New to admin center: Templates for adding users faster
Published Sep 16 2019 08:00 AM 25.1K Views
Microsoft

We’ve heard your feedback – creating multiple users with the same settings can be frustrating and time-consuming. I am pleased to announce the addition of templates to the active users page in Microsoft 365 admin center. We hope that this feature will streamline your work and help you achieve more.


You can now create and use a template to save time when adding multiple users. Templates are particularly useful if you have users who share many properties, like those who work in the same role and the same location.


Example:  I have a large group of engineers starting at the company. I know that they are all users with no admin role, located in the Redmond office in the United States, using Microsoft 365 Business, members of the Engineering department, and have the title Engineer 1. I can save all these values to a “Redmond engineer” template. When I create the users, I can use this template to populate all these values.

 

You can personalize multiple templates to speed up the work of adding different types of users. And you only have access to the templates you create as an admin; others cannot access your templates.

 

Getting started with templates

 

You have two ways to create a template. After adding a user, you have the option to create a template from the confirmation page. Or, you can create a template, as well as manage your templates, within the active users page. 

 

Figure 1. Option to save a new user’s settings as a template.

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Figure 2. Add or manage user templates within active users

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The following settings can be saved in the template:

  • Domain name
  • Password settings option (admin-generated or auto-generated)
  • One-time password choice (option to require the user to create a new password after their first sign in)
  • License location
  • License choices (for example, Microsoft 365 Business or Office 365 E5)
  • Application choices (for example, Microsoft Teams or PowerApps for Office 365)
  • Role (for example, User with no admin center access, or Helpdesk admin)
  • Most profile information, including job title, department, office, office phone number, and street address

 

Figure 3. Template details

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The following information is user-specific and isn’t saved in the template:

  • First and last name
  • Display name
  • Username
  • Choice to send the password in email and who the password email is sent to
  • Mobile phone number

 

We have started rolling out this new user template capability to tenants this month, and the rollout will continue over the next few months. Try it out and let us know what you think of this feature by submitting feedback on this blog post below or in the Microsoft 365 admin center!

46 Comments
Brass Contributor

Nice feature! Only thing that's still missing is the Company field. As far as I'm aware this must still be done through Exchange Admin Center.

 

It'd be great if you can add Company to both Azure AD and Microsoft 365 Admin Center!

Silver Contributor

@Lori Craw, I like this new feature.

Iron Contributor
If you have write back enabled on Azure AD Connect, can these templates be used and the corresponding user object is created in both AAD and on-prem AD?
Iron Contributor
Love this features of template
Copper Contributor

is that even possible to have this option synced from O365 to AD ? has MS considered this ?

Copper Contributor

This is a really useful feature, but will there be an option in future to add groups to the templates, similar to how we set up AD templates?

Copper Contributor

A welcome feature but a few shortcomings.

1) When a template is created by a Global admin, a user with "user admin" role doesn't see the template when they log in. They can't use it.

2) Also might be nice to apply to an existing user or group of users.

3) Can't use the template to create multiple users.

Copper Contributor

I created new user setup templates, but my other Global Admins are unable to see them. Definitely need visibility of these templates tied to the AD Roles. Also need the ability to modify the template after creation, so any users created with that template are also updated (for bulk licensing changes).

 

 

Microsoft

Thanks everyone for the feedback on templates. We really appreciate it. Please keep the feedback coming as you continue to use this feature! 

Copper Contributor

@Lori Craw

 

The announcement for this, in message MC188687, indicated that worldwide rollout would be complete by the end of November.  To date, this feature is not available in our instance.  Has there been a delay in full implementation, or is it an issue with our tenant?

 

We were anxiously awaiting this feature to arrive.

 

Thanks!

Copper Contributor

+1 to adding groups or distribution lists. New retail employee gets added to the "All Company" and "All Retail" distribution groups on creation as an example. 

Copper Contributor

Wondering...  It's now 2020 and we still don't have the option for user templates in the Admin Center...

 

Is it just us, or are there other Tenants/Organizations with the same issue?  Am I missing something??

 

@Lori Craw 

Brass Contributor

Major flaw of this: other global admins cannot see my templates, so they have to create them themselves. Basically, this feature is useless until all global admins can benefit from the work being done once. I use it, my colleagues cannot see my templates. Please fix immediately.

Copper Contributor

@Jamie_McKay , @Lori Craw I am not seeing this either. I always assume this is related to us having E2 NFP licenses. 

 

Joanne Rogers

Copper Contributor

@Joanne Rogers , perhaps that is it.  We're also a NFP, but carry E3 and E5 licenses in addition to the E2...

 

@Lori Craw, thoughts?

Copper Contributor

@Jamie_McKay we have one or two E3 also, but are also adding Microsoft 365 Business that showed up as an option recently. Pricing for NFP is very budget friendly. 

Copper Contributor

+1 for sharing templates with other admins within the tenant on an invite basis per template

Copper Contributor

Tampoco me salia hasta que abrir el Admin Center con el navegador "Edge" no me funcionó con "Chrome".

Microsoft

Hey @Jamie_McKay  - glad you're looking forward to the feature and apologize for the delay. We hit a few issues during rollout, and decided to pause the rollout while we addressed these. Now user templates are rolled out to all tenants. In addition, we hear the feedback from you and others on the importance of shared templates, and we are working on adding those capabilities.

Copper Contributor
Thanks @Karissa Larson, but the most important issue is still here, Other administrators cannot see templates one of our admins made. That means no standardization if anyone will be creating their own templates. Please fix this.
Microsoft

Thanks Dima. We've heard this loud and clear and are working on building support for shared templates right now. I have a question if you'd like to help directly shape the feature. @Dima Razbornov@Jamie_McKay@GreyWiz , @jimbarrgpboston , @MelNu , @Jennifer Smith - should all admins with the ability to create a user be able to create, view, use, and edit a shared template? Or should create and edit be restricted only to global admins, while all admins who can create a user could view and use shared templates? Is there a need to convert a shared template to a private one?

Brass Contributor
Option should exist to make template private or public among same-level admins. Global Admins should be able to create, edit, view, or delete any template, but maybe have the option for add-user admins to view/use templates, but not edit/delete them. Thanks! JB
Copper Contributor

It would be great if you could share these with team members, or make them global for all admins.

Copper Contributor

+1 for adding groups to templates.

+5 for being able to edit existing templates! Currently, if a template isn't working you have to create another.

Copper Contributor

Really need group membership to be part of a template!

Copper Contributor

Another vote for group membership, we tie all of our SSO and RBAC to azure AD groups, so having role based templates with the appropriate access controls would help 

Copper Contributor

Agree with  @Dima Razbornov@Jamie_McKay@GreyWiz , @jimbarrgpboston , @MelNu , @Jennifer Smith@Mark Bleasdale 

Really need to have a way to share the templates with other Admins. I think all Admins who can create, edit and delete users.
I think that "Shared" should be the default choice in a drop-down menu and "Private" the secondary one, when creating a template.

This would be great, really.

 

And also "Edit Template" should be a must.

Thank you for listening!

 

 

Steel Contributor

Why on Earth doesn't the template include the option for standard Group membership?

Microsoft

@Julian Knight, thanks for the question.  I've shared your feedback with the PG.  Adding Groups is something we are looking into and hope to be able to provide in a future release.

Copper Contributor

Adding my voice to others, the user template should include basic security/distro group membership

Copper Contributor

It been almost 2 years since this feature had been published, and reading the comments it shock me that almost from day one people had been asking for the feature for the templates to be Published as Shared with other Admins and MS have not implemented such important feature yet. This one is important and essential MS, you should published this template module if you where not going to allow that it can be shared to be used and manage in collaboration with other tenant admins. Another flaw that I found is that after I create a template, I can't alter to fix or correct. I have to DELETE and CREATE a NEW one from scratch if I made a mistake creating it the first time, or I have to modify something in the template that became irrelevant and need to be alter. I don't like being wasting my time recreating a template from scratch. The third thing I need that I find missing is that I need to set up the Group(s) of the user. Right now I have 3 distribution list groups: Employees, Temp Employees and Contractors. I currently define each user template I create per position per employment type. If I would be able to define in the template the groups I need to assign the user from the template, it would be sweet since I don't need after creating the account remembering to add the group. Other peoples in this forum are asking this.

 

So in summary, the 3 major feature I would like to see in the future of User Templates are:

  1. The ability to Shared User Templates so other Admins can use it and don't have to recreate it again on their accounts.
  2. The ability to modify an existing User Template, so admins don't have to delete to re-create.
  3. Be able to add Groups (Distribution, Security and Mail-enable Security) to be defined in the user template.

 

Copper Contributor

I would like to know if we can apply a template to any new user that get's synced into the tenant from our Active Directory (in hybrid).  In pure Azure/Tenant only mode, these seem to work great - but I would welcome the adjustments mentioned above by other users.

@Germán Vázquez-Martínez

 

Thank you for sharing your feedback for what you’d like to see in the future for User Templates!

 

  1. Regarding your suggestion for the ability to share user templates with other IT admins to avoid the need to recreate them; this is available now. We have a couple engineers investigating why this isn’t working for you.
  2. For your suggestion to edit an existing user template; we plan to release this within the next year.
  3. Regarding the ability to add Groups to a user template; we don’t have any updates to share at this time.

@alasorsa-sprague,

 

Thanks for your question about applying a template to a new user synced from Active Directory (Hybrid). Currently, there are no plans for this item.

Copper Contributor

Hi,

 

Would be great if you could edit templates.  Couple of times I've made a small mistake but there doesn't seem to be a way to edit the template once created.

 

Would also be really handy if you could add groups to the templates.  Each of our sites has an email group specifically for that site, so would be great if we could do that as part of the template.

 

Regards

 

Darren

@DarrenLough

 

Thanks for your comments!

 

Regarding your feedback for editing templates, we plan to ship this within the next year. 

 

Regarding the ability to add groups to templates; we heard the feedback from users and would love to implement it; however, there are some technical challenges. Therefore, we currently have no plans to add this.

 

 

Copper Contributor

Thanks for the update on being able to edit templates.

 

Shame there are technical challenges preventing adding groups at the template level.  Just got used to having that feature for the past 15 years on IBM Domino before we migrated.  Not sure on-prem Exchange Server even offered templates in my previous job, it was to long ago!!!

 

:)

 

Darren

Copper Contributor

Please add groups to the template function! I'm sure the technical hurdles can't be that big. GSuite can do it too

Copper Contributor
Climate platform go
Copper Contributor

@Microsoft_365_Team @alasorsa-sprague 

I will tell you why I can't share my templates, because you guys at M$ forgot to enable the "Publish this template" option for the User Admins, it does not make  sense that you only provide the feature to the Global Admin, you should provide the feature to all admins that manage Users, not only to the one admin that manage the hole tenant. You should be able to allow User Admin to be able to publish and share their templates, because my boss is not going to make me Global and he is not going to go and create the templates.

 

And Regarding the ability to add Groups, now you are telling me you cant do it and I have to every time after I create an user to loose extra time to search the user and edit it to add the corresponding groups (DL and security) because you cant find a way to implemented?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!!! Technical challenges sound more that M$ don't want to pay time for the development of  this feature. You have heard other user, other system do it.

Copper Contributor

We use Dynamic Groups to add all users to the group for what site they are at.  So we have templates for each of our 30 sites in which we have the users location as part of the template.  Then the dynamic group adds them to a group based on that location.  All those dynamic groups are then a member of our All Users group.

 

All our users only have one mandatory group which is their site group, to enable site and group emails, so this solution works well for us.  Would still be better if we could add other groups through the template, then we could have more specific templates for users who need to be in more groups.

Copper Contributor

Hi,  

 

Created user templates on m365. How to change the publish status from private to public.

Copper Contributor

When  you create the template there is a tick box to make it available on the first page.  You cannot change it once you've create the template as you cannot edit them once they have been created.

 

 

Template.jpg

Copper Contributor

@Microsoft_365_Team: Post:  ‎Jul 12 2021 01:51 PM


Regarding your feedback for editing templates, we plan to ship this within the next year.

What are the current plans for the edit function? It's over 1 year later and so far it hasn't been implemented unfortunately.

There are so many admins waiting for this feature!

Thanks a lot

Copper Contributor

This is a nice feature please add all the standard things that you would need to do when setting up new user. like the ability to assign o365 groups and  Assign a manager, Assign delegations, Assign Shared Mailboxes and Assign Custom attributes,

Iron Contributor

Bump for 'edit template'. Is it really that hard? I just want to change a job title. One text field. Please!

Copper Contributor

@Microsoft_365_Team it is now September 2023 and I still can't see in my Tennant a method of editing the User Templates I have created .

Apparently you posted this over 2 years ago 

@Microsoft_365_Team: Post:  ‎Jul 12 2021 01:51 PM

Regarding your feedback for editing templates, we plan to ship this within the next year.

Maybe I am just daft and I am looing in the wrong place

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