Teams Connect can be used alongside Mio channel sync to chat with external partners. This article will discuss ways to configure settings to enable Teams Connect.

Teams Connect is a part of the Microsoft Teams Public Preview, which is a list of features that you must opt into to get access to. Additionally, cross-tenant collaboration must be enabled in the Azure Portal before you can add external contacts to a shared channel. This section will cover how to enable Public Preview and configure cross-tenant collaboration in the Azure Portal.

In a browser, navigate to admin.teams.microsoft.com and login with your Microsoft admin credentials.

Once logged in, click the Teams tab in the left sidebar, then click Teams update policies.

Click the update policy your company uses, and ensure that the setting under Show preview features is set to Follow Office Preview.

Next, you will navigate to portal.azure.com and search for + click "External Identities".

Once in the External Identities dashboard, click Cross-tenant access settings. There will be an option to add organization by clicking Add organization.

You will need to input the Tenant ID or domain name of the organization you are connecting to. Note: the external organization will have to follow these steps to connect to you.

Once you have added the external organization, you have an option to configure the default cross-tenant access settings, or customize settings for the single tenant. In this example, we will customize settings for the individual external organization.

To customize settings, click the Inherited from default link under the Inbound access header.

This will bring you to the Inbound access settings page, where you need to select Customize settings, and Allow access. You can either enable all users or select specific users.

Note: both you and your external partner will need to allow access for both "External users and groups" and "Applications" for Mio to post.

Next, you and your external partner must repeat the steps for the B2B direct connect inbound access settings.

Save settings and navigate back to the Cross-tenant access settings page. Next, click the Inherited from default link under the Outbound access header.

Repeat steps from Inbound access here for both B2B collaboration and B2B direct connect:

Now that the settings are configured, you can go to teams.microsoft.com, or open the Microsoft Teams app, and login with your Microsoft credentials.

Within Microsoft Teams, create a new channel by clicking the three dots next to your team.

Select Add Channel

Then select Shared channel, name the channel, and click create.

Before you click "Create", make sure you check the box that says "Share this channel with everyone on the team" or else Mio will not be able to send messages via the Mio Bot from Slack/Webex/Zoom to MS Teams.

Now you can add external members by typing their email address in the search field:

If you want to add additional users, click Manage Channel and then click "Share with people".

Next, paste in the email addresses of the users you want to add. Then click "Share".