Overview

There are times where you may want to give an external user, such as your partner or a Cosmos employee, access to your Cosmos tenant to work with reports or make changes to the Data Model. This article covers the steps required to add an external user into your organization's Active Directory and then add them as a user in the Cosmos Portal.

Adding the User in Azure Active Directory

Adding the User in the Cosmos Portal

Details

Adding the User in Azure Active Directory

To be added as a Cosmos user there must first be an account for the user in your organization's Azure Active Directory. To create an account for the user, you will first navigate to the Microsoft Admin Center using the link here: Microsoft Admin Center - Users

Next, you will click the Add a User button and select Invite External User.

You will then fill in the email address and the display name for the user (this is the name that will be shown for the user inside of your Entra tenant), and you can leave the box checked for Send Invite Message which will send an email to the user inviting them to be an external user in your Entra tenant.

You can then click the Review + Invite button at the bottom.

The user will receive an invite email that they will need to click on to redeem the invitation. They may need to go through additional steps, such as setting up MFA, if you have that required in your Entra tenant.

Adding the User in the Cosmos Portal

Once the user has been added into your organization's Entra tenant, you will add just in the same manner as you would any other user. In addition, if the user will be creating or editing Cosmos Reports, you will want to ensure that they have the Report Editor role in Cosmos and that you have added them to the list of users that have the Excel add-in provisioned for them. Links to articles that address these three topics are below:

How to Add New Users

How to Assign Roles to a User

Publishing the Excel Add-In for Users

How the User Logs in to Cosmos

Entra is set up so that external users will log in via a slightly different method than regular Entra user. This alternate workflow is required by Microsoft.

When they get to the login screen for Microsoft Entra, they will first click the Sign-In Options button rather than entering their email.

They will then click on Sign in to an Organization.

They will then enter your Entra domain, such as cosmosdatatech.com. 

They will then sign in with the regular email/password associated with their account. This will complete the login process and they will be logged in to the Cosmos Portal.