Ever needed to provide controlled access to users who are external to the organization, such as vendors or contractors? Guest access is a popular feature request and we are pleased to announce it’s upcoming beta release expected in v5.14 (August 16, 2019)!
Guest access will be available to E10 and E20 Enterprise customers, through a new type of Guest user account that only has access to the channel or channels they are invited to. Guest accounts are restricted from finding and joining public channels and from creating direct messages or group messages with users that are outside of the channels they are assigned.
The Guest account feature also includes:
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An updated invitation flow. To accommodate a new option to invite guests via email, we took the opportunity to reimagine the invitation flow and experience. When inviting guests, you can assign one or more channels that the guest will be able to interact in and provide a custom message with the email invitation. Guests will use email to authenticate and login to Mattermost.
- A new guest role. Permissions and guest roles have been added in the backend in v5.10 and v5.12 in preparation of this feature to help manage guest restrictions in the system.
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Guest identification and badging. Guests will be identified with a badge on their profile within a channel and when searching in user lists, so that members can easily identify guests within the system.
- Guest management. Admins will be able to promote guests to users and demote users to guests if they choose. They will be able to view guest users via System Console > Users as well.
Support for additional authentication methods other than email for guests will be provided in a later release.
We would love to hear feedback in the comments or you can join us in the Guest Accounts channel on our community server.