Chatting with Someone at Another Company (Federated Users)

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🔍 Purpose

This SOP shows you how to send a chat message in Talk to someone who works at a different company. It also covers the two things federation will not do, so you know what to expect before you try.

Federation connects two separate Workspaces. You keep your account on your company's Workspace, they keep theirs on their company's Workspace, and the two servers pass messages back and forth. Nobody creates a second account, and neither company's files move anywhere.

🎯 When to Use This

Use federation when you need to work with someone at a partner company over time, and both companies want to keep their own accounts.

Here is the situation it was built for. Your company is teaming with a partner company on a proposal. Your proposal lead needs to chat with their capture manager most days for six weeks. Federation fits because:

• Their person stays their employee inside the chat. Their name carries their home Workspace, so nobody has to guess who works for whom.
• You do not create a guest account, so there is no extra password to hand out and nothing to clean up when the proposal is over.
• Each company's files stay on its own Workspace. Your documents sit on your Workspace and theirs sit on theirs.

If you only need one outside person for one meeting, a guest account is simpler. Use Creating Talk Workspaces for Proposal Teams for that instead.

🤝 First: The Federation Agreement

Federation between two companies stays off until both companies ask for it in writing.

CyberMyte will not connect two customer Workspaces because a user asked us to. We build the link after someone with signing authority at your company signs the Letter of Authorization for Workspace Tenant Federation. That letter names the one company you want to reach, and the link we build reaches only that company.

This is on purpose. No other customer on our platform can find your people, and you cannot find theirs, until your company has said yes in writing. Every link is point-to-point. There is no shared directory across the platform.

What that means when you sit down to use it:

• If your company has a signed agreement, their people show up when you search in Talk.
• If there is no agreement, they do not turn up at all. Your account is fine. The link just does not exist yet.
• To start a new link, email care@cybermyte.io and ask for the Federation Agreement. To end one, email the same address. We disconnect within five business days of your written notice.

✅ What You'll Need

• Your CyMyCloud Workspace login
• A signed Federation Agreement between your company and theirs
• The other person's name, email address, or Federated Cloud ID

🪪 Your Federated Cloud ID

Your Federated Cloud ID is your address across company lines. It is your username, then an @ sign, then your Workspace address:

jane.smith@workspace.yourcompany.com

To find yours: click your profile picture in the top right, open Personal settings, click Sharing in the left menu, and look under Federated Cloud. There is a copy button next to it. 

Send that string to your contact at the other company when they need to add you.

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🛠️ Step-by-Step Instructions

🟢 Step 1: Open Talk and Start a Conversation

1. Log in to your Workspace.
2. Click the Talk icon in the top menu.
3. Click Create a new conversation at the top of the conversation list.
4. Give it a name. Example: Army IT Support Proposal.

You can also add a federated user to an existing conversation. Open it, click the participants icon, then click Add participants.

🟡 Step 2: Add the Federated User

1. In the participant search box, type their name, their email address, or their full Federated Cloud ID.
2. Look for the result with a small globe icon and the other company's Workspace printed under the name. That is the federated entry.
3. Click it to add them.
4. Finish creating the conversation.

🔵 Step 3: They Accept the Invitation

Federated users do not drop straight into the conversation. They receive an invitation and must accept it.

On their side:

1. Talk notifies them that someone invited them to a federated conversation.
2. They open Talk and click Accept invitation. Pending invitations sit at the top of their conversation list.

Until they accept, they will not see your messages. If your contact tells you nothing ever arrived, have them look for a pending invitation in Talk before you open a ticket.

🟣 Step 4: Chat

Once they accept, chat behaves the way it does with your own coworkers. You can:

• Send messages and edit your own
• Mention people with @
• Reply to one specific message, and react to messages
• Use markdown formatting
• Run a poll
• Start an audio or video call, and share your screen

Federated names always show the other company's Workspace beside them, so you can tell at a glance who is outside your company.

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🚫 What Federation Will Not Do

Two things do not work in a federated conversation. Both are limits inside Nextcloud Talk. They are not settings we can switch on for you.

You cannot attach a file to the chat

In a federated conversation, the upload button and Share from Files are unavailable, and dragging a file into the message box does nothing. If you try anyway, Talk answers: File upload is not available in this conversation.

Nextcloud's wording is that file shares are not currently supported in federated conversations, and that attachment handling is planned for a later version. Step 5 is the workaround.

A federated user cannot be a moderator

You can add them, mention them, and call them. You cannot promote them to moderator. Someone from your own company has to hold that role.

📎 Step 5: Getting a File to a Federated User

Share it in Files first, then talk about it in the chat.

1. Open the Files app.
2. Find the file or folder you want them to have. A folder is usually the better choice, because anything you drop in it later is shared automatically.
3. Click the share icon next to it.
4. In the share box, type their full Federated Cloud ID, for example alex.garcia@workspace.partnercompany.com.
5. Pick them from the results, then set the permission you want, such as read-only or can edit.
6. Send the share.

They accept the share on their side, and it shows up as a folder in their own Files app. The file itself never leaves your Workspace. They are reaching into yours with the permission you handed them, and you can take it back whenever you want.

Now go back to the Talk conversation and tell them it is there. You can paste the file's link into the chat as an ordinary message, because a link is text rather than an attachment.

Both of you can open a shared document in ONLYOFFICE and edit it at the same time from your own Workspaces.

🔐 Important Notes

• Share the narrowest thing that does the job. Share one folder with the partner, not your whole Documents folder.
• A federation link does not let anyone browse your Workspace. Your partner sees what you shared with them and nothing else. No unshared folders, no user list, no settings.
• Review your federated shares when a project ends and revoke the ones nobody needs. Disconnecting the federation link stops new shares, but shares you already made keep working until someone removes them.
• Ask us for a share inventory any time, and we will list what is shared to and from which remote IDs.

📞 Need Help?

Email the CyMyCloud Support Team at care@cybermyte.io.

Tell us the conversation name, the other person's Federated Cloud ID, and what you saw on screen. If you got an error message, quote it or send a screenshot.

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