You can create a shared channel in Microsoft Teams. Shared channels allow collaboration between people on your team and people outside your team, which can include Cornell faculty, students, and staff, and also alumni or individuals not formally affiliated with the university. People outside Cornell who are added to a shared channel do not have to switch their organizational login to participate.

A team owner can create a shared channel. When a team owner creates a shared channel, they become the channel owner. 

When a team owner creates a shared channel, that team becomes the host team, which the shared channel sits inside. Channel owners can share a channel with the host team or add people to a shared channel without adding them to the host team.

In addition to letting you add colleagues from outside Cornell to the channel, even if you are only working with other Cornell faculty, students, or staff, shared channels may be useful for you. 

If you have a team whose membership is tailored for a specific project, and one aspect of the project requires collaboration with people who are not in the team, you can create a shared channel and add non-team members to only that channel. The expanded group for the shared channel can include existing team members, plus individuals you've added just to that shared channel.

That group can use all of Teams' collaboration features within the shared channel, while the non-team members who were added only to the shared channel will not have access to the rest of the channels in the host team. The shared channel essentially works like a team within a team. 

For more information, see Microsoft's documentation:

• What is a shared channel in Teams?
• Create a shared channel in Teams
• Why use a shared channel versus other channel types in Teams?