

Chat with someone in another organization

Yes

Yes

Call someone in another organization

Yes

Yes

See if someone from another organization is available for call or chat

Yes

Yes1

Search for people in other organizations

Yes2

No

Share files

No

Yes

See the out-of-office message of someone in another organization

No

Yes

Block someone in another organization

No

Yes

Use @mentions

Yes3

Yes

Things people outside your organization can do

People outside your organization can

External access users

Guests

Access Teams resources

No

Yes

Be added to a group chat

Yes

Yes

Be invited to a meeting

Yes

Yes

Make private calls

Yes

Yes5

View the phone number for dial-in meeting participants

No4

Yes

Use IP video

Yes

Yes5

Use screen sharing

Yes3

Yes5

Use meet now

No

Yes5

Edit sent messages

Yes3

Yes5

Delete sent messages

Yes3

Yes5

Use Giphy in conversation

Yes3

Yes5

Use memes in conversation

Yes3

Yes5

Use stickers in conversation

Yes3

Yes5

Presence is displayed

Yes

Yes

Use @mentions

Yes3

Yes


1 Provided that the user has been added as a guest and is signed in with the guest account.
2 Only by email or Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) address.
3 Supported for 1:1 chat for Teams Only to Teams Only users from two different organizations.
4 By default, external participants can't see the phone numbers of dialed-in participants. If you want to maintain the privacy of these phone numbers, select Tones for Entry/exit announcement type (this prevents the numbers from being read out by Teams). To learn more, read Turn on or off entry and exit announcements for meetings in Microsoft Teams.
5 Allowed by default, but can be turned off by the Teams admin

Related topics

External access in Teams

Guest access in Teams