We had a problem in Microsoft Teams where we could no longer chat with people outside our organisation (external users) anymore. In the box where one would normally type the next part of the conversation we had the message “Due to org policy changes, this chat is no longer available. Continue with Skype for Business”. There was nothing to click, this happened overnight and all of a sudden we could no longer Teams chat with external persons whom we had previously been able to chat quite happily the previous day.

Super frustrated, we started Googling around and went through various different article’s including re installation of the Microsoft Teams, application clearing the Microsoft Teams cache, checking all settings in relation to Teams and Skype for business coexistence or island mode and all looked normal we were in Microsoft Teams only mode as far as our 365 tenant was concerned.

Eventually we had to admit defeat and raise a ticket with Microsoft we spent a few hours with a really helpful lady based in Florida who is looking at other tickets along the same path and she too checked all our settings and found nothing really wrong. She made contact with a colleague who helpfully pointed us it is in a totally new direction and I’m glad to say three days later it was fixed! We can now chat with external users in Teams again.

If you have the same issue and can no longer interact, chat, video or voice call with an external user in the Microsoft Teams desktop app and are faced with the “Due to org policy changes, this chat is no longer available. Continue with Skype for Business” then try these steps and hopefully the issue will be solved for you also.

Step 1:

Log in as Global Admin and go to the Teams Admin Centre in the Office 365 portal then navigate to the Teams Upgrade section on the Menu:

Teams upgrade – Microsoft Teams admin center

Check that your tenant Coexistence mode is set to Teams Only

Due to org policy changes, this chat is no longer available. Continue with Skype for Business

Step 2:

Go to the External Access control panel in the Microsoft Teams Admin Center:

External access – Microsoft Teams admin center

Then set the following items:

  1. Toggle OFF “Users can communicate with other Skype for Business and Teams users”
  2. Toggle OFF “Users can communicate with Skype users’
  3. Add your identity.onmicrosoft.com to the domain ALLOWED list in.
Due to org policy changes, this chat is no longer available. Continue with Skype for Business

 NB. Be aware that once you commit these changes, you will no longer be able to chat or teams with any external users at all so if you are in a situation where some are working and some are not then after this point none will work but don’t worry this is only a temporary situation.

Step 3:

Wait three to four hours. This may seem odd but don’t worry it isn’t, behind the scenes the cogs need to turn in Microsoft backend systems and believe it or not it really does take time. If you reload the Teams desktop application after this you should see that all presence information is unavailable for external users and that no chats are possible with them.

Step 4:

Switch both toggles back on allowing uses to communicate with Skype for business and Skype uses then remove the whitelist entry in Step 2.

Due to org policy changes, this chat is no longer available. Continue with Skype for Business

Step 5:

Wait 24-48 Hours, then quit and relaunch the Microsoft Teams Application. You should be able to chat with external Teams users again!

This sounds ridiculous but it really did take 48 hours for our system to start working again. I hope this helps you guys out.

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