Teams group sharing with external users - do we need Entra licenses?

Question

I would like some clarity on the Entra External ID licensing and MAU.

Our organization has 2 M365 Basic subscriptions (Global admin account and org. communications account). We have a Teams group which we share with 30-40 external users. They need access to Teams communications and related SharePoint site. Do we need any Entra ID licences for our internal users to make use of the free 50,000 MAU limit? Or is it applied by default without subscribing to anything from Entra? Also, do we need to take any actions in the admin center (like setting up subscriptions) to activate the free MAU tier?

Statement from the documentation is not very clear about this - 'Your first 50,000 MAUs per month are free for both Premium P1 and Premium P2 features.'

Answer 1

Hi @V

As far as Teams is concerned, while you have access to Teams (with a Teams subscription and license), no additional licenses are required if you invite guest users into Teams or use shared channels with external users.

Sharing documents, sites, and teams with people outside your organization uses guest accounts. Guest accounts are a type of account in Microsoft Entra ID that is managed through Microsoft Entra B2B collaboration. They can be used to share resources in your organization with anyone who has an email address, including people in other Microsoft 365 cloud environments. You can manage guest accounts the same way you manage users in your organization. Guests don't require a license for most features of collaboration.

Shared channels are a type of Teams channel that allows you to share with people outside the team, including people in other Microsoft 365 organizations. While shared channels is turned on by default in Teams, external collaboration with shared channels is disabled by default. External collaboration with shared channels uses Microsoft Entra B2B direct connect which allows you to add people from other Microsoft 365 organizations to Teams channels without the need for creating a guest account.

Shared channels have a particular advantage over guest accounts in that they don't require external participants to switch accounts in the Teams desktop client or log into your organization. They can use their regular work or school account and access the channel directly.

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