Cross-tenant access settings API overview

Namespace: microsoft.graph

In the traditional Microsoft Entra B2B collaboration, any invited user from an organization could use their identity to access resources in external organizations. Administrators didn't have control over the user identities in their tenant that are allowed to sign in to external organizations. These limited controls made it difficult to prevent identities from your organization from being used in unauthorized ways.

Cross-tenant access settings let you control and manage collaboration between users in your organization and other organizations. The control can be on one or a combination of the following configurations:

• outbound access - how your users collaborate with other organizations.
• inbound access - how other organizations collaborate with you.
• tenant restrictions access - how your users collaborate with other organizations using other organization identities from your network or devices.

Granular controls let you determine the users, groups, and apps, both in your organization and in external organizations, that can participate in cross-tenant collaboration. These controls are implemented through:

• Default cross-tenant access settings which set the baseline settings for inbound and outbound access and tenant restrictions.

  • In Microsoft Entra B2B collaboration, both inbound and outbound access settings are enabled by default. This default configuration means all your users can be invited to external organizations, and all your users can invite guest users.
  • In Microsoft Entra B2B direct connect, both inbound and outbound access settings are disabled by default.
  • The service default settings may be updated.
  • In Tenant Restrictions, all access settings are disabled by default.

• Partner-specific access settings which allow you to configure customized settings for individual organizations. For the configured organizations, this configuration takes precedence over the default settings. Therefore, while Microsoft Entra B2B collaboration, Microsoft Entra B2B direct connect, and tenant restrictions might be disabled across your organization, you can enable these features for a specific external organization.

Default cross-tenant access settings

Default cross-tenant access settings determine your stance for inbound and outbound collaboration and tenant restrictions with all other Microsoft Entra organizations. Any external collaboration with an organization not listed explicitly in your cross-tenant access settings inherits these default settings. Default settings are defined using the crossTenantAccessPolicyConfigurationDefault resource type.

By default, Microsoft Entra ID assigns all Microsoft Entra tenants a service default configuration for cross-tenant access settings. You can override these service defaults with your own configuration to suit your organization. You can confirm whether you're using the service default settings or custom settings by looking at the isServiceDefault property returned when you query the default endpoint.

Partner cross-tenant access settings

Partner-specific cross-tenant access settings determine your stance for inbound and outbound collaboration and tenant restrictions with a specific Microsoft Entra organization. Any collaboration with this organization inherits these partner-specific settings. Partner settings are defined using the crossTenantAccessPolicyConfigurationPartner resource type.

Unless you configure all the properties of the partner-specific object, some of your default settings might still apply. For example, if you configure only b2bCollaborationInbound for a partner in your cross-tenant access settings, the partner configuration inherits the other settings from the default cross-tenant access settings. When querying the partner endpoint, any property on the partner object that is null inherits settings from the default policy.

Inbound trust settings in cross-tenant access settings

Inbound trust settings enable you to trust the MFA guest users perform in their home directories, preventing guest users from having to perform MFA both in their home directories and in your directory. With inbound trust settings, you enable a seamless authentication experience for your guest users and save on the MFA costs incurred by your organization.

For example, when you configure your trust settings to trust MFA, your MFA policies are still applied to guest users, but users who have already completed MFA in their home tenants don't have to complete MFA again in your tenant.

Inbound trust settings also enable you to trust devices that are compliant, or Microsoft Entra hybrid joined in their home directories. With inbound trust settings in cross-tenant access settings, you can now protect access to your apps and resources by requiring that guest users use compliant, or Microsoft Entra hybrid joined devices.

Inbound cross-tenant sync in cross-tenant access settings

You can enable cross-tenant synchronization to synchronize users from a partner tenant. Cross-tenant synchronization is a one-way synchronization service in Microsoft Entra ID that automates the creation, update, and deletion of B2B collaboration users across tenants in an organization. You create a user synchronization policy to streamline collaboration between users in multitenant organizations. Partner user synchronization settings are defined using the crossTenantIdentitySyncPolicyPartner resource type.

Collaborate with organizations using Microsoft Entra ID in different Microsoft clouds

Cross-tenant access settings are used to enable collaboration with Microsoft Entra organizations in separate Microsoft clouds. The allowedCloudEndpoints property enables you to specify which Microsoft clouds you'd like to extend your collaboration to. B2B collaboration is supported between the following Microsoft clouds:

• Microsoft Azure commercial and Microsoft Azure Government
• Microsoft Azure commercial and Microsoft Azure China

Learn more about collaborating with organizations from a different Microsoft cloud.

Interpreting the API response

The cross-tenant access settings API can be used to set up multiple configurations for allowing or blocking access to and from your organization. The following table highlights scenarios, shows an example of the API response, and what the interpretation should be of that response. b2bSetting is used as a placeholder for any B2B inbound (b2bCollaborationInbound or b2bDirectConnectInbound) or outbound (b2bCollaborationOutbound or b2bDirectConnectOutbound) or tenant restrictions (tenantRestrictions) configuration.

"b2bsetting": {
    "usersAndGroups": {
        "accessType": "blocked",
        "targets": [
            {
                "target": "AllUsers",
                "targetType": "user"
            }
        ]
    },
    "applications": {
        "accessType": "blocked",
        "targets": [
            {
                "target": "AllApplications",
                "targetType": "application"
            }
        ]
    }
}

"b2bsetting": {
    "usersAndGroups": {
        "accessType": "allowed",
        "targets": [
            {
                "target": "AllUsers",
                "targetType": "user"
            }
        ]
    },
    "applications": {
        "accessType": "allowed",
        "targets": [
            {
                "target": "AllApplications",
                "targetType": "application"
            }
        ]
    }
}

"b2bSetting": {
    "usersAndGroups": {
        "accessType": "allowed",
        "targets": [
            {
                "target": "g1",
                "targetType": "group"
            }
        ]
    },
    "applications": {
        "accessType": "allowed",
        "targets": [
            {
                "target": "AllApplications",
                "targetType": "application"
            }
        ]
    }
}

"b2bSetting": {
    "usersAndGroups": {
        "accessType": "allowed",
        "targets": [
            {
                "target": "AllUsers",
                "targetType": "user"
            }
        ]
    },
    "applications": {
        "accessType": "allowed",
        "targets": [
            {
                "target": "a1",
                "targetType": "application"
            }
        ]
    }
}

"b2bSetting": {
    "usersAndGroups": {
        "accessType": "allowed",
        "targets": [
            {
                "target": "g1",
                "targetType": "group"
            }
        ]
    },
    "applications": {
        "accessType": "blocked",
        "targets": [
            {
                "target": "a1",
                "targetType": "application"
            }
        ]
    }
}

"b2bSetting": {
    "usersAndGroups": {
        "accessType": " blocked",
        "targets": [
            {
                "target": "g1",
                "targetType": "group"
            }
        ]
    },
    "applications": {
        "accessType": "blocked",
        "targets": [
            {
                "target": "AllApplications",
                "targetType": "application"
            }
        ]
    }
}

"b2bSetting": {
    "usersAndGroups": {
        "accessType": "blocked",
        "targets": [
            {
                "target": "g1",
                "targetType": "group"
            }
        ]
    },
    "applications": {
        "accessType": "allowed",
        "targets": [
            {
                "target": "a1",
                "targetType": "application"
            }
        ]
    }
}

"b2bSetting": {
    "usersAndGroups": {
        "accessType": "allowed",
        "targets": [
            {
                "target": "g1",
                "targetType": "group"
            }
        ]
    },
    "applications": {
        "accessType": "allowed",
        "targets": [
            {
                "target": "a1",
                "targetType": "application"
            }
        ]
    }
}

"b2bSetting": {
    "usersAndGroups": {
        "accessType": "blocked",
        "targets": [
            {
                "target": "g1",
                "targetType": "group"
            }
        ]
    },
    "applications": {
        "accessType": "blocked",
        "targets": [
            {
                "target": "a1",
                "targetType": "application"
            }
        ]
    }
}

"invitationRedemptionIdentityProviderConfiguration": { 
    "primaryIdentityProviderPrecedenceOrder": [ 
        "externalFederation",
        "azureActiveDirectory", 
        "socialIdentityProviders" 
    ], 
    "fallbackIdentityProvider": "defaultConfiguredIdp" 
} 

Cross-tenant access settings vs tenant restrictions

Cross-tenant access settings outbound controls are for controlling how your organization's accounts are used for accessing resources in other Microsoft Entra organizations. Tenant Restrictions are for controlling how your employees use other Microsoft Entra organizations' accounts while the employee is on your networks or devices. Critically, outbound controls work all the time because they're associated with your accounts, while Tenant Restrictions require other signals to be injected into the authentication requests to be enforced, because tenant restrictions are scoped to networks and devices, not accounts. Learn more about tenant restrictions.

Related content

• Tutorial: Configure cross-tenant synchronization