Why This Web Part Exists

The Hidden Gap

A guest clicks “Accept” on your Microsoft 365 invitation. A Microsoft Entra guest user object is created in your tenant.

What is not guaranteed: a clear next step or support contact.

The sponsor relationship may already exist in Entra, but it remains invisible to the guest. There is no built-in SharePoint experience that shows them who their sponsors are, let alone how to contact them.

Whether Microsoft Teams works for this guest depends on one central fact: has this guest already been added to at least one Teams team in your tenant, or not?

That creates a communication gap: the organisation may already know who is responsible for the guest, but the guest cannot see any of it.

Why Landing Pages Matter

In many governance-driven invitation flows, the redirect after invitation redemption never becomes a deliberate guest journey. If the workflow doesn’t point the guest somewhere better, one common landing point is My Apps — a portal built for application discovery and launch, not for explaining who is responsible for the guest or what to do next.

Technically, a tenant-scoped Microsoft Teams deep link is not hard to generate. Microsoft Graph API invitation flows can set a custom redirect URL, and governance tools often can too. But a Teams link only helps once Teams guest functionality is actually available for that account. If no team membership exists yet, the guest may accept the invitation successfully while Teams guest functionality is still unavailable.

That is why a SharePoint guest landing page is pragmatic. It is a stable, controllable first destination that can work before Teams onboarding is finished. Out of the box, SharePoint can only show static guidance and generic links. It cannot surface the guest’s actual sponsors.

Sponsor vs Inviter

In many Microsoft Entra B2B guest onboarding flows, the inviter and the sponsor are not the same record.

The inviter is whoever triggered the invitation email or workflow. The sponsor is the person or group recorded in Microsoft Entra’s Sponsors field for that guest relationship. In standard Microsoft Entra invitation flows, the inviter becomes the default sponsor unless someone else is specified; SharePoint sharing invitations to brand-new external users are a documented exception. Guests usually see the inviter first because that name appears in the mail trail. For ongoing support, access questions, and onboarding context, the sponsor information is usually the more relevant signal.

That difference matters on a SharePoint guest landing page. If the page only repeats the inviter name, the sponsor relationship is still invisible.

Read the full sponsor vs inviter explanation.

Two Paths, Two Outcomes

Directly added to a Microsoft Teams team

An employee adds an external contact directly to a team, and Microsoft sends the invitation behind the scenes. Once the guest accepts and that first team membership is in place, Teams guest functionality becomes available in your tenant.

The guest is not just in Entra. They also have a real Teams entry point.

Via a governance process or the Microsoft Entra admin center

A lifecycle governance platform, a script, or an Entra admin workflow creates the guest account formally. The account exists in Entra, but no Teams team has been assigned yet.

The guest exists in Entra. Teams guest functionality is not there yet.

flowchart TD
    A(["Guest accepts invitation"])
    A --> B["Added directly to\na Teams team"]
    A --> C["Via governance process\nor Entra Admin Center"]
    B --> D(["Team membership exists\nTeams guest functions available ✓"])
    C --> E(["Entra account only\nNo Teams guest state yet"])
    E --> F(["Without this web part:\ncontact actions may look ready,\nbut not work yet ✗"])

This state is invisible to the guest unless something surfaces it explicitly.

What the Guest Sees

Without Guest Sponsor Info, a SharePoint landing page usually doesn’t answer the guest’s actual questions:

Question	Without this web part
Who are my sponsors?	Not visible to the guest
Who are my backup sponsors?	Not visible to the guest
How do I reach them?	Not visible to the guest
Is there manager context that helps me orient myself?	Not visible to the guest
Is Microsoft Teams already ready for contact?	Not visible to the guest
If a custom contact action exists	It may look ready even though Teams guest functionality is not ready yet

There is no built-in explanation telling the guest whether the action is unavailable, misconfigured, or simply not ready for their account yet.

With Guest Sponsor Info, that abstract relationship becomes a real, visible contact surface for the guest:

What the Web Part Does

Guest Sponsor Info sits on the SharePoint landing page guests reach after accepting an invitation. It does three things:

1. Shows sponsors — the internal sponsor contacts assigned in Microsoft Entra for the guest relationship. That relationship already exists in Entra, but the guest could not previously see it for themselves. The web part turns it into names, faces, titles, and actual contact options on the landing page. No per-guest configuration. No manual updates when sponsors change.

2. Shows backup sponsors and optional manager context — the guest does not just see the one person who happened to invite them. They can also see replacement sponsors and selected manager information that makes the contact structure easier to understand.

3. Detects Teams readiness — if Teams guest access is not ready yet, the web part detects this and responds: chat and call buttons are disabled, and a clear status message explains the situation. The guest sees a face, a name, and an honest status — not an action that looks ready but is not.

A guest whose Teams access is still being provisioned can reach their sponsor by email and knows that Teams is on its way. Even after Teams is working, the web part still adds value: Teams guest access does not surface Entra sponsor metadata on its own.

This page is deliberately about the guest-facing last mile. Guest Sponsor Info can only show what an upstream process has already decided: who the sponsor is, whether backup sponsors exist, and whether the guest is actually brought to the landing page instead of My Apps. It does not replace the governance layer behind invitations, redirects, sponsor ownership, and lifecycle changes. If you need that upstream layer as well, you either build it yourself on top of Microsoft Graph invitations and automation, or you use a product such as EasyLife 365 Collaboration.