Users, Groups, and Tenants

Every Azure environment begins with a tenant, and within that tenant live the users and groups that form the foundation of your identity management strategy. This lesson explores how to create, manage, and organise these identity objects.

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Understanding the Tenant

A tenant represents a single organisation in Microsoft Entra ID. When your organisation signs up for Azure, Microsoft 365, or any other Microsoft cloud service, a tenant is automatically created.

Tenant Properties

Property	Description
Tenant ID	A globally unique GUID (e.g., 72f988bf-86f1-41af-91ab-2d7cd011db47)
Primary domain	The default .onmicrosoft.com domain
Custom domains	Verified domains you add (e.g., contoso.com)
Country or region	Determines the data-residency location

Multi-Tenant vs Single-Tenant

• Single-tenant — one tenant per organisation (most common)
• Multi-tenant — some large organisations use separate tenants for subsidiaries, mergers, or regulatory isolation

You can establish cross-tenant access settings (B2B collaboration) to share resources between tenants.

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Managing Users

User Types

Entra ID supports two primary user types:

Type	Description
Member	A full member of the directory, typically an employee
Guest	An external user invited via B2B collaboration

Creating a User in the Azure Portal

1. Navigate to Microsoft Entra ID > Users > New user
2. Choose Create new user or Invite external user
3. Fill in the required fields: display name, user principal name (UPN), and initial password
4. Optionally assign groups, roles, and job information
5. Click Create

Creating a User with Azure CLI

az ad user create \
  --display-name "Jane Smith" \
  --user-principal-name jane.smith@contoso.com \
  --password "SecureP@ssw0rd!" \
  --mail-nickname jsmith

Creating a User with PowerShell

New-MgUser -DisplayName "Jane Smith" `
  -UserPrincipalName "jane.smith@contoso.com" `
  -PasswordProfile @{ Password = "SecureP@ssw0rd!"; ForceChangePasswordNextSignIn = $true } `
  -MailNickname "jsmith" `
  -AccountEnabled

User Properties

Users have a rich set of properties including:

• Identity — display name, UPN, mail, object ID
• Job info — job title, department, manager, company name
• Contact info — phone numbers, addresses
• Settings — usage location (required for licence assignment), preferred language

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Managing Groups

Groups simplify access management by allowing you to assign permissions to a collection of users rather than to individuals.

Group Types

Type	Description
Security	Used to manage access to resources (RBAC role assignments, app access)
Microsoft 365	Used for collaboration (shared mailbox, SharePoint site, Teams channel)

Membership Types