Configure guest user settings in Discovery (preview)

With guest access, you can provide access to eDiscovery cases to people outside your organization. You can invite guests users to eDiscovery (preview) cases just like you can invite guests into your Teams environment.

A guest is someone who doesn't have a work or school account with your organization. For example, guests can include external partners, vendors, suppliers, or consultants. Anyone who isn't part of your organization can be added as guest for an eDiscovery case. This access means that anyone with a Microsoft Entra account or personal email account (Outlook, Gmail, or others) can participate as a guest in eDiscovery and have access to specific eDiscovery cases.

Guest access in eDiscovery uses Azure B2B technology, which depends on an organization-wide Azure collaboration setting. When you invite a guest to eDiscovery, a guest account is created for them in Microsoft Entra ID. They're covered by the same compliance and auditing protection as other Microsoft 365 users. Guest access is subject to Microsoft Entra ID and Microsoft 365 service limits.

Set up guest access

Setting up guest access in eDiscovery requires configuring other settings in Microsoft Entra ID. To enable access to invite guests to eDiscovery cases, complete the following steps:

1. Check the B2B external collaboration settings to ensure that collaboration with guests isn't blocked. If the Guest invite settings is set to No one in the organization can invite guests including admins then inviting guests into eDiscovery is disabled. Contact your system administrator to ensure this setting is properly configured. You can view and update the collaboration setting using the Authorization Policy API.

2. Depending on the specific configuration in Step 1, eDiscovery administrators may or may not need additional roles to approval a guest access request submitted from the eDiscovery user.

   • If the Anyone in the organization can invite guest including guests and nonadmins (most inclusive) or Member users and users assigned to specific admin roles can invite guests including guests with member permission options are selected, then eDiscovery administrators can approve invitation requests without extra roles.
   • If Only users assigned to specific admin roles can invite guests is selected, then the eDiscovery administrator who would approve the invitation request requires the Invite guest role to approve and trigger the invitation email to the guest. See the Assign Microsoft Entra roles to users article for guidance on how to add the Guest Inviter role to users. If you prefer to use PowerShell to add this role, see Assign the Guest Inviter role to a user.

3. To enable collaboration with guest reviewers from other Microsoft 365 cloud environments, including if you're a Microsoft Azure Government organization, both your organization and the guest’s organization must enable specific connection settings. For detailed configuration guidance, see Collaborate with guests from other Microsoft 365 cloud environments.

Enable guest access in eDiscovery (preview)

eDiscovery admins must enable guest access in eDiscovery before they can invite users as guests.

To enable guest access for guests, complete the following steps:

1. In the Microsoft Purview portal, navigate to Settings > eDiscovery > Guest users.
2. Toggle Guest access to On.

Now eDiscovery managers and admins can initiate the guest invitation process within any eDiscovery case. To configure guest access to specific cases, see Learn about access and permission settings in eDiscovery (preview) cases.