B2B Direct Connect - ( Drap and Drop on teams and No Guest account)

Sure. I’ll replace the real company domains with fictional domains while keeping the technical scenario and issue unchanged.

Microsoft Teams B2B Direct Connect – Cross-Tenant Collaboration Without Guest Accounts

Hello Microsoft Community,

I am working on a Microsoft Teams cross-tenant collaboration project involving three separate Microsoft 365 tenants:

• CompanyA.example
• CompanyB.example
• CompanyC.example

Users may have a separate native account in each tenant. For example:

• osvaldo@companya.example — native account in the CompanyA tenant
• osvaldo@companyb.example — native account in the CompanyB tenant
• osvaldo@companyc.example — native account in the CompanyC tenant

These accounts are intentionally separate and must remain separate.

Our Primary Requirement

We do not want users to be created, provisioned, or represented as Guest users in another tenant.

For example, when osvaldo@companya.example collaborates with osvaldo@companyb.example, we do not want Microsoft Entra ID to create:

osvaldo@companya.example as a Guest user in the CompanyB tenant.

Both users must remain native users in their respective tenants.

The goal is to allow these existing users to collaborate across the tenant boundary using their existing identities, without creating additional Guest identities.

Why We Want to Avoid Guest Accounts

Creating Guest accounts creates several problems for us.

For example, the same person may already have:

• osvaldo@companya.example
• osvaldo@companyb.example
• osvaldo@companyc.example

If Guest accounts are also created for these users in the other tenants, users can start seeing multiple identities for what is effectively the same person. This creates confusion for users and additional identity/account-management overhead for IT.

Therefore, our requirement is:

Users stay in their respective tenants, and collaboration happens across tenants without creating Guest accounts.

B2B Direct Connect

I have been working on this configuration between CompanyA.example and CompanyB.example.

We intentionally configured Microsoft Entra B2B Direct Connect rather than B2B Collaboration because our goal is cross-tenant collaboration without creating Guest accounts.

We would like to use this model to provide a seamless Teams collaboration experience between the three companies.

Collaboration Requirements

We need users from the three trusted tenants to be able to:

1. Start and participate in 1-to-1 Teams chats across tenants.
2. Participate in group chats containing users from multiple tenants.
3. Share files with users in the other trusted tenants.
4. Use drag-and-drop file sharing in Teams chats.
5. Maintain their existing identities and accounts in their respective tenants.
6. Avoid having Guest accounts created in the other tenants.
7. Have the other organizations recognized as trusted external organizations/tenants.

Current Issue

After enabling B2B Direct Connect, we are experiencing an issue with file sharing in Microsoft Teams.

When communicating with a user from the trusted tenant, drag-and-drop file sharing does not work as expected in the Teams chat.

We need to understand whether this is:

• A configuration issue
• A Teams limitation
• A B2B Direct Connect limitation
• A Microsoft Entra cross-tenant access setting
• A SharePoint/OneDrive cross-tenant sharing restriction
• Or expected behavior for B2B Direct Connect

Questions

Could Microsoft please confirm:

1. Is B2B Direct Connect the correct Microsoft-supported architecture for cross-tenant Teams collaboration without creating Guest accounts?
2. Can B2B Direct Connect provide:
   • 1-to-1 Teams chat
   • Group chats
   • File sharing
   • Drag-and-drop file sharing
   between users from trusted tenants?
3. Is there any additional configuration required in:
   • Microsoft Entra ID
   • Cross-tenant access settings
   • Microsoft Teams
   • SharePoint
   • OneDrive
   • External access
   • B2B Direct Connect
   to enable this functionality?
4. How should the three tenants be configured so they are recognized as trusted organizations?
5. Can this entire collaboration model be implemented without creating Guest users in any of the three tenants?
6. If drag-and-drop file sharing is not supported with B2B Direct Connect, is this a product limitation? If so, what Microsoft-supported architecture would provide this functionality without creating Guest accounts?

Important Identity Requirement

To be very clear, we are not looking for a solution where users are created in the other tenants.

Each user's account must remain in its original tenant.

For example:

osvaldo@companya.example must remain a native CompanyA user.

osvaldo@companyb.example must remain a native CompanyB user.

osvaldo@companyc.example must remain a native CompanyC user.

These users need to collaborate with each other, but we do not want Microsoft Entra ID to create additional Guest accounts representing those users in the other tenants.

Our desired architecture is:

Tenant A ↔ Tenant B ↔ Tenant C

with trusted cross-tenant collaboration while maintaining separate native identities and without creating Guest accounts.

I would appreciate any guidance from Microsoft experts or the community regarding the recommended architecture and configuration for this scenario.

Thank you.