Manage Microsoft 365 user accounts

Types of User Accounts in Microsoft 365

You can manage Microsoft 365 user accounts in several different ways, depending on your configuration. You can manage user accounts in the Microsoft 365 admin center, PowerShell, in Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), or in the Microsoft Entra admin center.

As soon as you purchase Microsoft 365, the Microsoft 365 admin center and PowerShell can be used to manage accounts. When managing cloud identities, every person in your organization has a separate user account name and password. If you want to integrate with your on-premises infrastructure and have user accounts synchronized with Microsoft 365, you can use Microsoft Entra Connect to provide synchronization of identities and passwords for single sign-on (SSO) functionality.

Plan for where and how you will manage your user accounts

Where and how you can manage your user accounts depends on the identity model you want to use for your Microsoft 365. The two overall models are cloud-only and hybrid.

Cloud-only

You create and manage users in the Microsoft 365 admin center. You can also use PowerShell or the Microsoft Entra admin center.

Hybrid

User accounts are synchronized with Microsoft 365 from AD DS, so you must use on-premises AD DS tools to manage user accounts.

Managing Accounts

When deciding which way your organization will create and manage accounts, consider the following requirements:

• The directory synchronization software needs to be installed on servers within your on-premises environment to connect the identities between Microsoft 365 and your AD DS.

• Any directory synchronization option, including SSO options, requires that your AD DS attributes meet standards. The specifics of what attributes are used in your directory and what cleanup (if any) is needed are described in Prepare for directory synchronization to Microsoft 365.

• Plan how you are going to create Microsoft 365 accounts.

Regardless of how you intend to add the user accounts to Microsoft 365, you need to manage several account features, such as assigning licenses, specifying location, and so on. These features can be managed long-term from the Microsoft 365 admin center or you can also create user accounts with PowerShell.

If you choose to add and manage all your users through the admin center, you will specify the location and assign licenses at the same time as creating the Microsoft 365 account. As a result, not much planning is required.

Reference:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/manage-microsoft-365-accounts?view=o365-worldwide