Options for multiple 365 tenants / domains

[getoffmymac]

Hi All,

 

We have two secondary schools within our MAT which we want to enable to collaborate better together and make working together more seamless.

 

The long term plan is to migrate them into our central domain and 365 tenant however this is going to realistically be a few years off.

 

What have others done in terms of GALS, Sharepoint sites etc - should we be looking at cross tenant synch and etc? Is a trust relationship worth it in 2024?

 

Moving files to Teams/Onedrive and using something like CDM would help make file access more fluid (we do this at primary) - files are all on prem at the moment etc

 

Interested to hear what others have done in similar positions or

[HPlum78]

So there is no single answer to this as it depends on a lot of factors, there has been a lot of movement in this area in recent years and months (in some cases).

Here is the best place to start:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/identity/multi-tenant-organizations/overview

 

This outlines all of the options that are available in this area, and links of to those options to give more detail. One that maybe useful here is the Multitenant organization stuff that has been GA'd in the past week or so (not that i have had a chance to look at it in any detail) here are some extra resources on just that:

 

https://redmondmag.com/Articles/2024/04/25/Multi-Tenant-Organization-Hooks-Released-for-Microsoft-365.aspx

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-entra-blog/collaborate-across-m365-tenants-with-entra-id-multi-tenant/ba-p/4120309

 

As for if an actual AD forest/ domain trust is worth while well again it depends on what you are trying to achieve and if you have resources such as a file share on physical servers that you want to make available to users across each forest/ domain (depending on the trust configuration), I am not going to reinvent the wheel here as again it really depends on what you are trying to achieve in this space. This is the gospel on this:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/identity/domain-services/concepts-forest-trust

 

High level I want to connect two Tenants/ Forests and Domains together is easy to say but the detail is in the devil here!

Edited May 1, 2024 by HPlum78

[jblackburnHWGA]

Setting up an MTO would work, just be careful as some of its still in preview or only accessible under certain circumstances.

If you plan on moving to a central tenant i would just focus on doing that rather than a half way solution. It's going to take you a year or two to move it anyway but there are some quick wins. If your schools are all on prem at the moment the move to a central cloud prem like azure is fairly easy. Its only as disruptive as moving an on prem setup to azure.