What is a Microsoft 365 tenant?
A tenant is your organisation's own instance of Microsoft 365 - the account that holds your users, licences, data and settings. Everything about Cowork's cost is decided at tenant level: usage-based billing is switched on per tenant, spending limits are set there, and Cowork can only reach what sits inside it. One business, one tenant, one bill.
The tenant is the boundary of what Cowork knows. A fee earner's Cowork can read any document that fee earner can already open in the tenant - and nothing outside it. That's why the two pre-rollout jobs are permissions (tighten what people can already see) and billing (switch usage on deliberately, with caps).
Businesses with more than one tenant - usually the result of an acquisition - should know that Cowork doesn't bridge them. Each tenant needs its own billing set-up, and usage on one won't appear on the other's bill. Consolidating tenants is a project in its own right, and not one to start for Cowork's sake.
For most smaller UK businesses this is simpler than it sounds: one tenant, one admin centre, one place to set caps. The glossary term exists because Microsoft's documentation assumes you know the word.
If you use Microsoft 365 for email or Teams, yes - it was created when the first licence was bought. Your IT provider or whoever administers Microsoft 365 will know its name.
No. Each tenant is billed and permissioned separately. A group with several tenants budgets Cowork per tenant.
The definitions are the easy part. Whether Cowork is the right spend is a different question.
We help established UK businesses get a clear view of what they're already running - before they add more on top.