Cross-tenant access with Azure AD External Identities
![](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/external-identities/media/cross-tenant-access-overview/cross-tenant-access-settings-overview.png)
Azure AD (Active Directory) is a cloud-based identity and access management service in Microsoft Azure. It helps you manage the identities of users and devices while controlling access to resources within and outside your organization. A main Azure AD feature is support for integrated cross-tenant collaboration, enabling users from different organizations to collaborate and share resources with each other even when they're not part of the same Azure AD tenant (or instance). This article shows how to use cross-tenant access settings to manage B2B collaboration and B2B direct connect with external Azure AD organizations — even across clouds. Read the blog for a walkthrough of managing external access with inbound and outbound settings, default settings, organizational settings and others. In addiiton, get tips for comparing settings for different scenarios.