Microsoft Teams “Chat with Anyone” When Collaboration Outpaces Control

Microsoft’s new Chat with Anyone feature in Teams is designed to make collaboration easier. Users can now start a conversation with anyone simply by entering their email address, even if that person is outside the organization.

It’s a small change in appearance but a big shift in impact. Each new chat automatically creates a guest account in the tenant. The result is faster connection but also more moving parts for governance, security, and compliance to manage.

Microsoft continues to break down barriers to how people work together.
That’s good for productivity, but it raises the bar for control.

When Innovation moves faster than governance

The goal of this new feature is clear: reduce friction, simplify connection, and make Teams feel universal. But every simplification adds a new governance question.

• Who owns the relationship?
• How long should it stay active?
• And where is the record of approval?

Without clear answers, the boundary between collaboration and exposure becomes thin.

This isn’t a problem with Microsoft’s design. It’s a test of how prepared an organization is to handle continuous change.

Builiding control into daily collaboration

The tools to stay secure already exist. Entra ID, Conditional Access, Defender for Office 365, and audit logs all contribute to a strong foundation.

What many organizations still miss is a way to make these controls work together.

The most resilient companies treat governance as part of daily operations, not as a separate audit exercise. Every guest has a defined owner, a purpose, and a lifecycle.

When that structure is missing, even a small feature change can create unnecessary complexity.

Short-term control

For organizations that want to evaluate the impact of Chat with Anyone before enabling it, Microsoft allows administrators to disable the feature through Teams messaging policy settings in PowerShell. The control uses the UseB2BInvitesToAddExternalUsers parameter, which can be turned off at tenant or policy level. This serves as a short-term safeguard while governance policies and approval workflows are reviewed.

Example: Set-CsTeamsMessagingPolicy -Identity 'No Chat with Anyone' -UseB2BInvitesToAddExternalUsers $false

Long term, sustainable control depends on embedding ownership, consent, and lifecycle reviews into every access process rather than relying on feature restrictions.

Five best practices that keep guest access under control

To prepare for a more open Microsoft 365 environment, focus on these practical steps:

1. Assign ownership and purpose before access.
   Every external identity should have a responsible owner and a valid reason to exist.
2. Collect consent within the process.
   Capture acceptance of Terms or NDAs as part of the onboarding flow.
3. Automate reviews and expiry.
   Give every guest account a defined end date and send renewal reminders before that date arrives.
4. Control unmanaged entry points.
   Restrict access from unknown domains, enforce MFA, and monitor guest creation events.
5. Keep a single source of truth.
   Use dashboards or reports to show who invited whom, when, and for what purpose.

These practices create visibility and accountability while keeping collaboration fast and flexible.

How Affirmatic fits in

BCC Affirmatic connects Microsoft’s native controls into one coordinated workflow that manages the entire guest lifecycle.

Approvals, consent, expiry, and reporting are handled in one place, with full context on ownership and access. Nothing falls through the cracks because governance is built into how collaboration actually happens.

With Affirmatic, IT no longer needs to enforce control manually. It becomes part of the process from the first request to the final review.

The next phase of governance

Microsoft’s Chat with Anyone update is a clear sign of where digital collaboration is heading: open, connected, and boundaryless. The challenge for organizations is to make governance just as seamless.

Manual control will never scale with the pace of Microsoft’s ecosystem. What will scale is automation, visibility, and accountability that adapt in real time.

Collaboration and governance no longer compete for priority. They define the same goal which is secure, responsible teamwork that moves as fast as business does.

🎥 Watch our on-demand webinar on Guest Governance in Microsoft 365:
https://www.bcchub.com/en/videos-webinars/bcc-affirmatic-webinar-guest-chaos

About BCC  

BCC Ltd is a trusted global provider of digital transformation solutions, specializing in enterprise IT systems like Microsoft 365. With a commitment to innovation, security, and simplicity, BCC empowers organizations to optimize their IT infrastructure, drive efficiency, and achieve sustainable growth.