Create an organization relationship in Exchange Online

  • Article

Set up an organization relationship to share calendar information with an external business partner. Microsoft 365 and Office 365 admins can set up an organization relationship with another Microsoft 365 or Office 365 organization or with an Exchange on-premises organization.

What do you need to know before you begin?

  • Estimated time to complete: 5 minutes.

  • You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure or procedures. To see what permissions you need, see the Permissions in Exchange Online article.

  • To connect to Exchange Online PowerShell, see Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell.

  • If you want to share calendars with an on-premises Exchange organization, the on-premises Exchange administrator has to set up an authentication relationship with the cloud (also known as "federation") and must meet minimum software requirements.

Use the Exchange admin center to create an organization relationship

  1. In the EAC, go to Organization > Sharing > Organization sharing tab. Or, use Organization sharing.

  2. On the Organization sharing tab of the Sharing page, select Add organization relationship Add Icon..

  3. The New organization sharing wizard opens. On the Fill in the basic info page, configure the following settings:

    • Relationship name: Type a friendly name for the organization relationship.
    • Domains to share with: Type the domain for the external Microsoft 365, Office 365, or Exchange on-premises organization you want to let see your calendars. If you need to add more than one domain, you can edit the organization sharing relationship after you create it.

    When you're finished on the Fill in the basic info page, select Next.

  4. On the Sharing options page, turn on the Calendar free/busy information sharing toggle and then configure the following settings:

    • Select one of the following values:
      • Calendar free/busy information with time only (default).
      • Calendar free/busy information with time, subject, and location.
    • Share calendar free/busy information for: Select one of the following values:
      • Everyone in your organization (default).
      • A specified security group. In the box that appears, select the security group in your organization.

    When you're finished on the Sharing options page, select Next.

  5. On the Review organization relationship page, verify the settings. To make changes, select Back. When you're finished on the Review organization relationship page, select Next.

  6. On the Status page, select Done.

  7. Back on the Organization sharing tab on the Sharing page, select Refresh if the organization relationship isn't shown.

Use Exchange Online PowerShell to create an organization relationship

This example creates an organization relationship with Contoso, Ltd with the following conditions:

  • An organization relationship is set up with contoso.com, northamerica.contoso.com, and europe.contoso.com.
  • Free/busy access is enabled.
  • Contoso.com and the subdomains get free/busy time, subject, and location information from your organization.
New-OrganizationRelationship -Name "Contoso" -DomainNames "contoso.com","northamerica.contoso.com","europe.contoso.com" -FreeBusyAccessEnabled $true -FreeBusyAccessLevel LimitedDetails

If you're not sure of the domains that Contoso configured for cloud-based authentication, you can run the following command to automatically find the configuration information (Get-FederationInformation) and pass it to the New-OrganizationRelationship command.

Get-FederationInformation -DomainName Contoso.com | New-OrganizationRelationship -Name "Contoso" -FreeBusyAccessEnabled $true -FreeBusyAccessLevel LimitedDetails

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see Get-FederationInformation and New-OrganizationRelationship.

If you're setting up an organization relationship with an on-premises Exchange organization, you might want to provide the connection settings. This example creates an organization relationship with Fourth Coffee and specifies the connection settings to use. The following conditions apply:

  • The organization relationship is established with the domain fourthcoffee.com.
  • The Exchange Web Services application URL is mail.fourthcoffee.com.
  • The Autodiscover URL is https://mail.fourthcoffee.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.svc/wssecurity.
  • Free/busy access is enabled.
  • Fourth Coffee sees free/busy information with the time.
New-OrganizationRelationship -Name "Fourth Coffee" -DomainNames "fourthcoffee.com" -FreeBusyAccessEnabled $true -FreeBusyAccessLevel AvailabilityOnly -TargetAutodiscoverEpr "https://mail.fourthcoffee.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.svc/wssecurity" -TargetApplicationUri "mail.fourthcoffee.com"

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see New-OrganizationRelationship.

How do you that you've successfully created an organization sharing relations?

The successful completion of the New organization relationship wizard indicates that the organization relationship was created.

You can also replace <OrgRelationshipName> with the name of the organization relationship and run the following command to verify the settings:

Get-OrganizationRelationship -Identity "<OrgRelationshipName>" | Format-List

Organization relationships with GCC High

Microsoft 365 Government Community Cloud High (GCC High) organizations can create organization relationships with World Wide and Microsoft 365 Government Community Cloud (GCC) organizations.

Important

Organization relationships between the Microsoft 365 Department of Defense (DoD) cloud and other clouds is not supported.

Create cross-cloud organization relationships

Using Exchange Online PowerShell is the best way to create organization relationships between clouds.

This example creates an organization relationship between Contoso, Ltd. in the World Wide cloud and Fourth Coffee in the GCC High cloud with the following conditions:

  • Contoso domains are contoso.com, northamerica.contoso.com, and europe.contoso.com.
  • Fourth Coffee domains are fourthcoffee.com
  • Free/busy access is enabled.
  • Each tenant gets free/busy time, subject, and location information from the other tenant

In Fourth Coffee, run the following command:

New-OrganizationRelationship -Name "Contoso" -DomainNames "contoso.com","northamerica.contoso.com","europe.contoso.com" -FreeBusyAccessEnabled $true -FreeBusyAccessLevel LimitedDetails -TargetApplicationUri "outlook.com" -TargetAutodiscoverEpr "https://autodiscover-s.outlook.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.svc/WSSecurity"

In Contoso, run the following command:

New-OrganizationRelationship -Name "Fourth Coffee" -DomainNames "fourthcoffee.com" -FreeBusyAccessEnabled $true -FreeBusyAccessLevel LimitedDetails -TargetApplicationUri "office365.us" -TargetAutodiscoverEpr "https://autodiscover-s.office365.us/autodiscover/autodiscover.svc/WSSecurity"

You can't use the Get-FederationInformation cmdlet to automatically discover the domains and other configurations needed for cross-cloud organization relationship setup.

The configuration parameters that you need to set are described in the following table:

Parameter OrgRel in WW/GCC for GCC High tenant OrgRel in GCC High for WW/GCC tenant
DomainNames All the domains for the remote org. You need to collect and add these values manually. All the domains for the remote org. You need to collect and add these values manually.
TargetApplicationUri Office365.us Outlook.com
TargetAutodiscoverEpr https://autodiscover-s.office365.us/autodiscover/autodiscover.svc/WSSecurity https://autodiscover-s.outlook.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.svc/WSSecurity