Limitations in multitenant organizations

Article
05/30/2024

This article describes limitations to be aware of when you work with multitenant organization functionality across Microsoft Entra ID and Microsoft 365. To provide feedback about the multitenant organization functionality on UserVoice, see Microsoft Entra UserVoice. We watch UserVoice closely so that we can improve the service.

Scope

The limitations described in this article have the following scope.

Scope	Description
In scope	- Microsoft Entra administrator limitations related to multitenant organizations to support seamless collaboration experiences in new Microsoft Teams, with reciprocally provisioned B2B members - Microsoft Entra administrator limitations related to multitenant organizations to support seamless collaboration experiences in Microsoft Viva Engage, with centrally provisioned B2B members
Related scope	- Microsoft 365 admin center limitations related to multitenant organizations - Microsoft 365 multitenant organization people search experiences - Cross-tenant synchronization limitations related to Microsoft 365
Out of scope	- Cross-tenant synchronization unrelated to Microsoft 365 - End user experiences in new Teams - End user experiences in Viva Engage - Tenant migration or consolidation
Unsupported scenarios	- Multitenant organizations across education tenants involving student scenarios - Multitenant organizations in Microsoft 365 Government - Seamless collaboration experience across multitenant organizations in classic Teams - Self-service for multitenant organizations larger than 100 tenants - Multitenant organizations in Azure Government or Microsoft Azure operated by 21Vianet - Cross-cloud multitenant organizations

Create or join a multitenant organization using the Microsoft 365 admin center

After creating a multitenant organization in Microsoft 365 admin center, you'll see Microsoft admin center created cross-tenant synchronization configurations with the names MTO_Sync_<TenantID>. Refrain from editing or changing the name if you want Microsoft 365 admin center to recognize the configurations as created and managed by Microsoft 365 admin center.
Synchronization jobs created with Microsoft Entra ID won't appear in Microsoft 365 admin center. Microsoft 365 admin center will indicate an Outbound sync status of Not configured. This is expected behavior. There's no supported pattern for Microsoft 365 admin center to take control of cross-tenant synchronization jobs created in Microsoft Entra admin center.

Cross-tenant access settings

Cross-tenant synchronization in Microsoft Entra ID doesn't support establishing a cross-tenant synchronization configuration before the tenant in question allows inbound synchronization in their cross-tenant access settings for identity synchronization.
Therefore, prior to multitenant organization creation, the usage of the cross-tenant access settings template for identity synchronization is encouraged, with userSyncInbound set to true.
Similarly, prior to multitenant organization creation, the usage of the cross-tenant access settings template for partner configurations is encouraged with automaticUserConsentSettings.inboundAllowed and automaticUserConsentSettings.outboundAllowed set to true.

Join requests

There are multiple reasons why a join request might fail. If the Microsoft 365 admin center doesn't indicate why a join request isn't succeeding, try examining the join request response by using the Microsoft Graph APIs or Microsoft Graph Explorer.
If you followed the correct sequence to create a multitenant organization and add a tenant to the multitenant organization, and the added tenant's join request keeps failing, submit a support request in the Microsoft Entra or Microsoft 365 admin center.

Options to provision your external member users

If you're already using Microsoft Entra cross-tenant synchronization, for various multi-hub multi-spoke topologies, you don't need to use the Microsoft 365 admin center share users functionality. Instead, you might want to continue using your existing Microsoft Entra cross-tenant synchronization jobs.
If you haven't previously used Microsoft Entra cross-tenant synchronization, and you intend to establish a collaborating user set topology where the same set of users is shared to all multitenant organization tenants, you might want to use the Microsoft 365 admin center share users functionality.
If you already have your own at-scale user provisioning engine, you can utilize the new multitenant organization benefits while continuing to use your own engine to manage the lifecycle of your employees.
If you need to create individual external member users in a host tenant rather than creating them through a provisioning engine from a source tenant, see How to create, invite, and delete users.

Cross-tenant synchronization in Microsoft Entra admin center

For enterprise organizations with complex identity configurations, we recommend you use cross-tenant synchronization in Microsoft Entra admin center.
By default, new B2B users are provisioned as B2B members, while existing B2B guests remain B2B guests. You can opt to convert B2B guests into B2B members by setting Apply this mapping to Always.
By default, showInAddressList is synchronized into a target tenant as true. You might adjust this attribute mapping to match your organizations' needs.
The at-scale provisioning of B2B users might collide with contact objects. The handling or conversion of contact objects is currently not supported.
Using cross-tenant synchronization to target hybrid identities that have been converted to B2B users isn't currently supported.

Synchronize users in Microsoft 365 admin center

For smaller multitenant organizations, we recommend using Microsoft 365 admin center to synchronize users into multiple tenants of your multitenant organization.
To share users, Microsoft 365 admin center creates multiple cross-tenant synchronization jobs, one per target tenant, keeping the same user scope for all jobs.
After the Microsoft 365 admin center created the cross-tenant synchronization jobs, you might adjust attribute mappings in Microsoft Entra admin center to match your organizations' needs.

B2B guests or B2B members managed in the host tenant

The promotion of B2B guests to B2B members represents a strategic decision by multitenant organizations to consider B2B members as trusted users of the organization. Review the default permissions for B2B members.
As your organization rolls out the multitenant organization functionality including provisioning of B2B users across multitenant organization tenants, you might want to provision some users as B2B guests, while provisioning other users as B2B members.
To promote B2B guests to B2B members, a host tenant administrator can change the userType, assuming the property isn't recurringly synchronized.

B2B guests or B2B members managed using cross-tenant synchronization

If cross-tenant synchronization is used to recurringly synchronize the userType property, a source tenant administrator can amend the attribute mappings.
You might want to establish two Microsoft Entra cross-tenant synchronization configurations in the source tenant, one with userType attribute mappings configured to B2B guest, and another with userType attribute mappings configured to B2B member, each with Apply this mapping set to Always.
By moving a user from one configuration's scope to the other, you can easily control who will be a B2B guest or a B2B member in the target tenant. Using this approach, you might also want to disable Target Object Actions for Delete.

Global address list managed in the host tenant

The showInAddressList property of a B2B user can be updated with User Administrator privileges in Graph Explorer or Microsoft Graph PowerShell.
Updating the showInAddressList property on the user object will also update the hide recipients from address lists setting in Microsoft Exchange Online.
The hide recipients from address lists setting, if configured to differ from the showInAddressList property, takes precedence in determining address list visibility.
If the hide recipients setting isn't configurable in Exchange admin center due to user type Guest, it can be configured in PowerShell using the HiddenFromAddressListsEnabled property.
For more information, see Add guests to the global address list.

Global address list managed using cross-tenant synchronization

If cross-tenant synchronization is used to synchronize the property, showInAddressList in a source tenant can be used to control address list visibility in a target tenant.
On the other hand, hide recipient from address lists in the source tenant cannot be used to affect address list visibility in a target tenant.

Microsoft apps

In SharePoint OneDrive user interfaces, when sharing a file with People in Fabrikam, the current user interfaces might be counterintuitive, because B2B members in Fabrikam from Contoso count towards People in Fabrikam.
In Microsoft 365 admin center, Microsoft Forms, Microsoft OneNote, and Microsoft Planner, B2B member users might not be supported.
In Microsoft Power BI, B2B member support is currently in preview. B2B guest users can continue to access Power BI dashboards.
In Microsoft Power Apps, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and related workloads, B2B member users might have restricted functionality. For more information, see Invite users with Microsoft Entra B2B collaboration.
In Microsoft Purview, multitenant organization capabilities aren't yet supported. Learn more about existing functionalities for external users and labeled content and about external collaboration using sensitivity labels.
In Microsoft Intune, multitenant organization capabilities aren't yet supported. Learn more about existing functionalities to trust compliant device claims from external organizations.

B2B users or B2B members

As part of a multitenant organization, reset redemption for an already redeemed B2B user is currently disabled.
The at-scale provisioning of B2B users might collide with contact objects. The handling or conversion of contact objects is currently not supported.
Using cross-tenant synchronization to target hybrid identities that have been converted to B2B users hasn't been tested in source of authority conflicts and isn't supported.

Cross-tenant synchronization deprovisioning

By default, when provisioning scope is reduced while a synchronization job is running, users fall out of scope and are soft deleted, unless Target Object Actions for Delete is disabled. For more information, see Deprovisioning and Define who is in scope for provisioning.
Currently, SkipOutOfScopeDeletions works for application provisioning jobs, but not for cross-tenant synchronization. To avoid soft deletion of users taken out of scope of cross-tenant synchronization, set Target Object Actions for Delete to disabled.

Next steps

Known issues for provisioning in Microsoft Entra ID

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