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Simplified email migration

In this article, we will see how you can add a user/identity in your Office 365 cloud, also known as, Azure Active Directory. We will see how to add a cloud identity individually and in bulk using CSV file. This is done through the Office 365 admin portal, that also allows users management and servers many other functions.

Note that a cloud Office 365 identity is on Azured AD and not on Windows Active Directory Servers. There is another approach if you want to add a “hybrid” identity, which is synchronized between on-premises and Office 365. But that will be dealt in another article.

So, here’s how to add a cloud identity in Office 365 individually:

  1. Go to Home Page in Office 365 Admin portal
  2. Click on ‘Add a User’
  3. Enter the details in the new user dialog box (such first name, last name, display name, and more)
  4. Add a user name and select the domain name from the dropdown list of your domains. (such as YourCompany.OnMicrosoft.com
  5. You can also add other details such as Address, Job titles, departments, etc.
  6. Enter the password using which the particular user can login
  7. Set a ‘Role’ and select the product license type

Here are few points to remember:

  • If a password is not assigned, a randomly generated password will be sent to the administrator’s email account
  • If you do not assign a ‘role,’ it will be automatically given the role of a “user,” unless you manually specify any other such as “Administrator.”
  • If you want to add a user without assigning any license (for reasons such as testing), you can go to the product licenses tab, toggle ‘Create user without product license’ to ON.

But if you wish to add multiple users, this approach can be very time consuming, but there is a quicker and more efficient approach described below.

Here’s to perform a bulk creation of cloud identities using CSV file:

  1. Go to your Office 365 admin portal
  2. Go to ‘Users’ à Active Users à Select ‘Add Multiple Users’
  3. Download a sample CSV file. You can select if you want it empty or with sample data.
  4. Open the CSV with a simple text editor and enter the data for the users you want to add (like user name, display name, etc.)
  5. Go back to the admin center of Office 365, click “Browse,” and select your CSV file à Click “Verify”
  6. If there are any errors, check the log file to find the error, correct it in your CSV file, and upload again.
  7. Click “Next” after the verification is complete and there are no errors
  8. Set sign-in options (allowed or blocked), product license, and location.
  9. Finally, click “next” and all your entries will be added
  10. You can download the CSV file of the results that includes the passwords (randomly generated) for the users. You can choose to send that file to the selected recipients.

Things to note:

  • These “Cloud-only” identities in your Office 365 tenant are not available on on-premises server. From the “Active Users” page in your Office 365, you can see the “Sync Type” of all the users. The ones discussed in this article will be shown as “In Cloud” and the others will be shown as “Synced with Active Directory.”
  • There is no way to view only “cloud” users, but you can filter them to view the synced users. You can, however, download the ‘Cloud Only’ users through PowerShell
  • For cloud identities, you can only set or modify the sign in status manually using either the PowerShell or Office 365 admin portal.

When you are creating an identity for the first time after setting up Office 365 and having created the tenant, it will help you significantly to understand the cloud and hybrid identities and how to add them on your server. This post was only about manually adding a single and bulk identities using CSV. In an upcoming post, we will discuss about adding the hybrid identities that are synced with your cloud/Azure AD as well.

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