Unable to Add Users

Alexus Locke 0 Reputation points
2026-04-18T17:40:31.1833333+00:00

I am the Global Administrator for a higher education institution. I manage a dual-enrollment program in partnership with another institution, which provisions user accounts for participating students. Our institution provisions accounts for course facilitators and institutional staff.

We are responsible for providing the collaboration environment that enables students to access course-related information and communicate with instructors and program advisors.

Until recently, we used Slack. We have now transitioned to Microsoft 365 and are in the process of migrating students into Microsoft Teams. During this migration, we began receiving the error: “Invitations are blocked for this directory due to suspicious activity.”

As a result, we are unable to add students to Teams nor can we add any new internal or external users.

These students are currently in active courses and were scheduled to transition yesterday. Due to this block, they now lack access to essential communication channels and course materials required for participation and success.

In addition, this issue is now impacting other programs across our institution. We are currently unable to provision or onboard any new students into our environment, extending the disruption beyond this single program.

This issue is directly impacting critical academic operations and timelines.

A support ticket was submitted yesterday morning and classified as Severity A, but we have not yet received any response. (Support request ID: )

We urgently need assistance to remove the block on our tenant. Please advise on how to have this block removed as soon as possible so students can be added before Monday.

Microsoft Security | Microsoft Entra | Microsoft Entra External ID

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  1. Alexus Locke 0 Reputation points
    2026-04-21T01:41:03.1266667+00:00

    For anyone coming to view this after the fact. I saw a number of people with the issue, but there were few that followed up with the outcome. That's what this is intended to do. The only way to reach Microsoft support is by creating a support ticket. Though there are mentions of calling and chat, I was not able to find a way to access those items, even during business hours. Even with severity A, there is no guarantee of the 24x7 <1 hour turnaround as quoted on the support site. I had the standard support plan, and the first contact was made over 24 hours after the ticket was created and 3 hours into the standard business hours that are listed on the site. Outside of the support site, is no way to reach the support team, so genuinely, all you can do is wait. Once the ticket was picked up, even with reiterating to the support engineer I was assigned about the seriousness of my issue, there was still a request to lower the severity to B to allow them another day to unblock the account. I stayed persistent that this was a critical issue (as it genuinely was), and the block was removed about 3 hours later. This was incredibly stressful, but it did eventually get resolved. I would not recommend this experience to any other user.

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  2. Tushar Kanherkar 0 Reputation points
    2026-04-18T19:09:51.4533333+00:00

    The error “Invitations are blocked for this directory due to suspicious activity” is a tenant‑level security block. It cannot be fixed from your admin settings. Only Microsoft can remove it.

    What to do right now:

    • Call Microsoft support directly with your ticket number (2604170040004094).
    • Explain that this is a Severity A issue impacting active courses and onboarding.
    • Keep following up until the block is lifted.

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