Microsoft has announced that a new version of Teams 2.1 allows for multiple account and cross-tenant support.
Until now, the Microsoft Teams client would only let you log into one tenant at a time, causing what Ben Lee, MVO on the Microsoft Tech Community, describes as “Teams tenant trauma”.
The new client is currently in preview as Microsoft has not yet finished adding all the features that are available on the primary client.
After testing out Microsoft’s updated client, Lee commented: “Thankfully when Microsoft started re-architecting the new Microsoft Teams 2.1 client, this multi-account, multi-tenant issue was one that they sought to solve, and boy did they!
“Having used the new preview version of the client for a couple of months, I'm very pleased to report that the multiple account and cross-tenant support works flawlessly.
“Not just for the scenarios I outlined above where I need to work in multiple tenants, but even where I must work for different customers using completely alternative accounts.”
The lacking capability to remain logged into two tenants at once was also Microsoft Teams’ solution to the potential friction that could result between sharing, policies, identity management, and data locations.
The tenants act as boundaries between users and guest accounts and were intended to be the safe bridge through which file sharing, conversations, meetings, and other collaborative actions could take place.
Losing access to your home environment, however, is a big sacrifice as it means you cannot receive incoming calls, chat messages, and other notifications and alerts.
Data & Security
Teams 2.1 does not only solve these problems, but it also combats legitimate issues on the previous version relating to data integrity and security.
While there are workarounds to many of these obstacles, such as using different browser windows or tools like Firefox Containers or Portals to log in to multiple tenants, Microsoft wants to remove any friction entirely.
Teams 2.1 User Interface
The new Teams client has a drop-down menu in the top right-hand corner that displays all the accounts you are signed into, as well as the tenants to which that account has guest access.
