New organization switcher in the Microsoft 365 admin center
Published Feb 10 2020 05:05 PM 40.9K Views
Microsoft

We’ve received a lot of feedback from partners and customers about the challenges of managing multiple Microsoft cloud orgs. Partners manage anywhere from two to hundreds of orgs, and many enterprises use multiple orgs for compliance or logistical reasons. In these scenarios, switching between multiple orgs is done several times a day every day. In response to this feedback, we started looking at ways to improve the management experience for admins that manage multiple orgs.

 

Today, we are announcing a new feature in the Microsoft 365 admin center called the organization switcher, the first of many changes coming for admins who manage multiple organizations. The organization switcher allows you to seamlessly switch between organizations that you manage. Today’s release supports admins that are the partner of record (Associated Partner) for a Microsoft cloud org.

 

We’re also in the process of adding support for admins that are invited to manage an org through Azure B2B. Support for other scenarios are also coming soon, including support for enterprise scenarios, test environments (e.g., pre-production and production orgs), and mergers and acquisitions scenarios.

Accessing the Organization Switcher

If you have been designated partner of record (Associated Partner) for a Microsoft cloud org, you will see a new double-arrow switcher icon in the upper left-hand corner of the Microsoft 365 admin center next to the org’s name.

 

Organization switcher icon in the Microsoft 365 admin centerOrganization switcher icon in the Microsoft 365 admin center

 

Select the org name/icon, and then choose the organization you want to manage.

 

Choose the organization you want to manageChoose the organization you want to manage

 

Pinning Organizations

Some admins manage many orgs, but only a small number of orgs on a frequent basis. In that scenario, the ability to pin a tenant to the top of the list lets you to quickly access the orgs you manage most frequently.

 

Pin an organization you use frequently to access it quicklyPin an organization you use frequently to access it quickly

 

Search for Organizations

When the list is long, it becomes harder to find what you are looking for. You can search for the org by its name or domain name to make it easy to find the org you want to manage.

 

Use search to quickly find an organizationUse search to quickly find an organization

 

More to come

This is the first of many new features coming that are designed to improve the management experience for partners and customers that manage multiple Microsoft cloud orgs. As always, we’d love your feedback, so if you are a partner of record for multiple Microsoft cloud orgs, please try the organization switcher and let us know what you think!

 

--The Microsoft 365 admin center team

32 Comments
Copper Contributor

Very interesting! Which features would be possible to manage?

Deleted
Not applicable

Finally! This looks like the similar experience which exists for Azure Lighthouse, correct? 

Brass Contributor

I don't see this functionality yet, whether using the "new admin center" or not.

 

Will this include, or is anything being done to include the functionality that is missing when using delegated admin?  Specifically, the "Security & Compliance" admin center is missing when using the current organization switcher.

 

Finally, what is being done to provide for fine-grained access controls?  I.E., only allowing staff on "group A" in my partner organization to access the administration of one set of customers, and only allowing staff on "group B" in my partner organization to access the administration of another set of customers?

Copper Contributor

I don't see the functionality of organization switcher.

Copper Contributor

This is great. Cannot wait for it to happen for B2B aswell. So we can administer our companies this way.

Copper Contributor

Hi @Scott Schnoll I do not see such switcher.
I'm a global admin on few tenants.

Brass Contributor

This is great news for the Gui users out there - I had seen this from the Partner portal and hadn't noticed it in the actual admin.microsoft.com site.

If you click through to the exchange admin center you get prompted to use the new Exchange admin center and selecting that will dump you back to the original partner's exchange portal which is a shame.

The classic Exchange portal seems to work using the switcher AND you can now convert a regular mailbox into a shared mailbox and back again which was not possible in the old Partner portal delegation model.

 

Is there going to be a change for delegated access with powershell? We currently need individual named accounts in each tenant so we can run powershell scripts (which is the best way to keep an MSP efficient and having reproducible steps)

Also it doesn't appear to have the same functionality for Azure subscriptions - is that meant to be covered by switching subscriptions?

 

 

 

Copper Contributor

What are the requirements to display the different tenants in Organization Switcher?

Copper Contributor

Sounds great, but I haven't been able to see it in the admin portal yet or figure out what the requirements are.

Copper Contributor

Hi @Scott Schnoll 

How can i add a tenant in my organizations? 

 

Copper Contributor

I works for a client that want to take benefits of the organization switcher because it have multiples Office 365 deployments for some subsidiaries that have specific needs.

 

We can not see the organization switcher inside the admin.microsoft.com portal & it seems that there is not so much documentation about how to enable it. Don't know if it should be automatic? Or if we have to make any configuration somewhere...

We open a case to the O365 support by sending the link to this article but they answer us that this new feature is reserved for companies with more that 1 million of users & redirect us to the following Azure AD B2B page:

Multi-tenant architecture for large institutions - M365 Education | Microsoft Docs

 

@Scott Schnoll can you please precise in the article if the feature is reserved for companies with more than one million users? I was hoping the feature will be also available for smallest companies... & Also precise if there is some configuration to do to make it work? It sound that there is lack of documentation around it!

Microsoft

@Matt1983, right now we only support partner of record (Associated Partner) for a Microsoft cloud org.  We're working on Azure B2B support, but I don't have an ETA for that.  The tenant switcher has no requirements on number of users.  It simply looks at the account being used to sign in, and if that account is a partner of record for more than one tenant, we display the tenant switcher and the list of their tenants.  This happens automatically, and there is nothing extra that needs to be configured to make it available.

 

See also, https://docs.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/admin/multi-tenant/manage and https://docs.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/admin/whats-new-in-preview#featured-feedback-fix-multi-orga....

 

Hope this helps!

 

-Scott

Copper Contributor

"support partner of record (Associated Partner) for a Microsoft cloud org"

There seems to be more to it than just that since. We have set that part of successfully. I am now thinking it might be the "relationship type" that is causing the Organization/Tenant Switch option not to display.

mcates_0-1612390157200.png

 

 

Copper Contributor

Please ignore the typos. ; -)

Copper Contributor

What is missing completely is how to link a customer tenant to a your own tenant. There are many ways and levelis to connect organizations, partners, etc.


Is a PAL required to be make additonal tenants show up in the organization switcher? 
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/manage/link-partner-id

Copper Contributor

Sorry for the typos.

 

Anybody knows this?

Copper Contributor

Is this thread still active?

Copper Contributor

I'm confused - in some cases I can switch organizations/tenants (for instance in Azure), but in some cases I have no such option (like in Microsoft Security Center). Please provide uniform interface for switching tenants, or point me into right direction where I can configure it properly. 

Copper Contributor

Does anybody know HOW to link a tenant to another tenant?

Typically a customer tenant to your own tenant.

Iron Contributor

I am not even a MSP but I still need this product. 

Copper Contributor

Can someone please guide how to enable this feature, I don't see an option at all.

Copper Contributor

Anybody?

Copper Contributor

I don't think this is the right place to ask questions about his feature. Nobody from MS looks at our messages. 
Better ask customer support directly, or some other forums. 

Microsoft

Hi folks,

 

We only support partner of record (Associated Partner) for a Microsoft cloud org right now.  We're working on Azure B2B support, but I don't have an ETA for that.  Based on the account being used to sign in, if that account is a partner of record for more than one tenant, we display the tenant switcher and the list of their tenants.

 

Hope this helps!

 

-Scott

Copper Contributor

Here's a hard coded URL you 'as a partner' can use to send your client the invitation so they become available in switcher.

https://partner.microsoft.com/commerce/customers/acquire

Copper Contributor

The org switcher is great, but there seems to be a limit of 300 tenants you can manage! This is too low... I understand that there is a workaround using the Partner Portal, but this causes a lot of confusion in our team.

Copper Contributor

Hi @Scott Schnoll ,

Do you have any updates to this comment left a year ago? " We're working on Azure B2B support, but I don't have an ETA for that." tia

Microsoft

@itishnitsa3, I'm afraid I still don't have any ETA at this time.

Copper Contributor

Is the multi-tenant option available for Azure B2B guest users as well, who do not have a license assigned or not using Office 365, i have assigned a third-party email id as a Global Admin, i can able to login to Azure AD Portal but not on the Microsoft 365 Admin portal using guest credentials ... :sad:

Copper Contributor

I have multi-tenant with a few hundred customers.  It works perfectly.  However, some of my clients show up under old, wrong, or different names.  I've checked their Office 365 and Azure AD organizational settings, and everything looks correct there.  For OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams, all of those customers see their correct business name.  The one and only place it's wrong is in my tenant switcher.  Where is that value being drawn from, and how can I change it?

Copper Contributor

I have 4 tenants that I manage for my Org. I have been added as Global Admin on all the tenants as a guest user, I Azure I can switch between Tenants effortlessly, but when it comes to the 365 admin center, I can not see the tenant switcher. Is there a Walk through I am missing somewhere?

Copper Contributor

Hi @Scott Schnoll ,

Any updates regarding organization switcher for B2B support in 365 admin center?

"We're working on Azure B2B support, but I don't have an ETA for that."

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