It’s a new Exchange Online capability that lets you route inbound emails directly to a user’s geo-region—ensuring messages are processed and stored only within the user’s location, even if your Microsoft 365 tenant is based somewhere else.
You get better compliance with local data regulations, without impacting mail flow performance.
✅Admins can set inbound emails for certain accepted domains to flow into a specific region’s datacenter, matching the user’s location.
✅Data is kept entirely within the recipient’s region (the user’s “Preferred Data Location”/PDL).
Learn more about Multi-Geo and licensing requirements here:
👉 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/microsoft-365-multi-geo
💲Important licensing note:
You’ll need Multi-Geo licenses to enable IRR, and this requirement isn’t going away. So if your org spans multiple countries or regions, check your licensing readiness:
⚠️ Purview implications:
If you’re using Data Loss Prevention (DLP), retention, or eDiscovery policies under Microsoft Purview, heads-up, some regional routing behavior may impact how these policies apply. Review your configurations before enabling IRR to avoid any surprises.
What admins should do next:
✅Confirm admin permissions and tool access (PowerShell or M365 Admin Center)
✅Identify users in secondary geo-locations
✅Set up accepted domains for geo-region routing
To get started with IRR setup, check out this guide, which has plenty of detail:
Are you planning to enable this?