How it works

The principle behind Guests is simple: it's the end users who collaborate and therefore know their guests. They are the ones who truly understand their guests and can determine whether a guest and its access for collaboration are still necessary or not. This is why we designed Guests to empower end users with the possibility of managing their guests.

However, a self-service collaboration organization requires guidelines concerning security, data protection, governance, and the lifecycle. To fulfill this need, Guests offers policies that empower administrators to automate guest governance throughout their entire lifecycle — from onboarding... to collaboration... to offboarding.

Admin journey

The journey for administrators using Guests for guest management is a strategic process aimed at maintaining a well-organized and secure Microsoft 365 environment. Here's how it unfolds:

• Guest overview
  Upon logging into the Admin center at https://admin.guests.one (opens in a new tab), administrators gain a comprehensive view of all existing guests within their Microsoft 365 tenant. This initial overview allows them to assess the current guest landscape and take the first steps towards tidying up.

• Initial clean-up
  Administrators embark on the journey by conducting an initial clean-up. They identify outdated guest or guests that have never accepted the invitation and ensure that the guest list is streamlined and up-to-date.

• Establishing policies
  To ensure sustained cleanliness and security, administrators create individual onboarding, monitoring, and offboarding policies for guests. These policies outline the necessary steps for inviting guests, overseeing their status during collaboration, and removing guests once collaboration end.

• User-centric approach
  Once the policies are in place, the guest management baton is handed over to the end-users. By deploying the Guests Teams app across the organization, users gain the ability to invite guests in accordance with the predefined policies. This streamlined process eliminates uncertainty and ensures that every guest automatically follows the established guidelines.

• Empowerment and control
  Users can invite guests based on the specified criteria while being well-equipped to maintain governance & lifecycle standards. Additionally, users can exercise control by promptly blocking or deleting guests whenever necessary.

• Collaboration cycle completion
  As collaboration cycles come to an end, the system takes proactive measures. Users are reminded to either extend guest access or proceed with guest removal. This intelligent reminder mechanism ensures that guest accounts are either renewed or responsibly removed, preventing clutter and enhancing security.

In essence, Guests ensures that guests are accurately registered within Entra ID, continually monitored during collaboration, and automatically removed once their purpose is fulfilled. This holistic approach seamlessly combines user engagement, policy enforcement, and automated housekeeping to cultivate a well-maintained and secure Microsoft 365 environment.