Microsoft Teams (work)and Teams (free) users will be able to join each others meeting

Microsoft plans to enable Teams (free) users to join Teams (business/work) meetings and the other way around soon. As a recent Microsoft 365 roadmap update states the rollout should start in February 2024. By this change non-work Teams users or Teams (free) users will be able to directly join a Teams (work) meeting. Also Teams (work) users should be able to join a Team (free) meeting as far as I understood this upcoming change.

Source: Microsoft 365 roadmap feature ID 167326

In the Microsoft Message Center Notification MC704194 also further details are documented. Herein it is stated that the rollout starts in early February 2024 and should be completed by mid-March 2024.

Source: Microsoft 365 Message Center Notification MC704194

As a Teams admin the behavior can be controlled via the External Access settings in the Teams Admin Center. However, that’s tenant-/org-wide.

Anonymous (guest) join for meetings is not affected by this.

If you uncheck “External users with Teams accounts not managed by an organization can contact users in my organization” Teams (Free) users will not be able to search/lookup organizational/your company accounts to communicate with each other. Also, important, unchecking this will cause that Teams (free) users will NOT be able to join meetings hosted by your organizations’ Teams users, as stated in the message center notification.

There are some limitations and things for this use case you and your users should be aware of:

No breakout rooms for Teams (free) users
No PowerPoint Live conentent viewing or sharing for Teams (free) users
No Whiteboarding content viewing, interacting or sharing for Teams (free) users
No ability to start the recording by a Teams (free) user in a Teams (work) user hosted meeting
Teams (free) user can be presenter during the meeting by a Teams (work) user
Teams (free) user cannot added another Teams (free) user to join a meeting hosted by a Teams (work) user
Teams (free) users joining a Teams (work) meeting with a Microsoft account (MSA) by using the Teams app present their profile information in that meeting