Testing Microsoft Entra External ID User Flow Directly from the Entra Admin Center

Introduction

When working with Microsoft Entra External ID, validating your user journey before integrating it into an application is a critical step. While testing a .NET application verifies end-to-end integration, you sometimes need to isolate and validate the user flow configuration itself.

Fortunately, Microsoft Entra provides a built-in way to test user flows directly from the Entra Admin Center (entra.microsoft.com) — without writing a single line of code.

In this article, I will walk through step-by-step instructions to test Microsoft Entra External ID user flows directly from the portal.

Why Test User Flow from the Portal?

Testing from the Entra portal allows you to:

• Isolate policy issues from application issues

• Validate configuration before integration

• Troubleshoot claim mapping problems

• Test new changes safely

• Quickly verify MFA, email verification, and password reset

This method is especially useful when debugging issues like:

• Missing claims

• Email verification not working

• Incorrect user attributes

• Broken password reset

• Custom page UI errors

Step-by-Step: Testing User Flow from Entra Portal

Step 1: Sign in to Entra Admin Center

1. Go to entra.microsoft.com

2. Sign in with your administrator account.

3. Switch to your External ID tenant if needed.

Step 2: Navigate to User Flows

Go to: Entra ID - > External Identities -> User Flows, create a user flow or select an existing user flow

You will now see the configuration screen of the selected user flow.

Step 3: Configure the Test Application

From the user flow configuration screen - > select Application and add the application

Now it will list all the enterprise applications, select the application that you want to test along with the user flow.

If your application is not listed:

• Go to App registrations

• Ensure the application is created

• Make sure redirect URI is configured

Select the redirect URI (for example): jwt.ms

Using this is extremely helpful because it decodes and displays the token automatically after login.

Step 4: Click “Run user flow”

After selecting the application, click on Run user flow

From the wizard, for a quick test, make sure you selected a proper test application, the reply url, and Response type as an id token

Click on Run user flow button, it will take you to the sign-in page, after the successful sign-in, jwt.ms page will display the token and decoded claims.

Summary

Testing Microsoft External ID user flows directly from the Entra Admin Center is the fastest way to validate your identity configuration without deploying or modifying application code.

Before moving to integration testing in your  application, always validate your user flow directly in the Entra portal — it saves time, simplifies troubleshooting, and ensures a secure, predictable authentication experience.