Add Users In SharePoint Online And Manage Hierarchy

Introduction

 

Adding users in SharePoint online is a regular task for an admin user. For a regular developer, if you are using Office 365 Developer Program, then you might also need to add users and manage their hierarchy. The users will be added as Office 365 accounts and afterwards, you can choose which apps or licenses he can use.

 

First - Add Users

 

To manage users, you need to go to Microsoft 365 Admin Center.

 

Log in with your Office 365 account credentials. You must have administrative privileges to manage the users.

 

Click on Users section on the left side navigation bar. Select Active users. You will get the list of existing users as shown below. Click the "Add a user" button.

 

 

Enter the basic details like First name, Last name and enter the username (should be unique without special char).

 

 

You can choose to auto-generate the password or enter your own password. Similarly, you can choose roles as well or keep it default as User.

 

 

If you don't want the auto-generated password, then you can choose to enter your own password as shown below.

 

 

You need to specify the product licenses as well. If you don’t want to assign any license to the user (mostly if he/she is guest user), then you can choose “Create user without product license” and click on "Add".

 

 

As you can see below, a new user is added successfully with license associated to it.

 

 

You can add users in bulk as well. You need to prepare a CSV file with a list of users and their details in a specific format and use  the Import option provided. Click on More >> Select Import multiple users.

 

 

You will see the below screen where you will be able to download the sample CSV file. Download it and fill in the user details in a specified format. Upload the CSV file and click on "Next".

 

 

That’s the sample CSV format to import users in bulk.

 

 

Second - Manage Hierarchy of Users

 

From MS office 365 admin center, you were able to add users, but you can’t set the hierarchy from this place.

 

To set the hierarchy, choose the manager. We need to login to the Azure portal.

 

You will see the below dashboard screen of MS Azure.

 

 

Search for the Users resources/services from the search bar in the top bar and select Users services from the result.

 

 

You will see all the users you added from MS office 365 admin center,

 

 

Click on the user name to see detailed properties >> Click on Edit button >> you will see below screen >> There is a Manager field in the Job Info section >> Click on Change button,

 

 

A popup will appear where you can search for user who will be set as Manager of selected user >> Click on Select,

 

 

As shown below, the selected user is set as Manager to the current user.

 

 

Similarly, you can define the hierarchy of all users. You can specify Job Title, and Department metadata as well,

 

 

Summary

 

You can add users from the Microsoft 365 Admin center. But to manage hierarchy, you need to do it from the Azure portal. You can import users in bulk using CSV file. That’s it for this article. Hope this helps.