Overview
This document serves as an overview and general instruction manual on how to manage users with the application known as external365.
External365simplifies the management of external user accounts in Microsoft 365, making it easy to share content and users granted access to a company’s SharePoint online site, but are not licensed within that organization. Please follow to Managing external users in Microsoft Office 365 to find what External365 is.
External365 is designed to operate from within the Microsoft Azure cloud and leverages Microsoft Azure specific technologies (e.g. queues, storage, app services, etc.). It cannot operate from another cloud vendor, nor can it operate from a stand-alone service platform. The external365 application is a multitenant host that can provision any number of discrete Office 365 tenants while maintaining secure separation of services between them.
The external365 application has been installed in the Azure tenant created specifically to host it. Access to that tenant is managed by administrative persons from Immersion Technology Services.
Main screen
User operations can be accomplished by tenant user operators and tenant administrators. These operations include the ability to find, create, update, delete, and disable user accounts in the connected Office 365 directory.
User operations all start on external365 User Management page.
The screen may look a little different for each user, depending on their permissions (administrator or operator), culture settings and grid layout.
Icon | Function |
| Create a new user |
| Bulk create users with an import file (csv) |
| Navigate to different administration screens to configure the application |
| Access your profile information and personal configuration settings |
Create an external user
To create a new user:
•Click on
from the main user list. The following dialog will appear:
Please note that screen may look different and have different fields depending on configuration settings.
•Enter Account Settings fields and click the Next button to enter additional information.
Field name | Instructions |
Display name | Enter the display name of the new Azure user. This is what the user will see when they login to Office 365. Display name may be completely different than the users real name if needed. |
First name | Enter the first name of new Azure user. |
Last name | Enter the last name of new Azure user. |
Username | Enter username the user will need to use to login to your Office 365 tenant.
|
Email address | Specify the user’s personal email address that will be used to receive automated notification from external365, SharePoint online, and LMS365 Cloud. |
Phone number (bus) | Provide the user’s primary business phone number. |
Phone number (cell) | Provide the user’s cell phone number. |
Preferred language | Enter user’s preferred language. The notification sent to learner will be based on their preferred language. |
Enter additional information and click Next button to enter group membership.
Field name | Instructions |
Display name | Enter the display name of the new Azure user. This is what the user will see when they login to Office 365. Display name may be completely different than the users real name if needed. |
Company | Enter the user’s company |
Manager | Type in the user’s manager. The manager needs to be a user that has already been created (internal or external). The field is type ahead so type in the first letters of managers first name and application will provide list of matched users. Managers have specific permissions within Office 365 and will be considered as the user’s first line manager. In applications such as LMS365 Cloud this is heavily used for approvals, reporting rights, etc. |
Department | Enter the user’s department |
Title | Enter the user’s Title (e.g. contractor, analyst, CEO, etc.) |
View | Choose a view/group that the user needs to be part. By selecting a view, this tells the application who else can also see and manage this user in external365.
For example, let’s say you have:
|
NOTE: Available groups are configured in the Control Panel under the Tenant Configuration “Groups” section.
NOTE: Select the group from Available Groups section and click on arrow to add to Selected Groups. This will allow you to add user to select group membership.
Import or export users
To import or export users, click on 
from the main user list. The following dialog is displayed:
Import / batch create user
For performance reasons, the bulk import tool is limited to 50 records at a time:
1. Click on Select CSV file button
2. Browse for the CSV file that contains the user information to import
3. Click on Upload
The CSV file must contain the following columns and headers:
Column name | Field mapping | Format | Required | Comments |
Action | N/A | Text | Yes | Create, Update or Delete |
UserPrincipalName | Username | Yes | Login name | |
EmailAddress | Email address | Yes |
| |
FirstName | First name | Text | No |
|
LastName | Last name | Text | No |
|
DisplayName | Display name | Text | No |
|
TelephoneNumber | Business phone number | Number | No |
|
MobilePhoneNumber | Mobile phone number | Number | No |
|
Manager | User’s manager | No | Must be previously created account | |
PreferredLanguage | User’s preferred language | ISO language code | No |
|
Department | User’s department | Text | No |
|
Office | User’s company | Text | No |
|
Title | User’s official title | Text | No |
|
Scope | View | Text | Yes | Can be left blank if scoping is not activated |
Password | None | Text | No |
|
Groups | Groups | Text | No | If multiple groups, separate with a semicolon (;) |
Search for users
The search bar allows the operator to locate user with specific names or roles, the search will find an exact match:
-If you append an * to your text, it will execute a “starts with” search
-A special search for a - will find disabled users
-A search for ~ will find users who are pending completion of their provisioning process
Update an existing user information
To update a single user’s profile information, either:
-Scroll through the list and double click on the user you would like to edit
OR-Use the search to find the user and then double click on it
In either case the user’s profile is displayed where you can edit any of the fields you specified during the user creation process. The user profile information is organized under three tabs:
-General: Display Name, Name (first/last), Username, Email address, Phone (business and cell phone numbers) and manager
-Other information: Company, Department, Title, View identifier (role) and Preferred language
-Groups: update user AAD and Office 365 group memberships
Create a profile picture for user
From the edit screen you may also upload a profile picture to associate to the user that will be displayed throughout your Office 365 tenant for that user. To do so click on the user icon at the top right of the screen:
Disable a single user
From this same screen you may disable a user. Disabling a user is a very useful feature if you would like to keep the user’s account but would like to block the user from signing for a period of time.
To disable a user, just click on the Disable button. Once disabled a user will be represented in the user list with 
.
Tip: To find all disabled users in the user list, enter – in the search bar from the main user list screen.
Delete a single user
To delete a user, just click on the Delete button from this screen. When you delete a user, the account is effectively removed, and the user will not exist anymore.
When deleted, the user account will be placed in a recycle bin for 30 days. To reinstate an account that has been deleted, please contact your Office 365 tenant administrator. Past 30 days, there is no way to retrieve the account.
Tip: If you are not sure if an account should be deleted or disabled, it is always safer to disable an account until you are positive the user account should be effectively deleted.
Other single user functions
When editing a single user, you have additional options available by clicking on the Toolbox button
Option | Definition |
| Delete the account |
Reset password | Resets the user password; an automated email will be notifying the user their password has been reset and provide a new temporary password |
Send new invitation | Sends the user a new email notification inviting the user to your Office 365 tenant with a predefined welcome message, user name, and temporary password |
Relink user account | It can sometimes happen that the user account is not properly linked to the user’s SharePoint user profile. This is not dependent on external365 application and is due to factors within the Office 365 tenant. If this happens, just use this feature to relink the profile information with the SharePoint user profile information. |
Update multiple profiles
You may update multiple profiles at the same time. To do so, hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and individually select multiple users. When you do this, the multiple user edit icon (
) appears as illustrated below:
Click on the 
icon to open the user tools dialog:
From here you may:
-Reset the group of users’ passwords
-Resend a new invitation email
-Relink the users’ accounts
-Add users to AAD or Office 365 groups
-Disable all the users
-Enable all the users
-Delete all user account
Self-service password reset
Any existing external user may request a password reset for an account by visiting the /passwordreset endpoint for a tenant.
For example, the password reset endpoint for a fictitious Contoso tenant would be https://contoso.external365.com/passwordreset.
Tip: We recommend placing this URL on your external facing website with instructions so you external users can easily reset their password in case they forgot it.
When the password reset is initiated, an email notification containing a temporary password is sent to the user. Once submitted, the password reset request will expire within 20 minutes after submission. If the user receiving the notification did not make the request or no longer desires the password reset, they can simply ignore the notification.
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