M365 Changelog: (Updated) Microsoft Teams: User experience improvements for Multi-Tenant Organization (MTO) users

MC703704 – Updated March 27, 2024: Microsoft has updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Note: If you are not a multi-tenant organization, you can safely ignore this message.

This release features user experience improvements when Microsoft Teams users interact with users in another tenant that belongs to their organization (e.g., for conglomerates, as a result of M&A). 

• Microsoft is now removing any possibility of having 1:1 chat (between users from different MTO tenants) split across multiple threads. As part of this, users will no longer be able to send new messages in existing chat threads which use B2B identities of either party and they will be directed to the right single-thread.
• Users will now see a richer profile for users from other MTO tenants – this includes information like profile picture, contact information, and org chart.
• Users will now be able to perform a name-based search for users from other MTO tenants while adding them to a Shared channel.
• Users from MTO tenants and conversations involving them will no longer be labeled as “External.”
• MTO group admins can now configure an optional label for each tenant that will be displayed alongside user’s display name.

This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 375631

When this will happen:

Targeted Release: Microsoft will begin rolling out mid-January 2024 and expects to complete by early April 2024 (previously mid-March).

General Availability (Worldwide, GCC, GCC High and DoD): dependent on release of Microsoft Admin Center, and Microsoft will update this release schedule as appropriate.

How this will affect your organization:

This set of enhancements will affect users only from those tenants who are part of a Multi-Tenant Organization (MTO), as configured in Microsoft 365 Admin Center. 

What you need to do to prepare:

There is no action needed to prepare for this change. You may want to notify your users about this change and update any relevant documentation as appropriate.