How to Manage Multiple Office 365 Tenants? Effective Solution for Business Organization

In this article, we will explore the challenges of managing multiple Office 365 tenants, including how to keep data and user information secure, streamline administration and reporting, and ensure compliance with industry regulations and standards. Whether you’re new to managing multiple tenants or are looking to improve your current setup, this article will provide you with the information you need to manage your Office 365 tenants effectively.

Table of Content

• 5 Most Common Problems With Managing Multiple Office 365 Tenants
• What are the Benefits of Having Single Tenants in Office 365?
• How to Manage Multiple Microsoft Office 365 Tenants with Ease?
• Manage Multiple Office 365 Tenants Using Software Solution
• Conclusion

Microsoft Office 365 has accomplished great success in the market after its launch. It provides hybrid connectivity for easy migration and continuously delivers new functionalities at an impressive rate. It’s all amazing. Even though Microsoft’s FastTrack program is accessible to enable organizations to move to Office 365, sadly no tool is available to merge Office 365 tenants.

Well, this is surprising because according to a recent survey, it takes at least 13 hours/ month to manage an O365 tenant that includes 1 to 50 accounts. Hence, managing more than one Office 365 tenant can be problematic and a waste of our precious time. In this technical guide, we’ve gathered some common difficulties with multiple Office 365 tenants and an incredible technique to manage multiple tenants in Office 365.

5 Most Common Problems With Managing Multiple Office 365 Tenants

Below are some of the common problems users encounter while using multiple tenants.

• Mailbox Reassign – Microsoft does not allow users to configure a tenant-to-tenant migration instantly. Also, users can not ask Microsoft to reassign the mailboxes to any other O365 tenant even in the same location. In case, the mailboxes are in two different tenants and can be in a single O365 mailbox database in the service yet, one cannot get reassigned them. One needs anything in between.
• Password Migration – Users can not move passwords from one Office 365 to another for the end-users. For all the users who are utilizing DirSync and local AD accounts, the answer comprises their Active Directory migration. Make sure that the cloud-only end-users need to set a password. If users are required to change their email addresses and Online service IDs while switching then, they need to update the credentials on their devices.
• Custom Domain – A custom domain cannot be available to two different Office 365 tenants at once. One needs to remove a domain from the first tenant before adding it to the second one. If the email flow breaking is not allowed for a particular time, this can be an issue. In most cases, it might take a few minutes to remove the domain from an Office 365 tenant and add it to another tenant, however, sometimes it may also take a long time. Only in some exceptional cases, it can require raising a service request to Microsoft for a complete addition or removal.
• Username Changes – While performing potential temporary or permanent username changes, MS Outlook and other clients can fear changing their mailbox identities. This can be potentially alleviated by executing a slow migration among tenants yet, Outlook needs to be reconfigured in most cases.
• Transfer of other Services – While using multiple Office 365 tenants, one also needs tools to transfer other services. Users may need to migrate SharePoint sites, Lync Online Contacts, Yammer Contacts, and OneDrive for Business as well as merge them all. Users may require professional software to perform the task.

What are the Benefits of Having Single Tenants in Office 365? 

Single tenants in Office 365 provide several benefits, including:

• Enhanced Security – With a single tenant, all data and user information is kept separate from other organizations, providing an added layer of security.
• Customizable Features – IT administrators have more control over the configuration of Office 365 features, which allows them to tailor the service to the specific needs of the organization.
• Compliance – A single tenant allows organizations to more easily comply with industry regulations and standards, such as HIPAA and GDPR.
• Better Reporting – With a single tenant, IT administrators have access to more detailed usage and activity reports, which can be used to optimize the use of Office 365 within the organization.
• Better Integration – Single tenants can more easily integrate with on-premises systems and other third-party services, providing a more seamless user experience.

How to Manage Multiple Microsoft Office 365 Tenants with Ease?

Managing multiple tenants can be a complex and daunting task for IT admins, especially for those organizations who recently undergone mergers or acquisitions. To ease out this task, check out some of the ideal yet effective strategies and solutions to manage an Office 365 multi-tenant environment.

Tip 1. Centralized Identity and Access Management

One of the most common and core challenges is to provide users with streamlined access to respective resources across different tenants. This becomes a daunting and cumbersome task without centralized identity and access management.

However, using the Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) B2B and Microsoft Entra, organizations can overcome these challenges. By using the Azure AD, IT admins can allow users access to applications and resources in other tenants. Moreover, Microsoft Entra offers a comprehensive suite for identity management across multiple tenants.

Tip 2. Office 365 Cross-Tenant Collaboration

While keeping multiple tenants in place, organizations must ensure proper collaboration, as it results in productivity across different domains or businesses.

To deal with this Microsoft offers a few tools such as Microsoft Teams Shared Channels and Cross-Tenant Mail Flow. It allows users from different tenants to collaborate without switching accounts or signing in to multiple tenants. On the other hand, by configuring cross-tenant mail flow rules, users can send and receive emails across different tenants easily.

Tip 3. Centralized Administration

From an IT admin point of view, managing multiple tenants manually is a ton of tasks to perform. However, by consolidating administrations, organizations can improve efficiency and minimize the chances of human errors. Microsoft offers two administration tools for this purpose such as Micorosft Admin Center and PowerShell for Office 365.

The Microsoft Admin Center is a centralized and comprehensive dashboard, that allows admins to manage multiple tenants, for overseeing users, licenses, and services. However, you have to manually switch to different tenants separately.

Microsoft offers PowerShell for Micorosft 365, a powerful tool for managing and administering Office 365 environments. Admins can use PowerShell to automate any task such as user onboarding, license assignments, and mailbox management.

Tip 4. Consolidate Multiple Tenants

All the organizations going through acquisitions can consolidate multiple Office 365 tenants as it is the safest and most convenient way to manage multiple Office 365 tenants. They can execute it manually but, there is a high chance, that the mailboxes, accounts, directories, or email messages could be lost, deleted, or left behind. Also, there are possible chances that some of the objects might duplicate themselves, as it may cause unnecessary management complexities, expenditure, and downtime.

Therefore, we recommend using Office 365 to Office 365 Migration Tool to migrate mailboxes from one account to another in Office 365. The tool is completely secure and allows users to export mailboxes and shared mailboxes. It can migrate entire data among multiple tenants.

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Manage Multiple Office 365 Tenants Using Software Solution

Step 1. Start the software then select Office 365 as a source and as a destination from the initial screen.

Step 2. Select the item that you want to migrate from the Workload selection, the tool also provides Migrate document permissions, Use group Mapping options, and a Date-based filter. Apply options according to requirement then click on Next.

Step 3. Now, enter Office 365 source tenant admin ID and Application ID, then click on the Validate button to validate permissions.

Step 4. Now, that permissions validation is successful, click on Next.

Step 5. Enter Office 365 destination Admin ID and Application ID, then click on Validate.

Step 6. After validating permissions click on Next.

Step 7. Now, we have to create a mapping between Office 365 source and destination users. To create a mapping, the tool provides 3 options – Fetch users, Import users, and Download templates. Choose any one option and click on Next to manage multiple Office 365 tenants.

Step 8. Now, you can see mapping is created between source and destination users. Click on the Validate button to validate permission.

Step 9. Now, click Start to migrate.

Tip 5. License Management

Managing licenses for users across different tenants can be tricky as people with the same can exist in multiple tenants. This can lead to mass confusion and eventually can lead to an account inaccessibility due to license expiration.

To deal with this situation, admins can utilize Azure Cost Management and Billing and Microsoft 365 Admin Center. By using both these platforms administrators can track license usage patterns and optimize costs.

Tip 6. Security and Compliance

Last but not least, one of the biggest and major concerns associated with multiple tenants is adhering to regulatory requirements which include security and compliance. It becomes crucial for organizations to adhere to these regulatory requirements. To facilitate this Microsoft offers Multi-Tenant Security with Azure AD Conditional Access and Unified Compliance Center.

Both these configurations help ensure that only authorized users can access sensitive resources, even when collaborating across tenants, which eventually allows admins to manage compliance policies across multiple tenants

Conclusion

Organizations often face various problems while handling more than one Office 365 tenant. Therefore, in this article, we have disclosed all the possible and most common issues that users face while using multiple Office 365 tenants. In addition to it, we have also provided professional software that can easily mitigate the issue of having multiple tenants.