Step 5: Create a template
Introduction
Templates specify different guest categories or types and manage the onboarding, compliance monitoring, and offboarding procedures for guests assigned to each template. For instance, if your company differentiates between suppliers, consultants, partners, or customers, you have the flexibility to create a distinct template for each category. This allows you to define customized onboarding, compliance, and offboarding processes for each guest type.
In short, each template offers you the flexibility to manage the following aspects per guest:
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Guest invitation and process ownership: You have full control over determining who can invite guests and who acts as the process owner for the specifig guest type.
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Onboarding, compliance monitoring, and offboarding: These templates empower you to streamline and tailor the processes for guest onboarding, ensure compliance monitoring throughout collaboration, and facilitate seamless offboarding procedures to guarantee the removal of a guest from your environment and access at the conclusion of collaboration.
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Customizing features for users: These settings give you the flexibility to customize the self-service features available in the Teams app. This includes options like enabling or disabling access, facilitating guest deletion, and managing handovers. This empowers users to interact seamlessly with guests of specific types in a user-friendly manner and relaxes your IT.
A template includes the following settings:
- Name, description and status
- Responsibility and access (upcomming)
- Onboarding
- Offboarding
- Permissions in Teams app
To activate the configured policies, templates must be assigned to guests.
Default template
Enable the default template feature to streamline the onboarding process for new guests within Microsoft 365. By designating a template as the default, it ensures automatic integration into the native invitation features of Microsoft 365, including Teams, SharePoint, Groups, and more.
When utilizing the native invitation feature, the default template and its associated policies will be automatically applied to invited guests. This not only expedites the guest onboarding process but also ensures consistency in adherence to predefined policies.
Moreover, the system will intelligently identify the host who initiated the invitation and assign them as the responsible host for the respective guest.
To activate this feature, navigate to "Template" and mark the corresponding template as "Default" using the action available in the toolbar.
Create a new template
How to start?
- Open the admin center at https://admin.guests.one (opens in a new tab).
- Navigate to Templates.
- Click on "Add" to create a new template.
- Provide a name for the template, e.g., "Partner".
- Add a description to understand the purpose of this template, e.g., "Template for employees working for a partner company".
Make template available for your users
To enable the template and make it available for your users during the invitation process, simply toggle the switch "Make this template available for your users" to the "Yes" position.
Define responsibility and access (upcomming)
In the "Responsibility and Access" section, you can define who is responsible for this template and who has the authority to create new guests based on this template.
Specify a Service Owner who will receive notifications in case any issues arise with a guest assigned to this template.
Specify user/group permissions for inviting guests based on this template. If the template should be accessible to all users, leave the field empty.
This feature will be available in a future phase.
Setup the onboarding process
In the onboarding section, you can selecte the invitation flow that users must undergo when inviting a new guest.
Select the invitation flow. If no invitation flow is available in the list, go to Onboarding > Invitation flow and create an invitation flow first. Return here once you've completed that step.
Configure a display name policy to manage the name displayed in Microsoft 365. The display name policy ensures that names are generated according to the specified pattern and automatically resets the display name to your defined pattern if it changes during the initial login, based on the home tenant settings of the invited guest, especially if they are affiliated with a Microsoft 365 organization.
The feature to automatically assign resources such as Groups, Teams, Sites or Apps will be available in a future phase.
Setup the offboarding process
In the offboarding section, you can choose the renewal policy you want to apply to guests with this template.
Select the offboarding policy to automatically remove or block guests assigned to this template upon the conclusion of collaboration. If no offboarding policy exists, go to the Offboarding section and create a policy before returning here. If you prefer not to assign an offboarding policy, you can skip this step.
Configure Teams app features
Customize the features available to hosts when managing guests using this template within the Teams app. The following settings are available:
- Block and unblock assigned guests: When deactivated, hosts cannot block or unblock their guests themselves.
- Delete assigned guests: When deactivated, hosts cannot delete their guests.
- Change or transfer the host: When deactivated, hosts cannot transfer guests to another host, for instance, when leaving the company.
- Hide group membership: When deactivated, users can see the group membership of guests in the Teams app.
Continue with Step 6: Cleanup existing guests
After creating the template, you can proceed to Step 6: Cleanup existing guests.