Multi-tenant organization capabilities now available in Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 now offers enhanced multi-tenant organization (MTO) features, which are available to all users looking to improve collaboration, communication, and management across various tenants. These advancements are integrated across multiple Microsoft services, including Microsoft 365 People Search, Microsoft Teams, Viva Engage, and Microsoft Defender XDR, and can be managed through the Microsoft 365 admin center or the Microsoft Entra admin center.

A tenant represents a digital version of an organization, offering a secure and reliable infrastructure designed for scalability in security, productivity, collaboration, and compliance, and ensuring default data protection. As organizations expand through natural growth, mergers, acquisitions, or regulatory demands, the number of managed tenants may increase, potentially complicating user segmentation and management. These new MTO capabilities are designed to simplify these complexities while maintaining security and compliance.

Key features include:

Enhanced People Search: This feature allows users to locate and communicate with colleagues seamlessly across different tenants, returning accurate and singular results for each search.

Improved Team Collaboration: With the new Microsoft Teams client tailored for multi-tenant environments, users can participate in calls, chats, and meetings across tenants effortlessly, without the traditional barriers like meeting lobbies, while also managing communications within their own tenant simultaneously.

Expanded Community Engagement in Viva Engage: The capabilities in Viva Engage are now extended to better support cross-tenant interactions. This includes making announcements, engaging in community interactions, and participating in campaigns that transcend tenant limits.

Streamlined Incident Management with Microsoft Defender XDR: Offering a unified view for all managed tenants, this feature enhances the ability of security teams to swiftly investigate and address threats without constantly switching between different tenant views.

Simplified Multi-Tenant Administration: Establishing and managing these features across multiple tenants has been made more intuitive through tools like Microsoft Graph APIs and administrative centers, ensuring ease of setup and configuration.

Further details on each capability are as follows:

Multi-Tenant People Search: Enabled by tenant admins, this feature allows user profiles to be synchronized and discoverable across tenant global address lists, facilitated through the Microsoft Entra ID platform.

Microsoft Teams for Multi-Tenant Collaboration: Automatically enabled in Teams once multi-tenant organization configuration is set up in Entra ID, this feature removes previous complexities encountered during cross-tenant collaborations.

Community and Engagement Expansion in Viva Engage: New functionalities like MTO Communities, Campaigns, AMAs, and Events help foster greater community interaction and leader-employee engagement across tenants. Usage analytics for these features provide insights into reach and engagement levels, enhancing strategic decision-making.

Unified Security Management in Microsoft Defender XDR: This solution delivers an integral experience for security teams overseeing multiple tenants, encompassing rapid incident response and advanced threat hunting capabilities.

For more detailed information, visit the respective features’ pages on the Microsoft website. Microsoft continues to commit to enhancing organizational productivity and collaboration through innovative, multi-tenant solutions.

These additions will help organizations that have non-standard requirements, recently gone through a merger or acquisition or have needs for additional expansion.