Difference between multi-company groups and Workplace groups with guest accounts
As a system admin, you can choose to have multi-company groups, guest accounts or both when choosing external collaboration settings for your organization.
Multi-company groups enable you to collaborate with people outside of your organization in a shared space.
Guest accounts enable you to invite people from outside your organization who don’t have existing Workplace accounts.| Multi-company groups | Guest accounts | Both | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Creating a group | When creating a new group, you need to set a group up as a multi-company group. This can't be changed later. | Once guest accounts are enabled, group admins can turn guest access on or off anytime from the group settings. | New external collaboration groups will be created as MCGs by default.
Guest access in normal groups can be turned on or off anytime in group settings. |
| Inviting people | People who don’t have an account with another organization will need to create a new Workplace to join multi-company groups. They will be added as externals. | You can invite users without primary Workplace accounts. Invite new guests with a valid email address to groups in your Workplace.They will need to create a Workplace guest account. | You can invite people without a primary Workplace account as guests in normal and multi-company groups. They will need to create a Workplace guest account.
People with a primary Workplace account will be added to multi-company groups as externals. |
| Owning data | Data is shared between your organization and other organizations. | Your organization manages data for guests in your Workplace groups. | Data ownership is mixed. Shared in multi-company groups, and owned by your organizarion in your Workplace groups. |
If only MCGs are enabled, nobody in your Workplace can enable guest access in groups or invite new guests to your Workplace. Existing groups with guest access enabled will continue to work as normal, but new guests cannot be invited to these groups.
If only guest accounts are enabled, you will not be able to create new multi-company groups. Your existing multi-company groups will continue to work as normal, and you will be able to invite guests to them, as well as to normal groups.
From June, if you select the option of Both, you will be able to create new multi-company groups and to enable guest access in other groups. You can invite guests to any of these groups.
You can select guest accounts, multi-company groups or both for your organization’s external collaboration and change this setting at any time.
