Managing external identities to enable secure access for partners, customers, and other non-employees
Yes. Microsoft Entra supports this through self-service sign-up user flows for B2B collaboration, so external users can sign themselves up for access instead of an admin sending each guest invitation manually.
Key points:
- What it does
- External users can sign up for applications or resources themselves.
- After they complete sign-up, they are represented in the directory as a B2B collaboration user object, typically with user type set to Guest.
- Microsoft Entra accounts are supported as an identity provider option by default for B2B collaboration. No extra configuration is required for guests to sign in with their work or school account.
- How to enable it
- Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center as at least a User Administrator.
- Go to Entra ID > External Identities > External collaboration settings.
- Set Enable guest self-service sign up via user flows to Yes.
- Select Save.
- What happens next
- After enabling the tenant setting, user flow controls become available so the sign-up flow can be associated with an application.
- This is the feature used to create the self-registration experience for guest users.
- Licensing / requirements
- For the guest and partner access governance deployment scenario, the documented requirements include:
- Microsoft Entra ID P1 or P2
- Microsoft Entra ID Governance SKU
- Two tenants: source and target
- A cloud user in the source tenant to request access
- A cloud user in the target tenant to approve and access
- An account in the target tenant with one of these roles: User Administrator, Identity Governance Administrator, Privileged Role Administrator, or Global Administrator
- The documentation also notes that self-service sign-up can be enabled at the tenant level and configured through the portal or Microsoft Graph.
- For the guest and partner access governance deployment scenario, the documented requirements include:
- When to use this vs invitation flow
- Use invitation flow when admins want to add guest users directly.
- Use self-service sign-up user flows when end users should initiate their own registration.
- If approval workflows, access packages, lifecycle automation, or organization-scoped requests are needed, entitlement management is the documented option for those scenarios.
References:
- Add self-service sign-up user flows for B2B collaboration
- What is Microsoft Entra B2B collaboration?
- Use Microsoft Entra work and school accounts for B2B collaboration
- Configure external collaboration settings for B2B in Microsoft Entra External ID
- Microsoft Entra ID Governance deployment guide to govern guest and partner access