Chat with external people
You can chat with people outside your own organisation when they too have an active meil account — customers and partners who use meil, for example. Chat is closed to everyone else: there is no guest access, no email invitation and no bridge to other chat services.
Who you can find
The search in New conversation and Add people finds active meil accounts:
- Colleagues in your own workspace you can always find, by name or email address.
- External meil accounts you can find when your administrator allows it. Type the full meil address (for example
navn@firma.no) or search by name.
People outside your organisation are marked External in the search results. If the search comes back empty, you'll see “No available person found with that address.” The person then either has no active meil account, is hidden from the directory, or has no access to Chat in their own workspace.
Personal meil accounts can always find and chat with other meil accounts.
Conversations with external people
A direct message with an external person is end-to-end encrypted like every other direct message, and rooms work the same way whoever is in them. See Encryption.
If you share a document from Files in a conversation, the participants get read access to the original. That goes for external participants too — see Files, images and audio.
Check the participant list before you share
Open Group info to see who is in the room before you share documents or sensitive information in a room with external people.
What your administrator controls
The settings live under Identity at admin.onmeil.eu and apply to the whole workspace. See Identity.
| Setting | Where | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Allow chat with external people | Identity → Settings | Lets members find and start chats with active meil accounts outside the organisation. When it is off, the search finds colleagues only, and you get the message “Your administrator has turned off chat with people outside the organisation.” if you try to start a conversation with an external person. |
| Access to the Chat service | Identity → Access overview | An administrator can limit Chat to particular access groups. Without access you see “Chat isn't available for this account.”, and other people won't find you in the search either. |
Allow chat with external people is on by default. If it is switched off later, you can't start new conversations with external people or add them to rooms; conversations that already exist don't disappear from your list.
Common questions
Can I invite a customer who has no meil account? No. Chat requires an active meil account. Use email or a video meeting with a guest link instead.
How can I tell whether someone is external once the conversation has been created? The External marker shows in the search results when you start the conversation or add people. Open Group info to see who is in a room.
Can external people join project rooms?Project rooms (beta) take their members from the workspace's own user list, not from the chat search.