Many don’t realise that Office 365 identity is built on top of Azure Active Directory. This means that every Office 365 tenant is using Azure Active Directory. What many also don’t realise is that you can easily access the Azure Active Directory by simply enabling it from your Office 365 Admin console. Here’s how you do this.

Login to Office 365 as a global administrator. Navigate to the Office 365 Admin, in my case by selecting the Admin icon from the app launcher.

In the lower left of this window, under the Admin section, you should find the Azure AD link as shown above. Select this.

You’ll now be taken to a screen like that shown above where you sign up to Azure.

You’ll need to enter your details (email, phone, etc). You’ll also need to specific a mobile phone which a verification code can be sent to.

Once all the details are entered and you have complete the verification via mobile phone select the Sign up button.

You’ll notice here that you don’t need to put in any credit card details like you do when you sign up for a free trial. This is because you are getting the free Azure Active Directory Edition only.

You see your request begin to process.

After a short while you should see a screen like that shown above. You can see that what you have signed up for is Access to Azure Active Directory.

It will take a few minutes to complete the provisioning and you can press the Refresh link to get an update on the status.

When processing is complete you’ll see the above screen. Select the Portal link in the top right of the window to proceed.

You’ll most likely be prompted to work your way through an introductory tutorial.

You should then see the Azure management portal as shown above.

You won’t however see all the standard Azure options on left, you’ll only see what is shown above. The main one of interest is Active Directory so select that.

You should now see your Active Directory listed. There should only be one, so select the name to drill into its properties.

You’ll be taken to the Dashboard. However, here select Users from across the top.

You should now see a list of your Office 365 users.

Now you can administer and work with tenant users from Azure or Office 365 (as well as PowerShell in both environments). There is also a whole more configuring that is available for your users from this Azure portal but I’ll cover that in upcoming posts.

So you have now enabled the Free Azure Active Directory Edition that comes as part of every Office 365 subscription. To read more about the different Azure Active Directory Editions see:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn532272.aspx