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Quickstart: Create a tenant (preview)

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Microsoft Entra External ID offers a customer identity access management (CIAM) solution that lets you create secure, customized sign-in experiences for your customer-facing apps and services. You'll need to create a tenant with customer configurations in the Microsoft Entra admin center to get started. Once the tenant with customer configurations is created, you can access it in both the Microsoft Entra admin center and the Azure portal.

In this quickstart, you'll learn how to create a tenant with customer configurations if you already have an Azure subscription. If you don't have an Azure subscription, you can create a customer tenant free trial. For more information about the free trial, see Set up a free trial.

Prerequisites

  • An Azure subscription.
  • 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 Universal License Terms for Online Services for legal terms that apply to Azure features and services that are in beta, preview, or otherwise not generally available.

Create a new tenant with customer configurations

  1. Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center.

  2. Browse to Identity > Overview > Manage tenants.

  3. Select Create.

    Screenshot of the create tenant option.

  4. Select Customer, and then select Continue.

    Screenshot of the select tenant type screen.

  5. Select Use an Azure Subscription. If you're creating a tenant with customer configurations for the first time, you have the option to create a trial tenant that doesn't require an Azure subscription. For more information about the free trial, see Set up a free trial.

    Screenshot of the two tenants with customer configurations options available during the initial tenant creation.

  6. 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.

  7. Select Next: Add a subscription.

  8. 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, add 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.

  9. 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 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 tenant.

Customize your tenant with a guide

Our guide will walk you through the process of setting up a user and configuring a sample app in just a few minutes. This means that you can quickly and easily test out different sign-in and sign-up options and set up a sample app to see what works best for you. This guide is available in any customer tenant.

Note

The guide won’t run automatically in customer tenants that you created with the steps above. If you want to run the guide, follow the steps below.

  1. Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center.

  2. If you have access to multiple tenants, use the Settings icon in the top menu to switch to your customer tenant from the Directories + subscriptions menu.

  3. Browse to Home > Go to Microsoft Entra ID

  4. On the Get started tab, select Start the guide.

    Screenshot that shows how to start the guide.

This link will take you to the guide, where you can customize your tenant in three easy steps.

Clean up resources

If you're not going to continue to use this tenant, you can delete it using the following steps:

  1. Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center.

  2. If you have access to multiple tenants, use the Settings icon in the top menu to switch to your customer tenant from the Directories + subscriptions menu.

  3. Browse to Identity > Overview > Manage tenants.

  4. Select the tenant you want to delete, and then select Delete.

    Screenshot that shows how to delete the tenant.

  5. You might need to complete required actions before you can delete the tenant. For example, you might need to delete all user flows in the tenant. If you're ready to delete the tenant, select Delete.

The tenant and its associated information are deleted.

Next steps

To learn more about the set-up guide and how to customize your tenant, see the Get started guide article.