Creating and managing custom views

Custom views of users can be a handy way to make searching for a user who fits certain criteria a bit easier. (PowerShell also serves as a handy tool in this way.) There are lots of reasons you may want to do this. Feel free to use your imagination!

For example, let's create a view that shows us only users who have been synced from the local AD. To create a view, click the Views drop-down and scroll to the bottom, then click Add custom view:

Custom user views drop-down

This will bring up the Custom view dialog. We'll need to specify a few options on this screen:

• Name your view: Synced with AD
• Other conditions: Synchronized users only

When you're done, click the Add button to save your changes. Your views will appear below the out-of-the-box Views but above the Views based on admin roles.

Here's another useful view:

• Name your view: Mailboxes in danger
• Other conditions: Unlicensed users with Exchange mailboxes or archives

Unfortunately, the means of editing or deleting a view isn't particularly obvious. There's not any specific page you navigate to in order to manage user views. Instead, select a view from the drop-down at the top of the Active users page, then a button will appear to the right of the drop-down to allow you to make changes to it:

Edit custom user view button

The language on the button has changed over time. Microsoft documentation refers to it as the Edit this filter button. In the preceding screenshot, it's shown as Edit this view, though you must hover over it to see the full text.

To delete a view, first edit it, then scroll down to the bottom of the Custom view dialog and click Delete.

You can only edit or delete the views that you create. To make this interface even more annoying than it already is, whether the Edit this view button is visible or not is the only way to differentiate between an out-of-the-box view and a custom view, so if you create a lot of views like we did, you may lose track of which ones are yours and which came with Office 365.

Those interested in automating tenant setup for multiple Office 365 customers will be disappointed to learn that there's no evidence that any of the user view management capabilities appear to be exposed through PowerShell in any way at all. If you dreamed of rolling out a couple of handy custom views to be used across 100 tenants, good documentation of your process and a helpful intern will be your friends.

It's a good thing you most likely won't need to do a lot of frequent tasks within Custom views.