In this post I describe how you can configure custom images and banners for your Microsoft 365 tenant. One of the first things, besides security, I do to setup a new Microsoft 365 tenant is to configure custom images for branding the services pages. To me, this is essential, because if users will login or access services using certain Microsoft 365 portals they’ll see their known company logo, company wallpaper, colors etc. Talking in marking terms, this customizes your Microsoft 365 tenant to fit your corporate identity and branding to generate a better user experience based on known images from your company. Furthermore, this might also help, at least a little, that users don’t enter credentials if they might don’t recognize this, although this is an weak argument, not the major argument though. In my opinion, this is must for each tenant’s setup.

Additionally, I also take this post as an opportunity to inform you about an upcoming feature update, called Conglomerate branding (Roadmap ID 70551, MC243041), which might get available from April 2021, to customize your tenant more individually in case you have several domains and the need for different brandings within the same Microsoft 365 tenant. For details on this feature, please scroll down in the according section. Let’s start with the basics and what you can do today.

Image requirements

To start, you need some images or pictures for configuration. At the moment it is important that these images fit in resolution and data size because they are neither down- nor up-scaled if you just upload them.

• File types: PNG, JPG or JPEG

Azure and Microsoft 365 Login

• 1x background image 1920×1080 < 300 KB
• 1x banner logo 280×60 < 10 KB
• 1x logo squared light 240×240 < 50 KB
• 1x logo squared dark 240×240 < 50 KB

Microsoft 365 Portal

• 1x logo 200×30 < 10 KB
• 1x banner Logo strechted (top pane) 1366 x 50 < 15 KB

Configure login related pages

What do I mean with login related pages? Well, for users I mainly mean https://portal.office.com or any other Microsoft 365 page where users are required to login.

As-is start default

Target design

The above login screen is as-is but if the users enters his mail or login name it’s switched to your branded design as follows.

Okay, probaly not wining any prices for my graphic design but for testing and demo purposes this is ok to me. But what to configure?

Configuration example

1. Go to your Azure Active Dirctroy (AAD) https://aad.portal.azure.com/
2. Go to Company Branding (or directly https://aad.portal.azure.com/#blade/Microsoft_AAD_IAM/ActiveDirectoryMenuBlade/LoginTenantBranding)
3. Click configure and
4. Set up what you need for your configuration (after a first branding is set you could also set another branding depending on the locale/language)

That’s actually it for the first step. It does only take a few minutes. I’d claim that you probably need the most time to get the images in the right size (resolution and data size).

Configure Microsoft 365 portal pages

Let’s go ahead with the next step and configure the portal pages banner.

1. Go to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center (https://admin.microsoft.com)
2. Go to Settings
3. Go to Org settings
4. Go to Organization Profile
5. Open Custom Themes
6. Configure Custom Themes by uploading the images and pictures

The last checkboxes are checked because I want that users always have the corporate branding and them shown and their display name. If you done, click save and that’s it.

Add custom tiles to the app launcher

Also custom tiles for the app launcher can be configured on the Organzation profil page.

Conglomerate branding for global admins

As you now probably noted in the above, as-is March 2021 configuration, there’s no option to configure several and different custom themes. That’s why Microsoft has announced to provide the conglomerate branding, probably from April 2021 onwards, which is the (upcoming) capability to configure more custom themes. This is mostly needed in larger organizations with several brands beneath a single tenant which are required due to marketing and other purposes to appear with their branding, custom logos, wallpapers etc.

Additional resources

• Conglomerate branding for global admins Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 70551
• Microsoft Docs – Add branding to your organization’s Azure Active Directory sign-in page
• Microsoft Docs – Customize the Microsoft 365 theme for your organization
• Microsoft Docs – Add custom tiles to the app launcher