Microsoft will be rolling out a new account switching feature for Microsoft 365 web apps that eliminates the need for workarounds to use multiple Azure Active Directory and personal Microsoft accounts while using any web apps.
According to Microsoft, users will be able to sign into multiple accounts in the same browser and easily switch between the accounts without having to sign out of one account to sign into another. The feature will be rolled out from now until June in Worldwide environments of Office.com, Word, Excel, PowerPoint for the web, Outlook on the web, OneDrive for the web, SharePoint and the Microsoft 365 admin center.
The company bills this as a solution to distributed work and the many hats workers now wear while their work and personal loves become intertwined as they constantly move from their home offices to the corporate office.
However, users can currently only work with a single account inside of a Microsoft 365 web app, and are forced to sign out or use a private browser window or different device.
According to input from Microsoft customers, the new account switching feature will benefit users associated with more than one organization for work, such as consultants, as well as workers who want to switch between work and personal accounts to quickly tackle some personal items such as planning a family trip in between sending work emails.
To use the feature, users will have to click on the account manager in the top right corner where they can add a new account or switch to an existing signed-in account in the browser. The page will refresh with content from the new account in the same browser tab, according to the company.
What does this mean for security, data integrity?
Although users can add multiple accounts to a web app, only one account per app will be active at a time, and users will be notified to refresh any tabs with non-active accounts.
For the security-minded, Microsoft says it is not changing data access permissions or mixing data from different accounts and organizations.
“With this feature, we are helping reduce the friction users face when wanting to work with multiple accounts in the Microsoft 365 web apps,” writes Samuel Devashayam, group program manager of identity and network access at Microsoft, in a blog. “Security and privacy are extremely important for both Microsoft and our customers, and this feature maintains data integrity and privacy across different account and organization boundaries. In other words, each account will continue to only have access to the data they have permissions for.”
According to Microsoft, there is no admin control to turn off this functionality for a particular tenant, but the company promises that the feature will “maintain data integrity and privacy across organizational boundaries.” Admins can restrict access of Microsoft 365 applications to a specific set of tenants and disallow other sign-ins via tenant restrictions functionality in Azure Active Directory.
The account switching feature is not available for Microsoft 365 operated via 21Vianet, or Microsoft 365 Government and Germany cloud environments, per the company. Other apps not listed will be added to the scope in the future.
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