Define patterns of initial access for guests
Implementation Effort: Medium – IT and identity governance teams must analyze collaboration scenarios, catalog onboarding workflows, and standardize access grant mechanisms for external users.
User Impact: Low – This is a backend administrative activity with no direct involvement from guest users unless process changes are deployed.
Overview
Defining patterns of initial access for guest users in Microsoft Entra ID involves identifying the different collaboration use cases that require external access and formalizing how that access is granted. This includes analyzing how guests are currently onboarded—whether by direct invitation, self-service request, or automated provisioning via entitlement management—and aligning those patterns with security and compliance requirements. These patterns must be classified and linked to appropriate authorization scopes, such as specific Microsoft 365 groups, Teams, SharePoint sites, or enterprise applications.
Establishing consistent patterns enables the organization to apply Conditional Access policies, access expiration rules, and lifecycle governance from the beginning of the guest's interaction. This supports the Zero Trust principle of "Verify explicitly" by ensuring all access requests are authenticated, logged, and subject to policy, and enforces "Use least privilege access" by scoping initial access to only the resources necessary for the business purpose. Without a clear definition of onboarding patterns, guest access becomes ad hoc and inconsistent, making it difficult to apply uniform governance controls and increasing the risk of excessive or long-standing external access.