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Create a customer identity and access management (CIAM) tenant (preview)

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Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) offers a customer identity access management (CIAM) solution that lets you create secure, customized sign-in experiences for your customer-facing apps and services. With these built-in CIAM features, Azure AD can serve as the identity provider and access management service for your customer scenarios. You'll need to create a customer tenant in the Microsoft Entra admin center to get started. Once the customer tenant is created, you can access it in both the Microsoft Entra admin center and the Azure portal.

In this article, you learn how to:

  • Create a customer tenant
  • Switch to the directory containing your customer tenant
  • Find your customer tenant name and ID in the Microsoft Entra admin center

Prerequisites

  • An Azure subscription. If you don't have one, create a free account before you begin.
  • An Azure account that's been assigned at least the Contributor role scoped to the subscription or to a resource group within the subscription.

Important

Microsoft Entra External ID is currently in preview. See the Supplemental Terms of Use for Microsoft Azure Previews for legal terms that apply to Azure features and services that are in beta, preview, or otherwise not generally available.

Create a new customer tenant

  1. Sign in to your organization's Microsoft Entra admin center.

  2. From the left menu, select Azure Active Directory > Overview.

  3. On the overview page, select Manage tenants

  4. Select Create.

    Screenshot of the create tenant option.

  5. Select Customer, and then Continue. If you filtered the list of tenants by Tenant type: Customer in the previous step, this step will be skipped.

    Screenshot of the select tenant type screen.

  6. If you're creating a customer tenant for the first time, you have the option to create a trial tenant that doesn't require an Azure subscription. Otherwise, use the Azure Subscription option to continue to the next step.

    Screenshot of the two customer tenant options available during the initial CIAM tenant creation.

  7. If you choose the 30-day free trial, an Azure subscription isn't required.

  8. If you choose Use Azure Subscription option, then the admin center displays the tenant creation page. On the Basics tab, in the Create a tenant for customers page, enter the following information:

    Screenshot of the Basics tab.

    • Type your desired Tenant Name (for example Contoso Customers).

    • Type your desired Domain Name (for example Contosocustomers).

    • Select your desired Location. This selection can't be changed later.

  9. Select Next: Add a subscription.

  10. On the Add a subscription tab, enter the following information:

    • Next to Subscription, select your subscription from the menu.

    • Next to Resource group, select a resource group from the menu. If there are no available resource groups, select Create new, type a Name, and then select OK.

    • If Resource group location appears, select the geographic location of the resource group from the menu.

    Screenshot that shows the subscription settings.

  11. Select Next: Review + Create. If the information that you entered is correct, select Create. The tenant creation process can take up to 30 minutes. You can monitor the progress of the tenant creation process in the Notifications pane. Once the customer tenant is created, you can access it in both the Microsoft Entra admin center and the Azure portal.

    Screenshot that shows the link to the new customer tenant.

Get the customer tenant details

If you're not sure which directory contains your customer tenant, you can find the tenant name and ID both in the Microsoft Entra admin center and in the Azure portal.

  1. To make sure you're using the directory that contains your customer tenant, select the Directories + subscriptions icon in the toolbar.

    Screenshot of the Directories + subscriptions icon.

  2. On the Portal settings | Directories + subscriptions page, find your customer tenant in the Directory name list, and then select Switch. This step will bring you to the tenant's home page.

  3. Select the Overview tab at the top of the page. You can find the tenant Name, Tenant ID and Primary domain under Basic information.

    Screenshot of the tenant details.

You can find the same details if you go to Azure Active Directory either in the Microsoft Entra admin center or in the Azure portal. On the Azure Active Directory page, you can find the tenant Name, Tenant ID and Primary domain under Overview > Basic information.

Next steps