Multi-Tenant and Multi-Account Scenario in Microsoft Teams

The most requested feature for Microsoft Teams.

Image Description
Oleksandr Krakovetskyi 12 March 2021

If you are working with a single account within a single organization, you simply can skip this topic. Otherwise, read further.

Let's imagine that you have the following email accounts:

  1. personal - my.name@hotmail.com
  2. corporate - my.name@mycompany.com (MyCompany LLC)
  3. corporate - my.name@partnercompany.com (PartnerCompany Inc.)

And you are:

  1. a member of MyCompany tenant with my.name@mycompany.com
  2. a member of PartnerCompany tenant with my.name@partnercompany.com
  3. a guest in PartnerCompany tenant with my.name@mycompany.com

The goal is to have access to all tenants and be able to receive notifications and switch quickly between organizations and accounts.

Mobile

If you are using a mobile app, you need to log in with all accounts (my.name@hotmail.com, my.name@mycompany.com, my.name@partnercompany.com) and you will see a list of all organizations in the menu. You can switch quickly between organizations and see unread notifications.

Desktop

If you are using a desktop app, you don't have the ability to switch between organizations and accounts quickly. Let's look at different scenarios.

Switch Between Personal and Corporate Accounts

In a recent update, adding a personal account as a companion to the corporate one was added to Microsoft Teams.

First, you need to add a personal account (click on the profile picture, select Accounts & orgs menu item):

You can switch between personal and corporate from Accounts & orgs menu.

Depending on your scenario, you can switch between my.name@hotmail.com and my.name@mycompany.com or between my.name@hotmail.com and my.name@partnercompany.com.

Switch Between Organizations with Corporate Account

As you remember, you are a member of MyCompany and a guest in PartnerCompany with the same email account my.name@mycompany.com.

That's the easy part, as you can switch by clicking the same Accounts & orgs menu and select the actual tenant:

Unfortunately, you don't receive notifications from non-active organizations. That's why you need to monitor all email accounts to receive notifications.

Switch Between Multiple Accounts and Orgs

That's the common scenario for the majority of us, but it's not implemented yet. E.g. you want to switch from a member in MyCompany with my.name@mycompany.com and as a member in PartnerCompany with my.name@partnercompany.com.

The good news is that there is a workaround.

You need to log in to your second tenant (e.g. PartnerCompany) with the Microsoft Edge browser and then use Apps -> Install this site as an app:

It is still a website but loaded inside the desktop chrome. You can pin this window, receive notifications and work with this instance like a desktop app.

It's not perfect, but works.

As an alternative, you can use multiple Profiles in browsers to log in with multiple accounts.

Microsoft states that they are working on real multi-tenancy and switch between personal and corporate accounts is the first step. Until then, you can use workarounds.


Latest Publications

News, posts, articles and more!