User Accounts & Roles (part 1)

 

To read part 2, please click here

To read part 3, please click here

User Identities

Microsoft 365 is widely known for using cloud-based user identity and authentication service Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) to manage users, allowing you to select from any two of its main authentication models in Microsoft 365 (cloud authentication and federation authentication) to set up as well as manage user accounts. The various categories of authentication in Microsoft 365 are:

• Cloud-only- As the name suggests, here, the user identity exists in the cloud only due to which all the password management and policy control have to be through done through Azure AD.

• Directory Synchronization with Pass-through Authentication (PTA)- This one offers a simple password validation for Azure AD authentication services. PTA generally uses a software agent running on one or more on-premises servers to validate the users directly with your on-premises AD while also enabling users to sign in to both on-premises and Microsoft 365 resources as well as applications using their on-premises account and password.

• Single Sign-On with Active Directory Federated Services (SSO with AD FS)- The SSO option gives authentication control to your directory service so that the users will authenticate against AD FS instead of Azure AD. Hence, now whenever a user types their login credentials into the Microsoft 365 sign-in page, they will be redirected to their organization's sign-in page where they can easily enter their on-premises credentials and authenticate to the Microsoft 365 online services with the help of a delegated token verifying that the use have successfully authenticated by their on-premises directory service.   

Create User Accounts

You use the following methods accordingly to provision user accounts:

• Microsoft 365 admin center- It's a simple web interface for creating and managing users individually, also available in the form of mobile app or tables as Microsoft 365 admin app.

• Import multiple users- It offers a method to import multiple users bulkily into the Microsoft 365 admin center with the help of a Comma-Separated Value (CSV) file.

• Windows PowerShell- It is a cmdlet-based and script-based interface used to create as well as manage single/multiple users. 

• Directory Synchronization- For this one, you have to provision and manage users by synchronizing Microsoft 365 with an on-premises directory service like Active Directory.  

The easiest and commonly used method to create user accounts in a non-directory synchronized environment is to use the Microsoft 365 admin center or the Microsoft 365 admin app. 

Creating Users with the Microsoft 365 Admin Center

As stated earlier, it is the most simple way to create one or more user accounts with the help of following steps:

1. Firstly, sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center.
2. Now select Users  and then Active Users  on the Microsoft 365 admin center's Home page.
3. Click Add a User.
4. After that you can fill in the user information and then select Next.
5. Choose which user licenses you want to assign and then select Next.
6. Specify whether to assign the user to a role and select Next.
7. In the Review and finish screen click Finish Adding. 

Creating Users with the Add Multiple Users Option

You can perform following steps to create users with the help of bulk import:

1. On the Active users screen choose add multiple users in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
2. Browse to the CSV file containing your users.
3. The verification result informs you about any errors in your file and show them in he linked log file.
4. Now set the new users' sign in status, location, and licenses on the Set user options page.
5. You can also specify who should receive the email of the results on the View your results page. You should introduce your own email address to provide temporary passwords to your new users.  

To read part 2, please click here

To read part 3, please click here