iWorkplace Feature Focus: Smart Guest Management

In today’s digital workplace, collaboration extends far beyond your organisation’s walls. Consultants, contractors, suppliers, partners, and volunteers all require access to shared documents and Teams channels within your Microsoft 365 environment to complete their work.

However, as collaboration expands, so does the challenge of guest access management in Microsoft 365. Each external guest represents both an opportunity and a risk. Who invited them? What can they access? And most importantly, who is responsible for removing their access when the project ends?

These are not just IT questions. They are questions of information governance, compliance, and security, and answering them manually is both time-consuming and prone to errors.

Continuing our iWorkplace Feature Focus series—following our deep dive into Smart Provisioning—we turn our attention to Smart Guest Management, an iWorkplace App that brings visibility, automation, and control to how organisations collaborate externally.

What is Smart Guest Management?

Smart Guest Management empowers users to collaborate securely with external guests while maintaining strong Microsoft 365 governance. It is a more innovative, faster, and safer way to manage who comes into your digital workplace.

Think of Smart Guest Management as a digital concierge for your Microsoft 365 environment. It welcomes guests in a controlled, auditable, and automated way, ensuring your organisation stays both collaborative and compliant.

Instead of leaving access unmanaged or relying on spreadsheets to track approvals, Smart Guest Management ensures every guest has the right level of access and that it is removed when no longer needed. It is how modern organisations achieve secure external collaboration: striking a balance between openness and control.

Key Benefits

With Smart Guest Management, you can:

1. Approve or reject guest access requests with one click. The rest, such as provisioning, permissions, and notifications, is automated.
2. Gain visibility and control over all external users in your organisation.
3. Reduce administrative burden by removing manual processes for granting or revoking access.
4. Stay compliant by ensuring every guest’s access aligns with your security and governance policies.

Smart Guest Management captures the iWorkplace philosophy perfectly: simplify governance without slowing people down. It gives your teams the freedom to collaborate with partners while maintaining your data security and ensuring compliance obligations are met.

Because in the modern workplace, the goal is not to keep people out. It’s to let the right people in, the right way.

Stay tuned for the final iWorkplace Feature Focus as we continue to explore how iWorkplace for Microsoft 365 helps you manage, protect, and simplify information at scale.

Did you miss our blogs in this series? Catch up on your reading by clicking on the links below.

1. Smart Metadata – automates metadata application to files and folders.
2. Smart Labels – automates retention and deletion labels.
3. OneDrive Manager – helps control OneDrive overuse.
4. Smart Records – automatic application of data classification and sensitivity labels.
5. Smart Case Files – a practical and intuitive way to manage case files in Microsoft 365.
6. Smart Provisioning – automate the creation of compliant, well-governed workspaces in Microsoft 365.

Got a question about iWorkplace? Visit this page to learn more or request a free 30-minute consultation here.