External Collaborators

External Collaborators

Outside Collaborators are GitHub users who are not members of the organization but have been granted access to individual repositories. Typical use cases include cooperation partners from other universities, students working on a specific project, or external contractors.

Difference: Members vs. External Collaborators

Feature	Member (Member)	External Collaborator (Outside Collaborator)
Belongs to the organization	Yes	No
Visible in the member list	Yes	No (listed separately)
Access to all organization repositories	Depends on base permissions and teams	No – only explicitly granted repositories
Can join teams	Yes	No
Consumes a license	Yes (on GHEC)	Depends on the license type

Adding an external collaborator

Important (GHES/GHEC): Only organization administrators (Owners) can add external collaborators to repositories in the organization. Repository admins without the organization Owner role do not have this permission on GHES/GHEC.

External collaborators are added at the repository level or the entire organization level.

The following article describes how to add external collaborators: https://docs.github.com/en/organizations/managing-user-access-to-your-organizations-repositories/managing-outside-collaborators/adding-outside-collaborators-to-repositories-in-your-organization#adding-outside-collaborators-to-a-repository

The invited person receives an email and must accept the invitation.

Note (GHES): On the University of Bern’s GitHub Enterprise Server, the person must already have an account on the server before they can be invited. The account is automatically created via the Campus Account after a person logs in for the first time.

Removing an external collaborator

The following article describes how to remove an external collaborator: https://docs.github.com/en/organizations/managing-user-access-to-your-organizations-repositories/managing-outside-collaborators/removing-an-outside-collaborator-from-an-organization-repository

Overview of all external collaborators

As an Owner, all external collaborators of the organization can be viewed under the following path:

Organization → People → Tab Outside collaborators

Here all people are listed who have access to at least one repository of the organization without being a member.

Recommendations for practice

• External collaborators should generally be given the minimum necessary permission (Read or Write).
• The list of external collaborators should be reviewed regularly and expired access should be removed.
• For people who are permanently involved in multiple projects within the organization, full organization membership is more appropriate than external collaboration.