How to send a welcome message to new users?

[Eric Deferm]

What are the possible options for sending a welcome message when a new hire receives an Office365 account?

Can this be done in Sharepoint? MS Flow?

If not possible in O365, what are the options to send a welcome message when a new hire receives an Outlook mail box?

Any idea is welcome ;-). Tx.

[#2]

Eric,
Are you creating the user account in on-premises Active Directory and then adding a license to the user in the cloud, or is this a 100% pure cloud only identity?

If it is an on-premises AD user that is synced to the cloud, there is a community script that was written that can send the email as part of the new account creation process, reference is here: https://community.spiceworks.com/scripts/show/3188-office-365-user-creation

[#3]

Apart from automating a "welcome" script, you might also consider informing your users when new functionality is rolled out, or simply remind them about some features exist. There's a built-in "wizard" as part of the O365 Admin portal that lets you do that: https://portal.office.com/adminportal/home#/iwwizard

[#4]

Wow, I was not aware of that wizar...thanks @Vasil Michev

[#5]

Yes I like wizard, but it could be automated maybe in future will be possible to do that.

[#6]

this one is just great i did not know of!!

[#7]

That's a great one, @Vasil... new to me as well!

[#8]

It has been around for a while now, but since it's only exposed in one of the home page "boxes" it gets overlooked I guess. Same for all the setup wizards they have added in the past few months.

@Anne Michels I guess you can take some feedback on this? :) Also, do you guys have any plans to provide automation for these email, as people suggested above?

[#9]

Hi Joe , thanks for your fast reply. It's indeed an on-premise AD user that we sync to the cloud. The script you reference creates an account and at the end sends an email to the new user.
For different reasons we're using the admin interface to create our AD users.
Would it be possible to trigger/fire the script after the users are created ?
In the script we would then only the mail send code.
For different reasons we've a delay between the creation of the user, availability of the mail box and O365 license activation/assignment.
Would it be possible to trigger the script after assigning the O365 license?

[#10]

HI Vasil Michev,
Tx for your prompt reply. This is really a great feature, just discovered it now.
Do you know if MS will provide more of these 'Ready to send messages' ?
Today I notice a RtSM for Teams, any chance we can expect RtSMs for Stream, Planner, Sway, and other future apps?

[#11]

That's something Anne can answer, probably on Monday though :)

[#12]

 Hi all,

thanks for your feedback. We're indeed currently working on how to improve the "to user email capabilities" that we have in the admin center and to make this feature more discoverable to admins as well. If you have feedback in general on how you would like to see this fucntionality improve and evolve, please let us know.

Thanks,

Anne

[#13]

Hi Anne,

Sure - here is my feedback:

Currently the new email templates are on demand only. It would be ideal if those can be triggered to be send for any new employee.

It would also be great if we can customize the templates or create our own that are then sent to new employees automatically.

Thanks,

Joe

[#14]

Hi Anne, we have the same requirements as Joe:
- option to automatically sent to new users (per template)
- customize the message
- availability of templates for the main new features/applications
- add our own templates (like Welcome msg)
Tx.

[#15]

I agree, this aproach and this ideas could be to be considered regarding to adoption to Office 365.

[#16]

We also would like the option to email new users, automatically, with a welcome message regarding our IT policies and procedures.

[#17]

@Karissa Larson that's an example of "underexposed" feature, as we discussed at Ignite :)

[#18]

Hi Anne,

I have not seen any updates on this in the past 4 months.  Are there any works in progress??

Thanks

Kevin

[#19]

Hi Kevin,

we had to postpone this work. We're still evaluating it but we don't have an ETA yet.

Thanks,

Anne

[#20]

Any changes?