Enabling Teams for Education for Google users without an Exchange mailbox
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Many of our customers operate in mixed environments where both O365 and Google solutions are used. Customers in this situation can still benefit from the powerful collaboration and communication tools made available within Microsoft Teams.
The following guide provides details about how administrators can set up Microsoft Teams for Google users without an Exchange mailbox within their environment. Any experience limitations related to this set up are also documented below.
Note
This document assumes that Teams has already been enabled at the tenant level. Click here if you need more information on Getting Started with Teams..
Setting up Microsoft Teams for Google users
Step 1: Create a mail user account through the Exchange Admin Center.
Users do not need to have the Exchange product license enabled in order to use Teams. Instead admins should ensure that users are created as mail users within their Exchange environment. The external email address for these users should be set to their Google email address. This will ensure that email and calendar invites sent via Teams will arrive in their Gmail inbox.
You can do this through the Exchange admin center. Learn more about managing mail users in Exchange.
Step 2: Assign Office 365 and product licenses for the user.
Users who leverage Google services for mail and other capabilities will need to be provisioned with an Office 365 license before they can apply Teams capabilities. Learn more about assigning Office 365 licenses to users..
After a user license is created, ensure that the following product licenses are enabled to ensure core Teams capabilities are functional:
- Microsoft Teams
- SharePoint
- Office 365 Pro Plus
Learn more about managing user access to Teams, including how to manage add-on licensing for Audio Conferencing and Phone System capabilities.
If users desire to use additional services such as Stream, Planner and Forms, then product licenses for these services must also be enabled separately.
Step 3: Make calendar availability information visible between Exchange and Google users.
If you would like to make calendar availability information visible between Exchange and Google users in your environment, you can leverage Google Calendar Interop to do so.
If Google Calendar Interop is not enabled then users will be unable to view the availability of Google calendar users from within Teams.
Step 4: Reduce the number of account names users need to remember.
After following the steps above, users will have separate Google and Office 365 accounts. Using Google credentials directly in Teams is not supported. If you would like to sync your users’ Office 365 and Google accounts to reduce the number of account names a user needs to remember, you can do so through Microsoft Entra Connect or by integrating GSuite with Microsoft Entra ID.
Expected capabilities and limitations
After the setup steps above are taken, Teams capabilities and limitations should be as follows:
| Area | Feature | Enabled | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| User notifications and views |
Activity Feed |
Yes |
N/A |
| Notifications |
Yes |
Must be mail-enabled user |
|
| Notification Email |
No |
Notifications emails from both Teams and SharePoint may be blocked by Google due to DMARC policy. In these cases, users will not receive notifications in their Gmail inbox. Learn more about how Exchange and Teams interact. |
|
| Presence |
Yes |
||
| Chat and calling |
Private 1.1 chat, call and video call |
Yes |
|
| Private group chat, call and video call |
Yes |
||
| File sharing in private chats and calls |
Yes |
SharePoint license required |
|
| Adding tabs in private chats |
Yes |
||
| Adding contact to a private chat and calls |
Yes |
||
| Team |
Create a team |
Yes |
|
| Add a member to team |
Yes |
||
| Add a channel |
Yes |
||
| Conversation in Channel |
Yes |
||
| Teams Notifications |
Yes |
||
| Threaded conversation |
Yes |
||
| Co-authoring documents within a team |
Yes |
SharePoint license required |
|
| Hiding a team |
Yes |
||
| Leave a team |
Yes |
||
| Join team from a code |
Yes |
||
| Meetings |
View “Meetings” tab |
No |
|
| Create a new meeting |
No |
||
| Receive a meeting invite from an Exchange user |
Yes |
Invite subject and Teams meeting join link may appear in unexpected format. |
|
| Respond to an invite from an Exchange user (ex. accept, decline, tentative) |
Yes |
||
| Response from Google user visible to meeting organizer |
Yes |
||
| See Google user availability within a Teams meeting item |
Yes |
Google Calendar Interop is required |
|
| See Exchange user availability within Google calendar |
Yes |
Google Calendar Interop is required |
|
| Start a meeting within a channel using “Meet now” |
Yes |
||
| Scheduling a meeting within a channel |
No |
||
| Assignments |
Receive Assignments within a team |
Yes |
|
| Turn in and manage assignments within a team |
Yes |
||
| See grading information within a team |
Yes |
||
| Governance |
eDiscovery 1.1 chat |
Yes |
|
| eDiscovery teams and channel conversations |
Yes |
||
| Data loss prevention (DLP) in 1.1 chat |
Yes |
||
| Data loss prevention (DLP) in teams and channel conversations |
Yes |
||
| Data loss prevention (DLP) in Files |
Yes |
SharePoint license required |