Tutorial

We can't set up the conversation because your organisations are not set up to talk to each other

Not our usual content, but this pops up often enough that we thought a quick write-up would be helpful for us to share to our customers and for anyone else.

Eddie Zhang

• 2 min read
We can't set up the conversation because your organisations are not set up to talk to each other

The 'External access' setting controls which org you're allowed to communicate externally with in Teams.

Both orgs need to have compatible (allowed communication) settings to resolve this error. If you're normally able to start Teams chats with other orgs without issue the configuration change normally needs to be made on the receiving org.

The setting can be configured to one of the following but in most cases we see customers have 'Allow only specific external domains' configured which means they just need to add our domain to the allow list to permit communication.

  • Allow all external domains - The default setting in Teams, and it lets users in your organization find, call, chat, and set up meetings with people external to your organization in any domain.In this scenario, your users can communicate with all external domains that are running Teams or Skype for Business so long as the other organization has also enabled external access.
  • Allow only specific external domains - By adding domains to an Allow list, you limit external access to only the allowed domains. Once you set up a list of allowed domains, all other domains are blocked.
  • Block specific domains - By adding domains to a Block list, you can communicate with all external domains except the ones you've blocked. Once you set up a list of blocked domains, all other domains are allowed.
  • Block all external domains - Prevents users in your organization from finding, calling, chatting, and setting up meetings with people external to your organization in any domain.
IT Admins - Manage external meetings and chat with people and organizations using Microsoft identities - Microsoft Teams
For IT admins - Learn how to configure chat and meetings with people outside your organization who use Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft Teams Essentials, or Skype.
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Configuration Change

To change this setting browse to the Teams admin center and change the external access setting.

If Allow only specific external domains is configured and you're working with us:

Add projectblack.io to the list of allowed specific domains.