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Introduction

Modern trend, Organizations are using Cloud to manage their end user devices and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) with secured manner. The question arises to me how to join a device to an Azure AD which forced me to create this article. The article describes how to add a device to AZURE AD with your organization user id. You can start as a fresher to create a new Tenant, User, Group and Join your Device. If you have existing users and groups, you can directly jump to Add device to Azure AD section.

Prerequisites

Before you start the process make sure you are meeting the prerequisites which helps you to complete the task and not stop you in between

1. Need Azure Cloud account
2. Windows 10 or Windows 11 Operating system client (This is your device to join Azure AD). You can use a VM or Physical device which connected to Internet.
3. You can use existing Tenant Azure AD to join this device or follow the steps to create a new Tenant and join.

Create new Tenant

1. Login to https://portal.azure.com  with a valid user ID and password
2. AZURE portal will be opened, the page looks like below

3. Click View button in Manage Azure Active Directory to open your Active Directory properties Page, the page shows your Default Directory details which belongs to your current user Azure login domain. An Azure Tenant is A dedicated and trusted instance of Azure AD. The tenant is automatically created when your organization signs up for a Microsoft cloud service subscription. Multiple organizations are considered multi-tenant. Each Azure tenant has a dedicated and trusted Azure AD directory. The Azure AD directory includes the tenant’s users, groups, and apps and is used to perform identity and access management functions for tenant resources. Our aim is to create a new Tenant Domain for our organization and add our device on it.

4. From the Default Directory page, click Manage Tenants

Tenant Creation page

5. Select Create in Manage Tenants and You will get a Tenant creation page, Select Basic

6. Click Next: Configuration and Fill your new domain details

7. You may get the domain name already in use by another directory, hence try few more options to create your domain successful. The error will be disappeared after a successful Initial Domain name selection.

8.  Select your preferred Datacenter location, my case I selected Asia Pacific

9. Click Next: Review + Create > Domain name validation process will be started, allow few mins and refresh the page you can see Validation Passed, If not please check your domain name is valid.

10. Now you are ready to create the Domain by clicking Create button in the bottom, Type the letters to prove you are not robot, now you can see the tenant creation in progress

11. Few mins later, the Tenant created successful,

12.  You can click the Domain Name to open new domain, or You can come click Home button – Manage Azure Active Directory – Manage Tenants

13. Click your newly created Tenant, you can see the properties of this Tenant, this is new domain hence the profile not setup, verify your domain details are correct and close.

14. It’s time to switch your new domain, Tick the check box on your domain name and select Switch which will open your new domain,

15. Now you are in new Tenant, Verify your new Tenant details, User details on the summary page.

Create New Group

16. Before creating a user account, you should create a Group because part of the user account creation, the process will ask for a group. Follow the below steps to create a new group, In the new domain page -> Manage -> select Groups

17. Groups Page will open, select New group

18. Fill the information in the New Group page, Group Type – Security (for this case), Group Name – Give your desired group name, Group Description – Give appropriate description as per your convenient, Leave Membership default value Assigned.

Owners – No Owners selected (you can do it later), Members – No members selected because this is new group.

Select Create

19. Allow few mins to create the group, Click Refresh in the Groups page, your group will be appeared

Create New User

20. Create User Account, Go to Overview page and select Users

21. Users Page, select a New User -> Create new User

22. Fill the details of Username – Your user id depends on your standard, Name – Full Name, Password – I selected Let me create the password option and keyed in the password,

Group and Roles – Select the group you created in the previous group creation steps, my case “First Group”, Roles – select Users, Block Sign in – select No

Select Create

23. Allow few mins to create the User, Click Refresh in the Users page, The user should be shown there,

24. The user ID created successfully, and you are ready to setup Your device.

Add Device to Azure AD

25. Login to your preferred device which you want to join to this new domain (Tenant). Make sure you have internet on that device, I am using windows 11 OS virtual machine running in Hyper-V.
26. Login the device as Administrator, Go to Settings -> Accounts – Select Access work or School

27. Access work or school page – select Connect

28. Connect will show a pop-up window to use your email id to connect the device but we are not going to use Email id instead we will use Join this device to Azure Active Directory

29. Provide The user Account we created earlier, my case Test1 and click Next – Enter Your password and Click Sign in

30. Sign in windows showing you to change your password because of first time login, Change the password and sign in

31. Your organization details will be shown, Verify the information are correct, if yes click Join and allow few mins to join the device to your specified domain

32. Successfully the device joined to the domain,

33. Click Done, the window returns to Settings menu, you can see there the Device connected to Azure AD

34. Let us check our AZURE portal about the status of the new device, go to view overview of the new Tenant, Select Devices to go device page

35. Devices page shows Total number devices – 1 and Unmanaged devices – 1

36. Click the Total numbers Device and verify the new device details are correct, my case the device details are correct.

37. Click your Device name and check the device properties

38. Reboot your device and check your Azure login credentials are working, Select Other Users and enter your credentials

39. After a successful login, go to Settings, you can see your Azure account

Conclusion

The article showed you how to create a new Tenant Azure AD, how to create a user account, group and how to join a device to Azure AD. The joined device is under Unmanaged Devices section. Moving forward you can start how to manage the device with your organization’s MDM solution, Microsoft Intune and Microsoft Endpoint Manager.