Adding users to your Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central tenant

How do we define users in Business Central?

The management of users in Business Central are closely connected to your Microsoft 365 and Azure AD implementation. Although you can use Business Central without Microsoft 365 there is no doubt that your users will have the best user experience if your organization is using Microsoft 365 together with Business Central.

I have also created a YouTube video about this topic if you prefer to watch that instead of reading about it.

To create a new Business Central user we need to start in Azure AD and define our user there. Users can be both internal users and guest users. In this post my focus will be on internal users.

Create a new user in Azure AD

If you are unfamiliar with what Azure AD is you can read more about it at this Microsoft site.

From the Azure admin portal you can create new users or invite guest users.

From the list of our current users we can click add users to let Azure guide us through the process.

The first thing we are guided to do is to name the user and chose the users domain.

So we need to register the users first and last name together with the desired display name. We can also chose the username that is the one our new user will use as their login name. If there are more than one domain defined in our Azure AD we can pick from a list of available domains. In my case i only have one domain avalible.

We are given options to automatically create a password for the user or pick a password our self. I prefer to have it automatically created so i make sure the password is created in accordance with our organizations password policy.

If we want to force the user to change their password at the first login we can check that option.

And finally we are given the possibility to send the new password to one ore more email recipients. This can be handy if the new user got an alternative email address we can use for that purpose or if we as an administrator wants to check that the account is working as it should before we hand it over to our user.

The next step in the guide is about the users location and license. The licenses we have available to assign to our users can variate with the users location.

In my case i have now assigned the user license to both Business Central and Office 365. And as i mention earlier that is what gives our users the best user experience.

In the optional settings we can define if the user should have any kind of administrator roles in our Azure AD and give some additional user related information.

For an ordinary user we do not have to fill in anything here but your organization might have it’s own policy around what information should be used here.

The last step is a review step.

Here we can confirm or edit the information we have given so far before we submit the new user to our Azure AD.

Then we can the final confirmation that our new user is added ok.

Getting our new user into Business Central

Adding our user to Azure AD is the first step in the process. The next is to get the user into Business Central so she or he actually is able to log in to our system.

This can be done from the “Users” list within Business Central.

Under Process there is a function called “Update users from Microsoft 365”. Running that function will synchronize user changes between Azure AD and Business Central. This can involve adding new users but also removing users that no longer exist in our Azure AD.

Another guide is launched that will lead us through the process.

A summary of the changes ready to be updated is displayed and we are given the option to review the changes before update them into Business Central.

This is an example of what that review can look like.

And after completing the wizard we can now see that our new user is added to our user list in Business Central and the user will be able to log in.

The next natural step is to assign the correct user roles within Business Central. There are announced changes in the user role management in Business Central 2022 release wave 1 . So you can expect a new blog post around that topic as soon as the new release is available for public preview.