Azure PDF

Contents
Fundamentals documentation
Overview
What is Azure Active Directory?
What's new in Azure Active Directory
Quickstarts
Access the portal and create a tenant
View your groups with assigned members
Concepts
Identity secure score
Groups and access management
Group-based licensing
Azure AD architecture
Default user permissions
Deployment 30, 90, and beyond
Identity data storage for the EU
How-to guides
Organization
Sign up for Azure AD as an organization
Sign up for Azure AD Premium
Add a custom domain name
Add company branding
Associate an Azure subscription
Add your privacy info
Groups
Create a group and add members
Add or remove group members
Delete a group and its members
Add or remove a group from another group
Edit group information
Add or remove group owners
Users
Add or delete a new user
Add or change user profile info
Reset a user's password
Assign roles to users
Assign or remove licenses from users
Restore a deleted user
Resources
Get support for Azure Active Directory
Azure Active Directory FAQ
Azure Active Directory deployment plans
Archive for What's new? in Azure AD
What is Azure Active Directory?
3/5/2019 • 9 minutes to read • Edit Online
Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ) is Microsoft’s cloud-based identity and access management service. Azure AD
helps your employees sign in and access resources in:
External resources, such as Microsoft Office 365, the Azure portal, and thousands of other SaaS
applications.
Internal resources, such as apps on your corporate network and intranet, along with any cloud apps
developed by your own organization.
You can use the various Microsoft Cloud for Enterprise Architects Series posters to better understand the core
identity services in Azure, Azure AD, and Office 365.
Who uses Azure AD?

Azure AD is intended for:
IT admins. As an IT admin, you can use Azure AD to control access to your apps and your app resources,
based on your business requirements. For example, you can use Azure AD to require multi-factor
authentication when accessing important organizational resources. Additionally, you can use Azure AD to
automate user provisioning between your existing Windows Server AD and your cloud apps, including
Office 365. Finally, Azure AD gives you powerful tools to automatically help protect user identities and
credentials and to meet your access governance requirements. To get started, sign up for a free 30-day
Azure Active Directory Premium trial.
App developers. As an app developer, Azure AD gives you a standards-based approach for adding single
sign-on (SSO ) to your app, allowing it to work with a user's pre-existing credentials. Azure AD also
provides APIs that can help you build personalized app experiences leveraging existing organizational data.
To get started, sign up for a free 30-day Azure Active Directory Premium trial. For more information, you
can also see Azure Active Directory for developers.
Microsoft 365, Office 365, Azure, or Dynamics CRM Online subscribers. As a subscriber, you're
already using Azure AD. Each Microsoft 365, Office 365, Azure, and Dynamics CRM Online tenant is
automatically an Azure AD tenant. You can immediately start to manage access to your integrated cloud
apps.
What are the Azure AD licenses?

Microsoft Online business services, such as Office 365 or Microsoft Azure, require Azure AD for sign-in and to
help with identity protection. Therefore, if you subscribe to any Microsoft Online business service, you
automatically get Azure AD with access to all the free features.
To enhance your Azure AD implementation, you can also add paid capabilities by upgrading to Azure Active
Directory Basic, Premium P1, or Premium P2 licenses. Azure AD paid licenses are built on top of your existing free
directory, providing self-service, enhanced monitoring, security reporting, and secure access for your mobile
workforce.
NOTE
For the pricing options of these licenses, see Azure Active Directory Pricing.
Azure Active Directory Premium P1, Premium P2, and Azure Active Directory Basic are not currently supported in China. For
more information about Azure AD pricing, you can contact the Azure Active Directory Forum.
Azure Active Directory Free. Provides user and group management, on-premises directory
synchronization, basic reports, and single sign-on across Azure, Office 365, and many popular SaaS apps.
Azure Active Directory Basic. In addition to the Free features, Basic also provides cloud-centric app
access, group-based access management, self-service password reset for cloud apps, and Azure AD
Application Proxy, which lets you publish on-premises web apps using Azure AD.
Azure Active Directory Premium P1. In addition to the Free and Basic features, P1 also lets your hybrid
users access both on-premises and cloud resources. It also supports advanced administration, such as
dynamic groups, self-service group management, Microsoft Identity Manager (an on-premises identity and
access management suite) and cloud write-back capabilities, which allow self-service password reset for
your on-premises users.
Azure Active Directory Premium P2. In addition to the Free, Basic, and P1 features, P2 also offers Azure
Active Directory Identity Protection to help provide risk-based conditional access to your apps and critical
company data and Privileged Identity Management to help discover, restrict, and monitor administrators
and their access to resources and to provide just-in-time access when needed.
"Pay as you go" feature licenses. You can also get additional feature licenses, such as Azure Active
Directory Business-to-Customer (B2C ). B2C can help you provide identity and access management
solutions for your customer-facing apps. For more information, see Azure Active Directory B2C
documentation.
For more information about associating an Azure subscription to Azure AD, see How to: Associate or add an
Azure subscription to Azure Active Directory and for more information about assigning licenses to your users, see
How to: Assign or remove Azure Active Directory licenses.
Terminology
To better understand Azure AD and its documentation, you should review the following terms.
TERM OR CONCEPT DESCRIPTION
Azure subscription Used to pay for Azure cloud services. You can have many
subscriptions and they're linked to a credit card.
Azure tenant A dedicated and trusted instance of Azure AD that's

automatically created when your organization signs up for a
Microsoft cloud service subscription, such as Microsoft Azure,
Microsoft Intune, or Office 365. An Azure tenant represents a
single organization.
Single tenant Azure tenants that access other services in a dedicated

environment are considered single tenant.
Multi-tenant Azure tenants that access other services in a shared

environment, across multiple organizations, are considered
multi-tenant.
Azure AD directory Each Azure tenant has a dedicated and trusted Azure AD
directory. The Azure AD directory includes the tenant's users,
groups, and apps and is used to perform identity and access
management functions for tenant resources.
Azure AD account An identity created through Azure AD or another Microsoft

cloud service, such as Office 365. Identities are stored in Azure
AD and accessible to your organization's cloud service
subscriptions. This account is also sometimes called a Work or
school account.
Custom domain Every new Azure AD directory comes with an initial domain
name, domainname.onmicrosoft.com. In addition to that initial
name, you can also add your organization's domain names,
which include the names you use to do business and your
users use to access your organization's resources, to the list.
Adding custom domain names helps you to create user
names that are familiar to your users, such as
alain@contoso.com.
Account Administrator This classic subscription administrator role is conceptually the

billing owner of a subscription. This role has access to the
Azure Account Center and enables you to manage all
subscriptions in an account. For more information, see Classic
subscription administrator roles, Azure RBAC roles, and Azure
AD administrator roles.
Service Administrator This classic subscription administrator role enables you to

manage all Azure resources, including access. This role has the
equivalent access of a user who is assigned the Owner role at
the subscription scope. For more information, see Classic
subscription administrator roles, Azure RBAC roles, and Azure
AD administrator roles.
Owner This role helps you manage all Azure resources, including
access. This role is built on a newer authorization system
called role-base access control (RBAC) that provides fine-
grained access management to Azure resources. For more
information, see Classic subscription administrator roles, Azure
RBAC roles, and Azure AD administrator roles.
Azure AD Global administrator This administrator role is automatically assigned to whomever

created the Azure AD tenant. Global administrators can
perform all of the administrative functions for Azure AD and
any services that federate to Azure AD, such as Exchange
Online, SharePoint Online, and Skype for Business Online. You
can have multiple Global administrators, but only Global
administrators can assign administrator roles (including
assigning other Global administrators) to users.
Note
This administrator role is called Global administrator in the
Azure portal, but it's called Company administrator in
Microsoft Graph API, Azure AD Graph API, and Azure AD
PowerShell.
For more information about the various administrator roles,

see Administrator role permissions in Azure Active Directory.
Microsoft account (also called, MSA) Personal accounts that provide access to your consumer-
oriented Microsoft products and cloud services, such as
Outlook, OneDrive, Xbox LIVE, or Office 365. Your Microsoft
account is created and stored in the Microsoft consumer
identity account system that's run by Microsoft.
Which features work in Azure AD?

After you choose your Azure AD license, you will get access to some or all of the following features for your
organization:
CATEGORY DESCRIPTION
Application management Manage your cloud and on-premises apps using Application
Proxy, single sign-on, the My Apps portal (also known as the
Access panel), and Software as a Service (SaaS) apps. For more
information, see How to provide secure remote access to on-
premises applications and Application Management
documentation.
Authentication Manage Azure Active Directory self-service password reset,

Multi-Factor Authentication, custom banned password list,
and smart lockout. For more information, see Azure AD
Authentication documentation.
Business-to-Business (B2B) Manage your guest users and external partners, while
maintaining control over your own corporate data. For more
information, see Azure Active Directory B2B documentation.
Business-to-Customer (B2C) Customize and control how users sign up, sign in, and
manage their profiles when using your apps. For more
information, see Azure Active Directory B2C documentation.
Conditional access Manage access to your cloud apps. For more information, see
Azure AD Conditional Access documentation.
Azure Active Directory for developers Build apps that sign in all Microsoft identities, get tokens to
call Microsoft Graph, other Microsoft APIs, or custom APIs.
For more information, see Microsoft identity platform (Azure
Active Directory for developers).
Device Management Manage how your cloud or on-premises devices access your
corporate data. For more information, see Azure AD Device
Management documentation.
Domain services Join Azure virtual machines to a domain without using

domain controllers. For more information, see Azure AD
Domain Services documentation.
Enterprise users Manage license assignment, access to apps, and set up

delegates using groups and administrator roles. For more
information, see Azure Active Directory user management
documentation.
CATEGORY DESCRIPTION
Hybrid identity Use Azure Active Directory Connect and Connect Health to
provide a single user identity for authentication and
authorization to all resources, regardless of location (cloud or
on-premises). For more information, see Hybrid identity
documentation.
Identity governance Manage your organization's identity through employee,

business partner, vendor, service, and app access controls. You
can also perform access reviews. For more information, see
Azure AD identity governance documentation and Azure AD
access reviews.
Identity protection Detect potential vulnerabilities affecting your organization's

identities, configure policies to respond to suspicious actions,
and then take appropriate action to resolve them. For more
information, see Azure AD Identity Protection.
Managed identities for Azure resources Provides your Azure services with an automatically managed
identity in Azure AD that can authenticate any Azure AD-
supported authentication service, including Key Vault. For
more information, see What is managed identities for Azure
resources?.
Privileged identity management (PIM) Manage, control, and monitor access within your organization.
This feature includes access to resources in Azure AD, Azure
resources, and other Microsoft Online Services, like Office 365
or Intune. For more information, see Azure AD Privileged
Identity Management.
Reports and monitoring Gain insights into the security and usage patterns in your
environment. For more information, see Azure Active
Directory reports and monitoring.
Next steps
Sign up for Azure Active Directory Premium
Associate an Azure subscription to your Azure Active Directory
Access Azure Active Directory and create a new tenant
Azure Active Directory Premium P2 feature deployment checklist
What's new in Azure Active Directory?
Get notified about when to revisit this page for updates by copying and pasting this URL:
https://docs.microsoft.com/api/search/rss?search=%22release+notes+for+azure+AD%22&locale=en-us into your
feed reader.
Azure AD receives improvements on an ongoing basis. To stay up-to-date with the most recent developments, this
article provides you with information about:
The latest releases
Known issues
Bug fixes
Deprecated functionality
Plans for changes
This page is updated monthly, so revisit it regularly. If you're looking for items that are older than six months, you
can find them in the Archive for What's new in Azure Active Directory.
April 2019
Increased security using the app protection-based conditional access policy in Azure AD (Public preview)
Type: New feature
Service category: Conditional Access
Product capability: Identity Security & Protection
App protection-based conditional access is now available by using the Require app protection policy. This new
policy helps to increase your organization's security by helping to prevent:
Users gaining access to apps without a Microsoft Intune license.
Users being unable to get a Microsoft Intune app protection policy.
Users gaining access to apps without a configured Microsoft Intune app protection policy.
For more information, see How to Require app protection policy for cloud app access with conditional access.
March 2019
New support for Azure AD single sign-on and conditional access in Microsoft Edge (Public preview)
Type: New feature
We've enhanced our Azure AD support for Microsoft Edge, including providing new support for Azure AD single
sign-on and conditional access. If you've previously used Microsoft Intune Managed Browser, you can now use
Microsoft Edge instead.
For more information about setting up and managing your devices and apps using conditional access, see Require
managed devices for cloud app access with conditional access and Require approved client apps for cloud app
access with conditional access. For more information about how to manage access using Microsoft Edge with
Microsoft Intune policies, see Manage Internet access using a Microsoft Intune policy-protected browser.
Identity Experience Framework and custom policy support in Azure Active Directory B2C is now available (GA )
Type: New feature
Service category: B2C - Consumer Identity Management
Product capability: B2B/B2C
You can now create custom policies in Azure AD B2C, including the following tasks, which are supported at-scale
and under our Azure SLA:
Create and upload custom authentication user journeys by using custom policies.
Describe user journeys step-by-step as exchanges between claims providers.
Define conditional branching in user journeys.
Transform and map claims for use in real-time decisions and communications.
Use REST API-enabled services in your custom authentication user journeys. For example, with email
providers, CRMs, and proprietary authorization systems.
Federate with identity providers who are compliant with the OpenIDConnect protocol. For example, with
multi-tenant Azure AD, social account providers, or two-factor verification providers.
For more information about creating custom policies, see Developer notes for custom policies in Azure Active
Directory B2C and read Alex Simon’s blog post, including case studies.
New Federated Apps available in Azure AD app gallery - March 2019

Type: New feature
Service category: Enterprise Apps
Product capability: 3rd Party Integration
In March 2019, we've added these 14 new apps with Federation support to the app gallery:
ISEC7 Mobile Exchange Delegate, MediusFlow, ePlatform, Fulcrum, ExcelityGlobal, Explanation-Based Auditing
System, Lean, Powerschool Performance Matters, Cinode, Iris Intranet, Empactis, SmartDraw, Confirmit Horizons,
TAS
For more information about the apps, see SaaS application integration with Azure Active Directory. For more
information about listing your application in the Azure AD app gallery, see List your application in the Azure Active
Directory application gallery.
New Zscaler and Atlassian provisioning connectors in the Azure AD gallery - March 2019
Type: New feature
Service category: App Provisioning
Automate creating, updating, and deleting user accounts for the following apps:
Zscaler, Zscaler Beta, Zscaler One, Zscaler Two, Zscaler Three, Zscaler ZSCloud, Atlassian Cloud
For more information about how to better secure your organization through automated user account provisioning,
see Automate user provisioning to SaaS applications with Azure AD.
Restore and manage your deleted Office 365 groups in the Azure AD portal
Type: New feature
Service category: Group Management
Product capability: Collaboration
You can now view and manage your deleted Office 365 groups from the Azure AD portal. This change helps you to
see which groups are available to restore, along with letting you permanently delete any groups that aren’t needed
by your organization.
For more information, see Restore expired or deleted groups.
Single sign-on is now available for Azure AD SAML -secured on-premises apps through Application Proxy
(public preview)
Type: New feature
Service category: App Proxy
Product capability: Access Control
You can now provide a single sign-on (SSO ) experience for on-premises, SAML -authenticated apps, along with
remote access to these apps through Application Proxy. For more information about how to set up SAML SSO
with your on-premises apps, see SAML single sign-on for on-premises applications with Application Proxy
(Preview ).
Client apps in request loops will be interrupted to improve reliability and user experience
Type: New feature
Service category: Authentications (Logins)
Product capability: User Authentication
Client apps can incorrectly issue hundreds of the same login requests over a short period of time. These requests,
whether they're successful or not, all contribute to a poor user experience and heightened workloads for the IDP,
increasing latency for all users and reducing the availability of the IDP.
This update sends an invalid_grant error:
AADSTS50196: The server terminated an operation because it encountered a loop while processing a request to
client apps that issue duplicate requests multiple times over a short period of time, beyond the scope of normal
operation. Client apps that encounter this issue should show an interactive prompt, requiring the user to sign in
again. For more information about this change and about how to fix your app if it encounters this error, see What's
new for authentication?.
New Audit Logs user experience now available

Type: Changed feature
Service category: Reporting
Product capability: Monitoring & Reporting
We've created a new Azure AD Audit logs page to help improve both readability and how you search for your
information. To see the new Audit logs page, select Audit logs in the Activity section of Azure AD.
For more information about the new Audit logs page, see Audit activity reports in the Azure Active Directory
portal.
New warnings and guidance to help prevent accidental administrator lockout from misconfigured Conditional
Access policies
To help prevent administrators from accidentally locking themselves out of their own tenants through
misconfigured Conditional Access policies, we've created new warnings and updated guidance in the Azure portal.
For more information about the new guidance, see What are service dependencies in Azure Active Directory
conditional access.
Improved end-user Terms of use experiences on mobile devices

Service category: Terms of Use
Product capability: Governance
We've updated our existing Terms of use experiences to help improve how you review and consent to Terms of use
on a mobile device. You can now zoom in and out, go back, download the information, and select hyperlinks. For
more information about the updated Terms of use, see Azure Active Directory Terms of use feature.
New Azure AD Activity logs download experience available

You can now download large amounts of activity logs directly from the Azure portal. This update lets you:
Download up to 250,000 rows.
Get notified after the download completes.
Customize your file name.
Determine your output format, either JSON or CSV.
For more details about this feature, see Quickstart: Download an audit report using the Azure portal
Breaking change: Updates to condition evaluation by Exchange ActiveSync (EAS )

Type: Plan for change
We’re in the process of updating how Exchange ActiveSync (EAS ) evaluates the following conditions:
User location, based on country, region, or IP address
Sign-in risk
Device platform
If you’ve previously used these conditions in your Conditional Access policies, be aware that the condition behavior
might change. For example, if you previously used the user location condition in a policy, you might find the policy
now being skipped based on the location of your user.
February 2019
Configurable Azure AD SAML token encryption (Public preview)
Type: New feature
Product capability: SSO
You can now configure any supported SAML app to receive encrypted SAML tokens. When configured and used
with an app, Azure AD encrypts the emitted SAML assertions using a public key obtained from a certificate stored
in Azure AD.
For more information about configuring your SAML token encryption, see Configure Azure AD SAML token
encryption.
Create an access review for groups or apps using Azure AD Access Reviews
Type: New feature
Service category: Access Reviews
You can now include multiple groups or apps in a single Azure AD access review for group membership or app
assignment. Access reviews with multiple groups or apps are set up using the same settings and all included
reviewers are notified at the same time.
For more information about how create an access review using Azure AD Access Reviews, see Create an access
review of groups or applications in Azure AD Access Reviews
New Federated Apps available in Azure AD app gallery - February 2019

Type: New feature
In February 2019, we've added these 27 new apps with Federation support to the app gallery:
Euromonitor Passport, MindTickle, FAT FINGER, AirStack, Oracle Fusion ERP, IDrive, Skyward Qmlativ, Brightidea,
AlertOps, Soloinsight-CloudGate SSO, Permission Click, Brandfolder, StoregateSmartFile, Pexip, Stormboard,
Seismic, Share A Dream, Bugsnag, webMethods Integration Cloud, Knowledge Anywhere LMS, OU Campus,
Periscope Data, Netop Portal, smartvid.io, PureCloud by Genesys, ClickUp Productivity Platform
Enhanced combined MFA/SSPR registration

Service category: Self Service Password Reset
In response to customer feedback, we’ve enhanced the combined MFA/SSPR registration preview experience,
helping your users to more quickly register their security info for both MFA and SSPR.
To turn on the enhanced experience for your users today, follow these steps:
1. As a global administrator or user administrator, sign in to the Azure portal and go to Azure Active
Directory > User settings > Manage settings for access panel preview features.
2. In the Users who can use the preview features for registering and managing security info – refresh
option, choose to turn on the features for a Selected group of users or for All users.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be removing the ability to turn on the old combined MFA/SSPR registration
preview experience for tenants that don’t already have it turned on.
To see if the control will be removed for your tenant, follow these steps:
1. As a global administrator or user administrator, sign in to the Azure portal and go to Azure Active
Directory > User settings > Manage settings for access panel preview features.
2. If the Users who can use the preview features for registering and managing security info option is
set to None, the option will be removed from your tenant.
Regardless of whether you previously turned on the old combined MFA/SSPR registration preview experience for
users or not, the old experience will be turned off at a future date. Because of that, we strongly suggest that you
move to the new, enhanced experience as soon as possible.
For more information about the enhanced registration experience, see the Cool enhancements to the Azure AD
combined MFA and password reset registration experience.
Updated policy management experience for user flows

We've updated the policy creation and management process for user flows (previously known as, built-in policies)
easier. This new experience is now the default for all of your Azure AD tenants.
You can provide additional feedback and suggestions by using the smile or frown icons in the Send us feedback
area at the top of the portal screen.
For more information about the new policy management experience, see the Azure AD B2C now has JavaScript
customization and many more new features blog.
Choose specific page element versions provided by Azure AD B2C
Type: New feature
You can now choose a specific version of the page elements provided by Azure AD B2C. By selecting a specific
version, you can test your updates before they appear on a page and you can get predictable behavior. Additionally,
you can now opt in to enforce specific page versions to allow JavaScript customizations. To turn on this feature, go
to the Properties page in your user flows.
For more information about choosing specific versions of page elements, see the Azure AD B2C now has
JavaScript customization and many more new features blog.
Configurable end-user password requirements for B2C (GA )

Type: New feature
You can now set up your organization's password complexity for your end users, instead of having to use your
native Azure AD password policy. From the Properties blade of your user flows (previously known as your built-in
policies), you can choose a password complexity of Simple or Strong, or you can create a Custom set of
requirements.
For more information about password complexity requirement configuration, see Configure complexity
requirements for passwords in Azure Active Directory B2C.
New default templates for custom branded authentication experiences

Type: New feature
You can use our new default templates, located on the Page layouts blade of your user flows (previously known as
built-in policies), to create a custom branded authentication experience for your users.
For more information about using the templates, see Azure AD B2C now has JavaScript customization and many
more new features.
January 2019
Active Directory B2B collaboration using one -time passcode authentication (Public preview)
Type: New feature
Service category: B2B
We've introduced one-time passcode authentication (OTP ) for B2B guest users who can't be authenticated through
other means like Azure AD, a Microsoft account (MSA), or Google federation. This new authentication method
means that guest users don't have to create a new Microsoft account. Instead, while redeeming an invitation or
accessing a shared resource, a guest user can request a temporary code to be sent to an email address. Using this
temporary code, the guest user can continue to sign in.
For more information, see Email one-time passcode authentication (preview ) and the blog, Azure AD makes
sharing and collaboration seamless for any user with any account.
New Azure AD Application Proxy cookie settings
Type: New feature
We've introduced three new cookie settings, available for your apps that are published through Application Proxy:
Use HTTP -Only cookie. Sets the HTTPOnly flag on your Application Proxy access and session cookies.
Turning on this setting provides additional security benefits, such as helping to prevent copying or
modifying of cookies through client-side scripting. We recommend you turn on this flag (choose Yes) for the
added benefits.
Use secure cookie. Sets the Secure flag on your Application Proxy access and session cookies. Turning on
this setting provides additional security benefits, by making sure cookies are only transmitted over TLS
secure channels, such as HTTPS. We recommend you turn on this flag (choose Yes) for the added benefits.
Use persistent cookie. Prevents access cookies from expiring when the web browser is closed. These
cookies last for the lifetime of the access token. However, the cookies are reset if the expiration time is
reached or if the user manually deletes the cookie. We recommend you keep the default setting No, only
turning on the setting for older apps that don't share cookies between processes.
For more information about the new cookies, see Cookie settings for accessing on-premises applications in Azure
Active Directory.
New Federated Apps available in Azure AD app gallery - January 2019

Type: New feature
In January 2019, we've added these 35 new apps with Federation support to the app gallery:
Firstbird, Folloze, Talent Palette, Infor CloudSuite, Cisco Umbrella, Zscaler Internet Access Administrator,
Expiration Reminder, InstaVR Viewer, CorpTax, Verb, OpenLattice, TheOrgWiki, Pavaso Digital Close,
GoodPractice Toolkit, Cloud Service PICCO, AuditBoard, iProva, Workable, CallPlease, GTNexus SSO System,
CBRE ServiceInsight, Deskradar, Coralogixv, Signagelive, ARES for Enterprise, K2 for Office 365, Xledger, iDiD
Manager, HighGear, Visitly, Korn Ferry ALP, Acadia, Adoddle cSaas Platform
New Azure AD Identity Protection enhancements (Public preview)

Service category: Identity Protection
We're excited to announce that we've added the following enhancements to the Azure AD Identity Protection
public preview offering, including:
An updated and more integrated user interface
Additional APIs
Improved risk assessment through machine learning
Product-wide alignment across risky users and risky sign-ins
For more information about the enhancements, see What is Azure Active Directory Identity Protection (refreshed)?
to learn more and to share your thoughts through the in-product prompts.
New App Lock feature for the Microsoft Authenticator app on iOS and Android devices
Type: New feature
Service category: Microsoft Authenticator App
To keep your one-time passcodes, app information, and app settings more secure, you can turn on the App Lock
feature in the Microsoft Authenticator app. Turning on App Lock means you’ll be asked to authenticate using your
PIN or biometric every time you open the Microsoft Authenticator app.
For more information, see the Microsoft Authenticator app FAQ.
Enhanced Azure AD Privileged Identity Management (PIM ) export capabilities

Type: New feature
Service category: Privileged Identity Management
Product capability: Privileged Identity Management
Privileged Identity Management (PIM ) administrators can now export all active and eligible role assignments for a
specific resource, which includes role assignments for all child resources. Previously, it was difficult for
administrators to get a complete list of role assignments for a subscription and they had to export role
assignments for each specific resource.
For more information, see View activity and audit history for Azure resource roles in PIM.
November/December 2018
Users removed from synchronization scope no longer switch to cloud-only accounts
Type: Fixed
Service category: User Management
Product capability: Directory
IMPORTANT
We've heard and understand your frustration because of this fix. Therefore, we've reverted this change until such time that
we can make the fix easier for you to implement in your organization.
We’ve fixed a bug in which the DirSyncEnabled flag of a user would be erroneously switched to False when the
Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS ) object was excluded from synchronization scope and then moved to the
Recycle Bin in Azure AD on the following sync cycle. As a result of this fix, if the user is excluded from sync scope
and afterwards restored from Azure AD Recycle Bin, the user account remains as synchronized from on-premises
AD, as expected, and cannot be managed in the cloud since its source of authority (SoA) remains as on-premises
AD.
Prior to this fix, there was an issue when the DirSyncEnabled flag was switched to False. It gave the wrong
impression that these accounts were converted to cloud-only objects and that the accounts could be managed in
the cloud. However, the accounts still retained their SoA as on-premises and all synchronized properties (shadow
attributes) coming from on-premises AD. This condition caused multiple issues in Azure AD and other cloud
workloads (like Exchange Online) that expected to treat these accounts as synchronized from AD but were now
behaving like cloud-only accounts.
At this time, the only way to truly convert a synchronized-from-AD account to cloud-only account is by disabling
DirSync at the tenant level, which triggers a backend operation to transfer the SoA. This type of SoA change
requires (but is not limited to) cleaning all the on-premises related attributes (such as LastDirSyncTime and
shadow attributes) and sending a signal to other cloud workloads to have its respective object converted to a
cloud-only account too.
This fix consequently prevents direct updates on the ImmutableID attribute of a user synchronized from AD, which
in some scenarios in the past were required. By design, the ImmutableID of an object in Azure AD, as the name
implies, is meant to be immutable. New features implemented in Azure AD Connect Health and Azure AD Connect
Synchronization client are available to address such scenarios:
Large-scale ImmutableID update for many users in a staged approach
For example, you need to do a lengthy AD DS inter-forest migration. Solution: Use Azure AD Connect to
Configure Source Anchor and, as the user migrates, copy the existing ImmutableID values from Azure AD
into the local AD DS user’s ms-DS -Consistency-Guid attribute of the new forest. For more information, see
Using ms-DS -ConsistencyGuid as sourceAnchor.
Large-scale ImmutableID updates for many users in one shot
For example, while implementing Azure AD Connect you make a mistake, and now you need to change the
SourceAnchor attribute. Solution: Disable DirSync at the tenant level and clear all the invalid ImmutableID
values. For more information, see Turn off directory synchronization for Office 365.
Rematch on-premises user with an existing user in Azure AD For example, a user that has been re-
created in AD DS generates a duplicate in Azure AD account instead of rematching it with an existing Azure
AD account (orphaned object). Solution: Use Azure AD Connect Health in the Azure portal to remap the
Source Anchor/ImmutableID. For more information, see Orphaned object scenario.
Breaking Change: Updates to the audit and sign-in logs schema through Azure Monitor
We're currently publishing both the Audit and Sign-in log streams through Azure Monitor, so you can seamlessly
integrate the log files with your SIEM tools or with Log Analytics. Based on your feedback, and in preparation for
this feature's general availability announcement, we're making the following changes to our schema. These schema
changes and its related documentation updates will happen by the first week of January.
New fields in the Audit schema
We're adding a new Operation Type field, to provide the type of operation performed on the resource. For
example, Add, Update, or Delete.
Changed fields in the Audit schema
The following fields are changing in the Audit schema:
FIELD NAME WHAT CHANGED OLD VALUES NEW VALUES
Category This was the Service Name Account Provisioning User Management
field. It's now the Audit Core Directory Group Management
Categories field. Service Self-service Password App Management
Name has been renamed to Reset
the loggedByService field.
targetResources Includes Policy

TargetResourceType at the App
top level. User
Group
loggedByService Provides the name of the Null Account Provisioning

service that generated the Core Directory
audit log. Self-service password
reset
Result Provides the result of the 0 Success

audit logs. Previously, this 1 Failure
was enumerated, but we
now show the actual value.
Changed fields in the Sign-in schema

The following fields are changing in the Sign-in schema:
appliedConditionalAccessPoli This was the No change No change

cies conditionalaccessPolicies
field. It's now the
appliedConditionalAccess
Policies field.
conditionalAccessStatus Provides the result of the 0 Success

Conditional Access Policy 1 Failure
Status at sign-in. Previously, 2 Not Applied
this was enumerated, but we 3 Disabled
now show the actual value.
appliedConditionalAccessPoli Provides the result of the 0 Success

cies: result individual Conditional Access 1 Failure
Policy Status at sign-in. 2 Not Applied
Previously, this was 3 Disabled
enumerated, but we now
show the actual value.
For more information about the schema, see Interpret the Azure AD audit logs schema in Azure Monitor (preview )
Identity Protection improvements to the supervised machine learning model and the risk score engine
Product capability: Risk Scores
Improvements to the Identity Protection-related user and sign-in risk assessment engine can help to improve user
risk accuracy and coverage. Administrators may notice that user risk level is no longer directly linked to the risk
level of specific detections, and that there's an increase in the number and level of risky sign-in events.
Risk detections are now evaluated by the supervised machine learning model, which calculates user risk by using
additional features of the user’s sign-ins and a pattern of detections. Based on this model, the administrator might
find users with high risk scores, even if detections associated with that user are of low or medium risk.
Administrators can reset their own password using the Microsoft Authenticator app (Public preview)
Azure AD administrators can now reset their own password using the Microsoft Authenticator app notifications or
a code from any mobile authenticator app or hardware token. To reset their own password, administrators will now
be able to use two of the following methods:
Microsoft Authenticator app notification
Other mobile authenticator app / Hardware token code
Email
Phone call
Text message
For more information about using the Microsoft Authenticator app to reset passwords, see Azure AD self-service
password reset - Mobile app and SSPR (Preview )
New Azure AD Cloud Device Administrator role (Public preview)

Type: New feature
Service category: Device Registration and Management
Product capability: Access control
Administrators can assign users to the new Cloud Device Administrator role to perform cloud device administrator
tasks. Users assigned the Cloud Device Administrators role can enable, disable, and delete devices in Azure AD,
along with being able to read Windows 10 BitLocker keys (if present) in the Azure portal.
For more information about roles and permissions, see Assigning administrator roles in Azure Active Directory
Manage your devices using the new activity timestamp in Azure AD (Public preview)
Type: New feature
Service category: Device Registration and Management
Product capability: Device Lifecycle Management
We realize that over time you must refresh and retire your organizations' devices in Azure AD, to avoid having
stale devices in your environment. To help with this process, Azure AD now updates your devices with a new
activity timestamp, helping you to manage your device lifecycle.
For more information about how to get and use this timestamp, see How To: Manage the stale devices in Azure AD
Administrators can require users to accept a Terms of use on each device

Type: New feature
Administrators can now turn on the Require users to consent on every device option to require your users to
accept your Terms of use on every device they're using on your tenant.
For more information, see the Per-device Terms of use section of the Azure Active Directory Terms of use feature.
Administrators can configure a Terms of use to expire based on a recurring schedule

Type: New feature
Administrators can now turn on the Expire consents option to make a Terms of use expire for all of your users
based on your specified recurring schedule. The schedule can be annually, bi-annually, quarterly, or monthly. After
the Terms of use expire, users must reaccept.
For more information, see the Add Terms of use section of the Azure Active Directory Terms of use feature.
Administrators can configure a Terms of use to expire based on each user’s schedule
Type: New feature
Administrators can now specify a duration that user must reaccept a Terms of use. For example, administrators can
specify that users must reaccept a Terms of use every 90 days.
For more information, see the Add Terms of use section of the Azure Active Directory Terms of use feature.
New Azure AD Privileged Identity Management (PIM ) emails for Azure Active Directory roles
Type: New feature
Customers using Azure AD Privileged Identity Management (PIM ) can now receive a weekly digest email,
including the following information for the last seven days:
Overview of the top eligible and permanent role assignments
Number of users activating roles
Number of users assigned to roles in PIM
Number of users assigned to roles outside of PIM
Number of users "made permanent" in PIM
For more information about PIM and the available email notifications, see Email notifications in PIM.
Group-based licensing is now generally available

Service category: Other
Group-based licensing is out of public preview and is now generally available. As part of this general release, we've
made this feature more scalable and have added the ability to reprocess group-based licensing assignments for a
single user and the ability to use group-based licensing with Office 365 E3/A3 licenses.
For more information about group-based licensing, see What is group-based licensing in Azure Active Directory?
New Federated Apps available in Azure AD app gallery - November 2018

Type: New feature
In November 2018, we've added these 26 new apps with Federation support to the app gallery:
CoreStack, HubSpot, GetThere, Gra-Pe, eHour, Consent2Go, Appinux, DriveDollar, Useall, Infinite Campus, Alaya,
HeyBuddy, Wrike SAML, Drift, Zenegy for Business Central 365, Everbridge Member Portal, IDEO, Ivanti Service
Manager (ISM ), Peakon, Allbound SSO, Plex Apps - Classic Test, Plex Apps – Classic, Plex Apps - UX Test, Plex
Apps – UX, Plex Apps – IAM, CRAFTS - Childcare Records, Attendance, & Financial Tracking System
October 2018
Azure AD Logs now work with Azure Log Analytics (Public preview)
Type: New feature
We're excited to announce that you can now forward your Azure AD logs to Azure Log Analytics! This top-
requested feature helps give you even better access to analytics for your business, operations, and security, as well
as a way to help monitor your infrastructure. For more information, see the Azure Active Directory Activity logs in
Azure Log Analytics now available blog.
New Federated Apps available in Azure AD app gallery - October 2018

Type: New feature
In October 2018, we've added these 14 new apps with Federation support to the app gallery:
My Award Points, Vibe HCM, ambyint, MyWorkDrive, BorrowBox, Dialpad, ON24 Virtual Environment,
RingCentral, Zscaler Three, Phraseanet, Appraisd, Workspot Control, Shuccho Navi, Glassfrog
Azure AD Domain Services Email Notifications

Type: New feature
Service category: Azure AD Domain Services
Product capability: Azure AD Domain Services
Azure AD Domain Services provides alerts on the Azure portal about misconfigurations or problems with your
managed domain. These alerts include step-by-step guides so you can try to fix the problems without having to
contact support.
Starting in October, you'll be able to customize the notification settings for your managed domain so when new
alerts occur, an email is sent to a designated group of people, eliminating the need to constantly check the portal
for updates.
For more information, see Notification settings in Azure AD Domain Services.
Azure AD portal supports using the ForceDelete domain API to delete custom domains
Service category: Directory Management
We're pleased to announce that you can now use the ForceDelete domain API to delete your custom domain
names by asynchronously renaming references, like users, groups, and apps from your custom domain name
(contoso.com) back to the initial default domain name (contoso.onmicrosoft.com).
This change helps you to more quickly delete your custom domain names if your organization no longer uses the
name, or if you need to use the domain name with another Azure AD.
For more information, see Delete a custom domain name.
September 2018
Updated administrator role permissions for dynamic groups
Type: Fixed
We've fixed an issue so specific administrator roles can now create and update dynamic membership rules, without
needing to be the owner of the group.
The roles are:
Global administrator
Intune administrator
User administrator
For more information, see Create a dynamic group and check status
Simplified Single Sign-On (SSO ) configuration settings for some third-party apps
Type: New feature
We realize that setting up Single Sign-On (SSO ) for Software as a Service (SaaS ) apps can be challenging due to
the unique nature of each apps configuration. We've built a simplified configuration experience to auto-populate
the SSO configuration settings for the following third-party SaaS apps:
Zendesk
ArcGis Online
Jamf Pro
To start using this one-click experience, go to the Azure portal > SSO configuration page for the app. For more
information, see SaaS application integration with Azure Active Directory
Azure Active Directory - Where is your data located? page

Type: New feature
Product capability: GoLocal
Select your company's region from the Azure Active Directory - Where is your data located page to view
which Azure datacenter houses your Azure AD data at rest for all Azure AD services. You can filter the information
by specific Azure AD services for your company's region.
To access this feature and for more information, see Azure Active Directory - Where is your data located.
New deployment plan available for the My Apps Access panel

Type: New feature
Service category: My Apps
Check out the new deployment plan that's available for the My Apps Access panel
(https://aka.ms/deploymentplans). The My Apps Access panel provides users with a single place to find and access
their apps. This portal also provides users with self-service opportunities, such as requesting access to apps and
groups, or managing access to these resources on behalf of others.
For more information, see What is the My Apps portal?
New Troubleshooting and Support tab on the Sign-ins Logs page of the Azure portal
Type: New feature
The new Troubleshooting and Support tab on the Sign-ins page of the Azure portal, is intended to help admins
and support engineers troubleshoot issues related to Azure AD sign-ins. This new tab provides the error code,
error message, and remediation recommendations (if any) to help solve the problem. If you're unable to resolve the
problem, we also give you a new way to create a support ticket using the Copy to clipboard experience, which
populates the Request ID and Date (UTC ) fields for the log file in your support ticket.
Enhanced support for custom extension properties used to create dynamic membership rules
With this update, you can now click the Get custom extension properties link from the dynamic user group rule
builder, enter your unique app ID, and receive the full list of custom extension properties to use when creating a
dynamic membership rule for users. This list can also be refreshed to get any new custom extension properties for
that app.
For more information about using custom extension properties for dynamic membership rules, see Extension
properties and custom extension properties
New approved client apps for Azure AD app-based conditional access

Service category: Conditional access
Product capability: Identity security and protection
The following apps are on the list of approved client apps:
Microsoft To-Do
Microsoft Stream
For more information, see:
Azure AD app-based conditional access
New support for Self-Service Password Reset from the Windows 7/8/8.1 Lock screen
Type: New feature
Service category: SSPR
After you set up this new feature, your users will see a link to reset their password from the Lock screen of a device
running Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1. By clicking that link, the user is guided through the same
password reset flow as through the web browser.
For more information, see How to enable password reset from Windows 7, 8, and 8.1
Change notice: Authorization codes will no longer be available for reuse

Starting on November 15, 2018, Azure AD will stop accepting previously used authentication codes for apps. This
security change helps to bring Azure AD in line with the OAuth specification and will be enforced on both the v1
and v2 endpoints.
If your app reuses authorization codes to get tokens for multiple resources, we recommend that you use the code
to get a refresh token, and then use that refresh token to acquire additional tokens for other resources.
Authorization codes can only be used once, but refresh tokens can be used multiple times across multiple
resources. An app that attempts to reuse an authentication code during the OAuth code flow will get an
invalid_grant error.
For this and other protocols-related changes, see the full list of what's new for authentication.
New Federated Apps available in Azure AD app gallery - September 2018

Type: New feature
In September 2018, we've added these 16 new apps with Federation support to the app gallery:
Uberflip, Comeet Recruiting Software, Workteam, ArcGIS Enterprise, Nuclino, JDA Cloud, Snowflake,
NavigoCloud, Figma, join.me, ZephyrSSO, Silverback, Riverbed Xirrus EasyPass, Rackspace SSO, Enlyft SSO for
Azure, SurveyMonkey, Convene, dmarcian
Support for additional claims transformations methods

Type: New feature
We've introduced new claim transformation methods, ToLower() and ToUpper(), which can be applied to SAML
tokens from the SAML -based Single Sign-On Configuration page.
For more information, see How to customize claims issued in the SAML token for enterprise applications in Azure
AD
Updated SAML -based app configuration UI (preview)

As part of our updated SAML -based app configuration UI, you'll get:
An updated walkthrough experience for configuring your SAML -based apps.
More visibility about what's missing or incorrect in your configuration.
The ability to add multiple email addresses for expiration certificate notification.
New claim transformation methods, ToLower() and ToUpper(), and more.
A way to upload your own token signing certificate for your enterprise apps.
A way to set the NameID Format for SAML apps, and a way to set the NameID value as Directory
Extensions.
To turn on this updated view, click the Try out our new experience link from the top of the Single Sign-On
page. For more information, see Tutorial: Configure SAML -based single sign-on for an application with Azure
Active Directory.
Quickstart: Create a new tenant in Azure Active
Directory
You can do all of your administrative tasks using the Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ) portal, including creating a
new tenant for your organization.
In this quickstart, you'll learn how to get to the Azure portal and Azure Active Directory, and you'll learn how to
create a basic tenant for your organization.
If you don’t have an Azure subscription, create a free account before you begin.
Sign in to the Azure portal

Sign in to your organization's Azure portal using a Global administrator account.
Create a new tenant for your organization

After you sign in to the Azure portal, you can create a new tenant for your organization. Your new tenant
represents your organization and helps you to manage a specific instance of Microsoft cloud services for your
internal and external users.
To create a new tenant
1. Select Create a resource, select Identity, and then select Azure Active Directory.
The Create directory page appears.
2. On the Create directory page, enter the following information:
Type Contoso into the Organization name box.
Type Contoso into the Initial domain name box.
Leave the United States option in the Country or region box.
3. Select Create.
Your new tenant is created with the domain contoso.onmicrosoft.com.
Clean up resources
If you’re not going to continue to use this application, you can delete the tenant using the following steps:
Select Azure Active Directory, and then on the Contoso - Overview page, select Delete directory.
The tenant and its associated information is deleted.
Next steps
Change or add additional domain names, see How to add a custom domain name to Azure Active Directory
Add users, see Add or delete a new user
Add groups and members, see Create a basic group and add members
Learn about role-based access using Privileged Identity Management and Conditional access to help
manage your organization's application and resource access.
Learn about Azure AD, including basic licensing information, terminology, and associated features.
Quickstart: View your organization's groups and
members in Azure Active Directory
You can view your organization's existing groups and group members using the Azure portal. Groups are used to
manage users (members) that all need the same access and permissions for potentially restricted apps and
services.
In this quickstart, you’ll view all of your organization's existing groups and view the assigned members.
If you don’t have an Azure subscription, create a free account before you begin.
Prerequisites
Before you begin, you’ll need to:
Create an Azure Active Directory tenant. For more information, see Access the Azure Active Directory portal
and create a new tenant.
Sign in to the Azure portal

You must sign in to the Azure portal using a Global administrator account for the directory.
Create a new group

Create a new group, named MDM policy - West. For more information about creating a group, see How to create a
basic group and add members.
1. Select Azure Active Directory, Groups, and then select New group.
2. Complete the Group page:
Group type: Select Security
Group name: Type MDM policy - West
Membership type: Select Assigned.
3. Select Create.
Create a new user

Create a new user, named Alain Charon. A user must exist before being added as a group member. For more
information about creating a user, see How to add or delete users.
1. Select Azure Active Directory, Users, and then select New user.
2. Complete the User page:
Name: Type Alain Charon.
User name: Type alain@contoso.com.
3. Copy the auto-generated password provided in the Password box, and then select Create.
Add a group member
Now that you have a group and a user, you can add Alain Charon as a member to the MDM policy - West group.
For more information about adding group members, see How to add or remove group members.
1. Select Azure Active Directory > Groups.
2. From the Groups - All groups page, search for and select the MDM policy - West group.
3. From the MDM policy - West Overview page, select Members from the Manage area.
4. Select Add members, and then search and select Alain Charon.
5. Choose Select.
View all groups

You can see all the groups for your organization in the Groups - All groups page of the Azure portal.
Select Azure Active Directory > Groups.
The Groups - All groups page appears, showing all your active groups.
Search for the group

Search the Groups – All groups page to find the MDM policy – West group.
1. From the Groups - All groups page, type MDM into the Search box.
The search results appear under the Search box, including the MDM policy - West group.
2. Select the group MDM policy – West.
3. View the group info on the MDM policy - West Overview page, including the number of members of that
group.
View group members

Now that you’ve found the group, you can view all the assigned members.
Select Members from the Manage area, and then review the complete list of member names assigned to
that specific group, including Alain Charon.
Clean up resources
This group is used in several of the how -to processes that are available in the How-to guides section of this
documentation. However, if you'd rather not use this group, you can delete it and its assigned members using the
following steps:
1. On the Groups - All groups page, search for the MDM policy - West group.
2. Select the MDM policy - West group.
The MDM policy - West Overview page appears.
3. Select Delete.
The group and its associated members are deleted.
IMPORTANT
This doesn't delete the user Alain Charon, just his membership in the deleted group.
Next steps
Advance to the next article to learn how to associate a subscription to your Azure AD directory.
Associate an Azure subscription
What is the identity secure score in Azure Active
Directory? (Public preview)
How secure is your Azure AD tenant? If you don't know how to answer this question, read this article to learn how
the identity secure score helps you to monitor and improve your identity security posture.
What is an identity secure score?

The identity secure score is number between 1 and 248 that functions as indicator for how aligned you are with
Microsoft's best practices recommendations for security.
The score helps you to:

Objectively measure your identity security posture
Plan identity security improvements
Review the success of your improvements
You can access the score and related information on the identity secure score dashboard. On this dashboard, you
find:
Your score
A comparison graph
A trend graph
A list of identity security best practices.
By following the improvement actions, you can:

Improve your security posture and your score.
Take advantage of Microsoft’s Identity features.
How do I get my secure score?

The Identity Secure Score is available in all editions of Azure AD.
To access your score, go to the Azure AD Overview dashboard.
How does it work?

Every 48 hours, Azure looks at your security configuration and compares your settings with the recommended best
practices. Based on the outcome of this evaluation, a new score is calculated for your tenant. This means that it can
take up to 48 hours until a configuration change you have made is reflected in your score.
Each recommendation is measured based on your Azure AD configuration. If you are using third-party products to
enable a best practice recommendation, you can indicate this in the settings of an improvement action.
Additionally, you also have the option to set recommendations to be ignored if they don't apply to your
environment. An ignored recommendation does not contribute to the calculation of your score.
How does it help me?

The secure score helps you to:
Objectively measure your identity security posture
Plan identity security improvements
Review the success of your improvements
What you should know

Who can use the identity secure score?
The identity secure score can be used by the following roles:
Global admin
Security admin
Security readers
What does [Not Scored] mean?
Actions labeled as [Not Scored] are ones you can perform in your organization but won't be scored because they
aren't hooked up in the tool (yet!). So, you can still improve your security, but you won't get credit for those actions
right now.
How often is my score updated?
The score is calculated once per day (around 1:00 AM PST). If you make a change to a measured action, the score
will automatically update the next day. It takes up to 48 hours for a change to be reflected in your score.
My score changed. How do I figure out why?
On the score analyzer page on the secure score portal, click a data point for a specific day, then scroll down to see
the completed and incomplete actions for that day to find out what changed.
Does the Secure Score measure my risk of getting breached?
In short, no. The Secure Score does not express an absolute measure of how likely you are to get breached. It
expresses the extent to which you have adopted features that can offset the risk of being breached. No service can
guarantee that you will not be breached, and the Secure Score should not be interpreted as a guarantee in any way.
How should I interpret my score?
You're given points for configuring recommended security features or performing security-related tasks (like
reading reports). Some actions are scored for partial completion, like enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA)
for your users. Your Secure Score is directly representative of the Microsoft security services you use. Remember
that security should always be balanced with usability. All security controls have a user impact component.
Controls with low user impact should have little to no effect on your users' day-to-day operations.
To see your score history, go to the score analyzer page on the secure score portal. Choose a specific date to see
which controls were enabled for that day and what points you earned for each one.
How does the identity secure score relate to the Office 365 secure score?
The Office 365 secure score is about to be migrated into an aggregate of five different scores:
Identity
Data
Devices
Infrastructure
Apps
The identity secure score represents the identity part of the Office 365 secure score. This means that your
recommendations for the identity secure score and the identity score in Office 365 are the same.
Next steps
If you would like to see a video about the Office 365 secure score, click here.
Manage app and resource access using Azure Active
Directory groups
Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ) helps you to manage your cloud-based apps, on-premises apps, and your
resources using your organization's groups. Your resources can be part of the directory, such as permissions to
manage objects through roles in the directory, or external to the directory, such as for Software as a Service (SaaS )
apps, Azure services, SharePoint sites, and on-premises resources.
NOTE
To use Azure Active Directory, you need an Azure account. If you don't have an account, you can sign up for a free Azure
account.
How does access management in Azure AD work?

Azure AD helps you give access to your organization's resources by providing access rights to a single user or to
an entire Azure AD group. Using groups lets the resource owner (or Azure AD directory owner), assign a set of
access permissions to all the members of the group, instead of having to provide the rights one-by-one. The
resource or directory owner can also give management rights for the member list to someone else, such as a
department manager or a Helpdesk administrator, letting that person add and remove members, as needed. For
more information about how to manage group owners, see Manage group owners
Ways to assign access rights

There are four ways to assign resource access rights to your users:
Direct assignment. The resource owner directly assigns the user to the resource.
Group assignment. The resource owner assigns an Azure AD group to the resource, which automatically
gives all of the group members access to the resource. Group membership is managed by both the group
owner and the resource owner, letting either owner add or remove members from the group. For more
information about adding or removing group membership, see How to: Add or remove a group from
another group using the Azure Active Directory portal.
Rule-based assignment. The resource owner creates a group and uses a rule to define which users are
assigned to a specific resource. The rule is based on attributes that are assigned to individual users. The
resource owner manages the rule, determining which attributes and values are required to allow access the
resource. For more information, see Create a dynamic group and check status.
You can also Watch this short video for a quick explanation about creating and using dynamic groups:
External authority assignment. Access comes from an external source, such as an on-premises directory
or a SaaS app. In this situation, the resource owner assigns a group to provide access to the resource and
then the external source manages the group members.
Can users join groups without being assigned?

The group owner can let users find their own groups to join, instead of assigning them. The owner can also set up
the group to automatically accept all users that join or to require approval.
After a user requests to join a group, the request is forwarded to the group owner. If it's required, the owner can
approve the request and the user is notified of the group membership. However, if you have multiple owners and
one of them disapproves, the user is notified, but isn't added to the group. For more information and instructions
about how to let your users request to join groups, see Set up Azure AD so users can request to join groups
Next steps
Now that you have a bit of an introduction to access management using groups, you start to manage your
resources and apps.
Create a new group using Azure Active Directory or Create and manage a new group using PowerShell
cmdlets
Use groups to assign access to an integrated SaaS app
Sync an on-premises group to Azure using Azure AD Connect
What is group-based licensing in Azure Active
Directory?
Microsoft paid cloud services, such as Office 365, Enterprise Mobility + Security, Dynamics 365, and other similar
products, require licenses. These licenses are assigned to each user who needs access to these services. To manage
licenses, administrators use one of the management portals (Office or Azure) and PowerShell cmdlets. Azure
Active Directory (Azure AD ) is the underlying infrastructure that supports identity management for all Microsoft
cloud services. Azure AD stores information about license assignment states for users.
Until now, licenses could only be assigned at the individual user level, which can make large-scale management
difficult. For example, to add or remove user licenses based on organizational changes, such as users joining or
leaving the organization or a department, an administrator often must write a complex PowerShell script. This
script makes individual calls to the cloud service.
To address those challenges, Azure AD now includes group-based licensing. You can assign one or more product
licenses to a group. Azure AD ensures that the licenses are assigned to all members of the group. Any new
members who join the group are assigned the appropriate licenses. When they leave the group, those licenses are
removed. This licensing management eliminates the need for automating license management via PowerShell to
reflect changes in the organization and departmental structure on a per-user basis.
Licensing requirements
You must have one of the following licenses to use group-based licensing:
Paid or trial subscription for Azure AD Basic
Paid or trial edition of Office 365 Enterprise E3 or Office 365 A3 and above
Required number of licenses
For any groups assigned a license, you must also have a license for each unique member. While you don't have to
assign each member of the group a license, you must have at least enough licenses to include all of the members.
For example, if you have 1,000 unique members who are part of licensed groups in your tenant, you must have at
least 1,000 licenses to meet the licensing agreement.
Features
Here are the main features of group-based licensing:
Licenses can be assigned to any security group in Azure AD. Security groups can be synced from on-
premises, by using Azure AD Connect. You can also create security groups directly in Azure AD (also called
cloud-only groups), or automatically via the Azure AD dynamic group feature.
When a product license is assigned to a group, the administrator can disable one or more service plans in
the product. Typically, this assignment is done when the organization is not yet ready to start using a service
included in a product. For example, the administrator might assign Office 365 to a department, but
temporarily disable the Yammer service.
All Microsoft cloud services that require user-level licensing are supported. This support includes all Office
365 products, Enterprise Mobility + Security, and Dynamics 365.
Group-based licensing is currently available only through the Azure portal. If you primarily use other
management portals for user and group management, such as the Microsoft 365 admin center, you can
continue to do so. But you should use the Azure portal to manage licenses at group level.
Azure AD automatically manages license modifications that result from group membership changes.
Typically, license modifications are effective within minutes of a membership change.
A user can be a member of multiple groups with license policies specified. A user can also have some
licenses that were directly assigned, outside of any groups. The resulting user state is a combination of all
assigned product and service licenses. If a user is assigned same license from multiple sources, the license
will be consumed only once.
In some cases, licenses cannot be assigned to a user. For example, there might not be enough available
licenses in the tenant, or conflicting services might have been assigned at the same time. Administrators
have access to information about users for whom Azure AD could not fully process group licenses. They can
then take corrective action based on that information.
Your feedback is welcome!

If you have feedback or feature requests, share them with us using the Azure AD admin forum.
Next steps
To learn more about other scenarios for license management through group-based licensing, see:
Assigning licenses to a group in Azure Active Directory
Identifying and resolving license problems for a group in Azure Active Directory
How to migrate individual licensed users to group-based licensing in Azure Active Directory
How to migrate users between product licenses using group-based licensing in Azure Active Directory
Azure Active Directory group-based licensing additional scenarios
PowerShell examples for group-based licensing in Azure Active Directory
What is the Azure Active Directory architecture?
Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ) enables you to securely manage access to Azure services and resources for your
users. Included with Azure AD is a full suite of identity management capabilities. For information about Azure AD
features, see What is Azure Active Directory?
With Azure AD, you can create and manage users and groups, and enable permissions to allow and deny access to
enterprise resources. For information about identity management, see The fundamentals of Azure identity
management.
Azure AD architecture
Azure AD's geographically distributed architecture combines extensive monitoring, automated rerouting, failover,
and recovery capabilities, which deliver company-wide availability and performance to customers.
The following architecture elements are covered in this article:
Service architecture design
Usability
Continuous availability
Data centers
Service architecture design
The most common way to build an accessible and usable, data-rich system is through independent building blocks
or scale units. For the Azure AD data tier, scale units are called partitions.
The data tier has several front-end services that provide read-write capability. The diagram below shows how the
components of a single-directory partition are delivered throughout geographically distributed data centers.
The components of Azure AD architecture include a primary replica and secondary replicas.
Primary replica
The primary replica receives all writes for the partition it belongs to. Any write operation is immediately replicated
to a secondary replica in a different datacenter before returning success to the caller, thus ensuring geo-redundant
durability of writes.
Secondary replicas
All directory reads are serviced from secondary replicas, which are at data centers that are physically located across
different geographies. There are many secondary replicas, as data is replicated asynchronously. Directory reads,
such as authentication requests, are serviced from data centers that are close to customers. The secondary replicas
are responsible for read scalability.
Scalability
Scalability is the ability of a service to expand to meet increasing performance demands. Write scalability is
achieved by partitioning the data. Read scalability is achieved by replicating data from one partition to multiple
secondary replicas distributed throughout the world.
Requests from directory applications are routed to the datacenter that they are physically closest to. Writes are
transparently redirected to the primary replica to provide read-write consistency. Secondary replicas significantly
extend the scale of partitions because the directories are typically serving reads most of the time.
Directory applications connect to the nearest datacenters. This connection improves performance, and therefore
scaling out is possible. Since a directory partition can have many secondary replicas, secondary replicas can be
placed closer to the directory clients. Only internal directory service components that are write-intensive target the
active primary replica directly.
Continuous availability
Availability (or uptime) defines the ability of a system to perform uninterrupted. The key to Azure AD’s high-
availability is that the services can quickly shift traffic across multiple geographically distributed data centers. Each
data center is independent, which enables de-correlated failure modes.
Azure AD’s partition design is simplified compared to the enterprise AD design, using a single-master design that
includes a carefully orchestrated and deterministic primary replica failover process.
Fault tolerance
A system is more available if it is tolerant to hardware, network, and software failures. For each partition on the
directory, a highly available master replica exists: The primary replica. Only writes to the partition are performed at
this replica. This replica is being continuously and closely monitored, and writes can be immediately shifted to
another replica (which becomes the new primary) if a failure is detected. During failover, there could be a loss of
write availability typically of 1-2 minutes. Read availability is not affected during this time.
Read operations (which outnumber writes by many orders of magnitude) only go to secondary replicas. Since
secondary replicas are idempotent, loss of any one replica in a given partition is easily compensated by directing
the reads to another replica, usually in the same datacenter.
Data durability
A write is durably committed to at least two data centers prior to it being acknowledged. This happens by first
committing the write on the primary, and then immediately replicating the write to at least one other data center.
This write action ensures that a potential catastrophic loss of the data center hosting the primary does not result in
data loss.
Azure AD maintains a zero Recovery Time Objective (RTO ) to not lose data on failovers. This includes:
Token issuance and directory reads
Allowing only about 5 minutes RTO for directory writes
Data centers
Azure AD’s replicas are stored in datacenters located throughout the world. For more information, see Azure
datacenters.
Azure AD operates across data centers with the following characteristics:
Authentication, Graph, and other AD services reside behind the Gateway service. The Gateway manages load
balancing of these services. It will fail over automatically if any unhealthy servers are detected using
transactional health probes. Based on these health probes, the Gateway dynamically routes traffic to healthy
data centers.
For reads, the directory has secondary replicas and corresponding front-end services in an active-active
configuration operating in multiple data centers. In case of a failure of an entire data center, traffic will be
automatically routed to a different datacenter.
For writes, the directory will fail over primary (master) replica across data centers via planned (new primary is
synchronized to old primary) or emergency failover procedures. Data durability is achieved by replicating any
commit to at least two data centers.
Data consistency
The directory model is one of eventual consistencies. One typical problem with distributed asynchronously
replicating systems is that the data returned from a “particular” replica may not be up-to-date.
Azure AD provides read-write consistency for applications targeting a secondary replica by routing its writes to the
primary replica, and synchronously pulling the writes back to the secondary replica.
Application writes using the Graph API of Azure AD are abstracted from maintaining affinity to a directory replica
for read-write consistency. The Azure AD Graph service maintains a logical session, which has affinity to a
secondary replica used for reads; affinity is captured in a “replica token” that the graph service caches using a
distributed cache. This token is then used for subsequent operations in the same logical session.
NOTE
Writes are immediately replicated to the secondary replica to which the logical session's reads were issued.
Backup protection
The directory implements soft deletes, instead of hard deletes, for users and tenants for easy recovery in case of
accidental deletes by a customer. If your tenant administrator accidental deletes users, they can easily undo and
restore the deleted users.
Azure AD implements daily backups of all data, and therefore can authoritatively restore data in case of any logical
deletions or corruptions. The data tier employs error correcting codes, so that it can check for errors and
automatically correct particular types of disk errors.
Metrics and monitors
Running a high availability service requires world-class metrics and monitoring capabilities. Azure AD continually
analyzes and reports key service health metrics and success criteria for each of its services. There is also
continuous development and tuning of metrics and monitoring and alerting for each scenario, within each Azure
AD service and across all services.
If any Azure AD service is not working as expected, action is immediately taken to restore functionality as quickly
as possible. The most important metric Azure AD tracks is how quickly live site issues can be detected and
mitigated for customers. We invest heavily in monitoring and alerts to minimize time to detect (TTD Target: <5
minutes) and operational readiness to minimize time to mitigate (TTM Target: <30 minutes).
Secure operations
Using operational controls such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) for any operation, as well as auditing of all
operations. In addition, using a just-in-time elevation system to grant necessary temporary access for any
operational task-on-demand on an ongoing basis. For more information, see The Trusted Cloud.
Next steps
Azure Active Directory developer's guide
What are the default user permissions in Azure Active
Directory?
In Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ), all users are granted a set of default permissions. A user’s access consists of
the type of user, their role assignments, and their ownership of individual objects. This article describes those
default permissions and contains a comparison of the member and guest user defaults. The default user
permissions can be changed only in user settings in Azure AD.
Member and guest users

The set of default permissions received depends on whether the user is a native member of the tenant (member
user) or if the user is brought over from another directory as a B2B collaboration guest (guest user). See What is
Azure AD B2B collaboration? for more information about adding guest users.
Member users can register applications, manage their own profile photo and mobile phone number, change
their own password, and invite B2B guests. In addition, users can read all directory information (with a few
exceptions).
Guest users have restricted directory permissions. For example, guest users cannot browse information from
the tenant beyond their own profile information. However, a guest user can retrieve information about another
user by providing the User Principal Name or objectId. A guest user can read properties of groups they belong
to, including group membership, regardless of the Guest users permissions are limited setting. A guest
cannot view information about any other tenant objects.
Default permissions for guests are restrictive by default. Guests can be added to administrator roles, which grant
them full read and write permissions contained in the role. There is one additional restriction available, the ability
for guests to invite other guests. Setting Guests can invite to No prevents guests from inviting other guests. See
Delegate invitations for B2B collaboration to learn how. To grant guest users the same permissions as member
users by default, set Guest users permissions are limited to No. This setting grants all member user permissions
to guest users by default, as well as to allow guests to be added to administrative roles.
Compare member and guest default permissions

AREA MEMBER USER PERMISSIONS GUEST USER PERMISSIONS
Users and contacts Read all public properties of users and Read own properties
contacts Read display name, email, sign-in name,
Invite guests photo, user principal name, and user
Change own password type properties of other users and
Manage own mobile phone number contacts
Manage own photo Change own password
Invalidate own refresh tokens
AREA MEMBER USER PERMISSIONS GUEST USER PERMISSIONS
Groups Create security groups Read all properties of groups

Create Office 365 groups Read non-hidden group memberships
Read all properties of groups Read hidden Office 365 group
Read non-hidden group memberships memberships for joined groups
Read hidden Office 365 group Manage owned groups
memberships for joined group Add guests to owned groups (if
Manage properties, ownership, and allowed)
membership of groups the user owns Delete owned groups
Add guests to owned groups Restore owned Office 365 groups
Manage dynamic membership settings Read properties of groups they belong
Delete owned groups to, including membership.
Restore owned Office 365 groups
Applications Register (create) new application Read properties of registered and

Read properties of registered and enterprise applications
enterprise applications Manage application properties,
Manage application properties, assignments, and credentials for owned
assignments, and credentials for owned applications
applications Delete owned applications
Create or delete application password Restore owned applications
for user
Delete owned applications
Restore owned applications
Devices Read all properties of devices No permissions

Manage all properties of owned devices Delete owned devices
Directory Read all company information Read display name and verified domains
Read all domains
Read all partner contracts
Roles and Scopes Read all administrative roles and No permissions

memberships
Read all properties and membership of
administrative units
Subscriptions Read all subscriptions No permissions

Enable Service Plan Member
Policies Read all properties of policies No permissions

Manage all properties of owned policy
To restrict the default permissions for member users

Default permissions for member users can be restricted in the following ways.
PERMISSION SETTING EXPLANATION
Ability to create security groups Setting this option to No prevents users from creating security
groups. Global administrators and User administrators can still
create security groups. See Azure Active Directory cmdlets for
configuring group settings to learn how.
PERMISSION SETTING EXPLANATION
Ability to create Office 365 groups Setting this option to No prevents users from creating Office
365 groups. Setting this option to Some allows a select set of
users to create Office 365 groups. Global administrators and
User administrators will still be able to create Office 365
groups. See Azure Active Directory cmdlets for configuring
group settings to learn how.
Restrict access to Azure AD administration portal Setting this option to No prevents users from accessing Azure
Active Directory.
Ability to read other users This setting is available in PowerShell only. Setting this to
$false prevents all non-admins from reading user information
from the directory. This does not prevent reading user
information in other Microsoft services like Exchange Online.
This setting is meant for special circumstances, and setting this
to $false is not recommended.
Object ownership
Application registration owner permissions
When a user registers an application, they are automatically added as an owner for the application. As an owner,
they can manage the metadata of the application, such as the name and permissions the app requests. They can
also manage the tenant-specific configuration of the application, such as the SSO configuration and user
assignments. An owner can also add or remove other owners. Unlike Global Administrators, owners can only
manage applications they own.
Group owner permissions
When a user creates a group, they are automatically added as an owner for that group. As an owner, they can
manage properties of the group such as the name, as well as manage group membership. An owner can also add
or remove other owners. Unlike Global administrators and User administrators, owners can only manage groups
they own. To assign a group owner, see Managing owners for a group.
Next steps
To learn more about how to assign Azure AD administrator roles, see Assign a user to administrator roles in
Azure Active Directory
To learn more about how resource access is controlled in Microsoft Azure, see Understanding resource access in
Azure
For more information on how Azure Active Directory relates to your Azure subscription, see How Azure
subscriptions are associated with Azure Active Directory
Manage users
Azure Active Directory feature deployment guide
It can seem daunting to deploy Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ) for your organization and keep it secure. This
article identifies common tasks that customers find helpful to complete in phases, over the course of 30, 60, 90
days, or more, to enhance their security posture. Even organizations who have already deployed Azure AD can use
this guide to ensure they are getting the most out of their investment.
A well-planned and executed identity infrastructure paves the way for secure access to your productivity workloads
and data by known users and devices only.
Additionally customers can check their identity secure score to see how aligned they are to Microsoft best practices.
Check your secure score before and after implementing these recommendations to see how well you are doing
compared to others in your industry and to other organizations of your size.
Prerequisites
Many of the recommendations in this guide can be implemented with Azure AD Free, Basic, or no license at all.
Where licenses are required we state which license is required at minimum to accomplish the task.
Additional information about licensing can be found on the following pages:
Azure AD licensing
Microsoft 365 Enterprise
Enterprise Mobility + Security
Azure AD B2B licensing guidance
Phase 1: Build a foundation of security

In this phase, administrators enable baseline security features to create a more secure and easy to use foundation
in Azure AD before we import or create normal user accounts. This foundational phase ensures you are in a more
secure state from the start and that your end-users only have to be introduced to new concepts one time.
TASK DETAIL REQUIRED LICENSE
Designate more than one global Assign at least two cloud-only Azure AD Free
administrator permanent global administrator
accounts for use if there is an
emergency. These accounts are not be
used daily and should have long and
complex passwords.
Use non-global administrative roles Give your administrators only the Azure AD Free
where possible access they need to only the areas they
need access to. Not all administrators
need to be global administrators.
Enable Privileged Identity Management Enable Privileged Identity Management Azure AD Premium P2
for tracking admin role use to start tracking administrative role
usage.
Roll out self-service password reset Reduce helpdesk calls for password Azure AD Basic
resets by allowing staff to reset their
own passwords using policies you as an
administrator control.
Create an organization specific custom Prevent users from creating passwords Azure AD Basic
banned password list that include common words or phrases
from your organization or area.
Enable on-premises integration with Extend the banned password list to Azure AD Premium P1
Azure AD password protection your on-premises directory, to ensure
passwords set on-premises are also in
compliance with the global and tenant-
specific banned password lists.
Enable Microsoft's password guidance Stop requiring users to change their Azure AD Free
password on a set schedule, disable
complexity requirements, and your
users are more apt to remember their
passwords and keep them something
that is secure.
Disable periodic password resets for Periodic password resets encourage Azure AD Free
cloud-based user accounts your users to increment their existing
passwords. Use the guidelines in
Microsoft's password guidance doc and
mirror your on-premises policy to
cloud-only users.
Customize Azure Active Directory smart Stop lockouts from cloud-based users Azure AD Basic
lockout from being replicated to on-premises
Active Directory users
Enable Extranet Smart Lockout for AD AD FS extranet lockout protects against

FS brute force password guessing attacks,
while letting valid AD FS users continue
to use their accounts.
Deploy Azure AD Multi-Factor Require users to perform two-step Azure AD Premium P1

Authentication using conditional access verification when accessing sensitive
policies applications using conditional access
policies.
Enable Azure Active Directory Identity Enable tracking of risky sign-ins and Azure AD Premium P2
Protection compromised credentials for users in
your organization.
Use risk events to trigger multi-factor Enable automation that can trigger Azure AD Premium P2
authentication and password changes events such as multi-factor
authentication, password reset, and
blocking of sign-ins based on risk.
Enable converged registration for self- Allow your users to register from one Azure AD Premium P1
service password reset and Azure AD common experience for both Azure
Multi-Factor Authentication (preview) Multi-Factor Authentication and self-
service password reset.
Phase 2: Import users, enable synchronization, and manage devices
Next, we add to the foundation laid in phase 1 by importing our users and enabling synchronization, planning for
guest access, and preparing to support additional functionality.
Install Azure AD Connect Prepare to synchronize users from your Azure AD Free
existing on-premises directory to the
cloud.
Implement Password Hash Sync Synchronize password hashes to allow Azure AD Premium P1
password changes to be replicated, bad
password detection and remediation,
and leaked credential reporting.
Implement Password Writeback Allow password changes in the cloud to Azure AD Premium P1
be written back to an on-premises
Windows Server Active Directory
environment.
Implement Azure AD Connect Health Enable monitoring of key health Azure AD Premium P1
statistics for your Azure AD Connect
servers, AD FS servers, and domain
controllers.
Assign licenses to users by group Save time and effort by creating

membership in Azure Active Directory licensing groups that enable or disable
features by group instead of setting per
user.
Create a plan for guest user access Collaborate with guest users by letting Azure AD B2B licensing guidance
them sign in to your apps and services
with their own work, school, or social
identities.
Decide on device management strategy Decide what your organization allows

regarding devices. Registering vs
joining, Bring Your Own Device vs
company provided.
Deploy Windows Hello for Business in Prepare for password-less

your organization authentication using Windows Hello
Phase 3: Manage applications

As we continue to build on the previous phases, we identify candidate applications for migration and integration
with Azure AD and complete the setup of those applications.
Identify your applications Identify applications in use in your No license required

organization: on-premises, SaaS
applications in the cloud, and other line-
of-business applications. Determine if
these applications can and should be
managed with Azure AD.
Integrate supported SaaS applications Azure AD has a gallery that contains Azure AD Free
in the gallery thousands of pre-integrated
applications. Some of the applications
your organization uses are probably in
the gallery accessible directly from the
Azure portal.
Use Application Proxy to integrate on- Application Proxy enables users to Azure AD Basic
premises applications access on-premises applications by
signing in with their Azure AD account.
Phase 4: Audit privileged identities, complete an access review, and

manage user lifecycle
Phase 4 sees administrators enforcing least privilege principles for administration, completing their first access
reviews, and enabling automation of common user lifecycle tasks.
Enforce the use of Privileged Identity Remove administrative roles from Azure AD Premium P2
Management normal day to day user accounts. Make
administrative users eligible to use their
role after succeeding a multi-factor
authentication check, providing a
business justification, or requesting
approval from designated approvers.
Complete an access review for Azure AD Work with your security and leadership Azure AD Premium P2
directory roles in PIM teams to create an access review policy
to review administrative access based
on your organization's policies.
Implement dynamic group membership Use dynamic groups to automatically

policies assign users to groups based on their
attributes from HR (or your source of
truth), such as department, title, region,
and other attributes.
Implement group based application Use group-based access management

provisioning provisioning to automatically provision
users for SaaS applications.
Automate user provisioning and Remove manual steps from your

deprovisioning employee account lifecycle to prevent
unauthorized access. Synchronize
identities from your source of truth (HR
System) to Azure AD.
Next steps
Azure AD licensing and pricing details
Identity and device access configurations
Common recommended identity and device access policies
Identity data storage for European customers in
Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ) helps you to manage user identities and to create intelligence-driven access
policies that help secure your organization's resources. Identity data is stored in a location that's based on the
address your organization provided when you subscribed to the service. For example, when you subscribed to
Office 365 or Azure. For specific info about where your identity data is stored, you can use the Where is your data
located? section of the Microsoft Trust Center.
While most Azure AD -related European identity data stays in European datacenters, there are some operational,
service-specific data that's required for normal Azure AD operation, which are stored in the U.S. and doesn't
include any personal data.
Data stored outside of European datacenters for European customers

Most Azure AD -related European identity data, for organizations with European-based addresses, stays in
European datacenters. Azure AD data that's stored in European datacenters, and also replicated to United States
datacenters, includes:
Microsoft Azure multi-factor authentication (MFA ) and Azure AD self-service password reset
(SSPR)
MFA stores all user data at-rest in European datacenters. However, some MFA service-specific data is stored
in the U.S., including:
Two-factor authentication and its related personal data might be stored in the U.S. if you're using
MFA or SSPR.
All two-factor authentication using phone calls or SMS might be completed by U.S. carriers.
Push notifications using the Microsoft Authenticator app require notifications from the
manufacturer's notification service (Apple or Google), which might be outside Europe.
OATH codes are always validated in the U.S.
Some MFA and SSPR logs are stored in the U.S. for 30 days, regardless of authentication type.
Microsoft Azure Active Directory B2C (Azure AD B2C )
Azure AD B2C stores all user data at-rest in European datacenters. However, operational logs (with personal
data removed) stay at the location from where the person is accessing the services. For example, if a B2C
user accesses the service in the U.S., the operational logs stay in the U.S. Additionally, all policy
configuration data not containing personal data is stored only in the U.S. For more info about policy
configurations, see the Azure Active Directory B2C: Built-in policies article.
Microsoft Azure Active Directory B2B (Azure AD B2B )
Azure AD B2B stores all user data at-rest in European datacenters. However, B2B stores its non-personal
metadata in tables within U.S. datacenters. This table includes fields like redeemUrl, invitationTicket,
resource tenant Id, InviteRedirectUrl, and InviterAppId.
Microsoft Azure Active Directory Domain Services (Azure AD DS )
Azure AD DS stores user data in the same location as the customer-selected Azure Virtual Network. So, if
the network is outside Europe, the data is replicated and stored outside Europe.
Services and apps integrated with Azure AD
Any services and apps that integrate with Azure AD have access to identity data. Evaluate each service and
app to determine how identity data is processed by that specific service and app, and whether they meet
your company's data storage requirements.
For more information about Microsoft services' data residency, see the Where is your data located? section
of the Microsoft Trust Center.
Next steps
For more information about any of the features and functionality described above, see these articles:
What is Multi-Factor Authentication?
Azure AD self-service password reset
What is Azure Active Directory B2C?
What is Azure AD B2B collaboration?
Azure Active Directory (AD ) Domain Services
Sign up your organization to use Azure Active
Directory
Sign up for Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ) or a new Microsoft Azure subscription, using either:
Microsoft account. Use your personal, Microsoft account to get access to Azure and all consumer-oriented
Microsoft products and cloud services, such as Outlook (Hotmail), Messenger, OneDrive, MSN, Xbox LIVE,
or Office 365. Signing up for an Outlook.com mailbox automatically creates a Microsoft account. For more
information, see Microsoft account overview.
Work or school account. Use your work or school-related account to get access to all the small, medium,
and enterprise cloud services from Microsoft, such as Azure, Microsoft Intune, or Office 365. After you sign
up for one of these services as an organization, Azure AD automatically provisions a cloud-based directory
that represents your organization. For more information, see Manage your Azure AD directory.
NOTE
We recommend that you use your work or school account if you already have access to Azure AD. However, you
should use whichever type of account is associated with your Azure subscription.
Next steps
How to buy Azure
Sign up for Azure Active Directory Premium editions
Learn more about Azure AD
Use your on-premises identity infrastructure in the cloud
Visit the Microsoft Azure blog
Sign up for Azure Active Directory Premium editions
You can purchase and associate Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ) Premium editions with your Azure
subscription. If you need to create a new Azure subscription, you'll also need to activate your licensing plan and
Azure AD service access.
NOTE
Azure AD Premium and Basic editions are available for customers in China using the worldwide instance of Azure Active
Directory. Azure AD Premium and Basic editions aren't currently supported in the Azure service operated by 21Vianet in
China. For more information, talk to us using the Azure Active Directory Forum.
Before you sign up for Active Directory Premium 1 or Premium 2, you must first determine which of your existing
subscription or plan to use:
Through your existing Azure or Office 365 subscription
Through your Enterprise Mobility + Security licensing plan
Through a Microsoft Volume Licensing plan
Signing up using your Azure subscription with previously purchased and activated Azure AD licenses,
automatically activates the licenses in the same directory. If that's not the case, you must still activate your license
plan and your Azure AD access. For more information about activating your license plan, see Activate your new
license plan. For more information about activating your Azure AD access, see Activate your Azure AD access.
Sign up using your existing Azure or Office 365 subscription

As an Azure or Office 365 subscriber, you can purchase the Azure Active Directory Premium editions online. For
detailed steps, see How to Purchase Azure Active Directory Premium - Existing Customers or How to Purchase
Azure Active Directory Premium - New Customers.
Sign up using your Enterprise Mobility + Security licensing plan

Enterprise Mobility + Security is a suite, comprised of Azure AD Premium, Azure Information Protection, and
Microsoft Intune. If you already have an EMS license, you can get started with Azure AD, using one of these
licensing options:
For more information about EMS, see Enterprise Mobility + Security web site.
Try out EMS with a free Enterprise Mobility + Security E5 trial subscription
Purchase Enterprise Mobility + Security E5 licenses
Purchase Enterprise Mobility + Security E3 licenses
Sign up using your Microsoft Volume Licensing plan

Through your Microsoft Volume Licensing plan, you can sign up for Azure AD Premium using one of these two
programs, based on the number of licenses you want to get:
For 250 or more licenses. Microsoft Enterprise Agreement
For 5 to 250 licenses. Open Volume License
For more information about volume licensing purchase options, see How to purchase through Volume Licensing.
Activate your new license plan

If you signed up using a new Azure AD license plan, you must activate it for your organization, using the
confirmation email sent after purchase.
To activate your license plan
Open the confirmation email you received from Microsoft after you signed up, and then click either Sign In
or Sign Up.
Sign in. Choose this link if you have an existing tenant, and then sign in using your existing
administrator account. You must be a global administrator on the tenant where the licenses are being
activated.
Sign up. Choose this link if you want to open the Create Account Profile page and create a new
Azure AD tenant for your licensing plan.
When you're done, you will see a confirmation box thanking you for activating the license plan for your tenant.
Activate your Azure AD access

If you're adding new Azure AD Premium licenses to an existing subscription, your Azure AD access should already
be activated. Otherwise, you need to activate Azure AD access after you receive the Welcome email.
After your purchased licenses are provisioned in your directory, you'll receive a Welcome email. This email
confirms that you can start managing your Azure AD Premium or Enterprise Mobility + Security licenses and
features.
TIP
You won't be able to access Azure AD for your new tenant until you activate Azure AD directory access from the welcome
email.
To activate your Azure AD access

1. Open the Welcome email, and then click Sign In.
2. After successfully signing in, you'll go through two-step verification using a mobile device.
The activation process typically takes only a few minutes and then you can use your Azure AD tenant.
Next steps
Now that you have Azure AD Premium, you can customize your domain, add your corporate branding, create a
tenant, and add groups and users.
Add your custom domain name using the Azure
Active Directory portal
Every new Azure AD tenant comes with an initial domain name, domainname.onmicrosoft.com. You can't change
or delete the initial domain name, but you can add your organization's names to the list. Adding custom domain
names helps you to create user names that are familiar to your users, such as alain@contoso.com.
Before you begin

Before you can add a custom domain name, you must create your domain name with a domain registrar. For an
accredited domain registrar, see ICANN -Accredited Registrars.
Create your directory in Azure AD

After you get your domain name, you can create your first Azure AD directory.
1. Sign in to the Azure portal for your directory, using an account with the Owner role for the subscription,
and then select Azure Active Directory. For more information about subscription roles, see Classic
subscription administrator roles, Azure RBAC roles, and Azure AD administrator roles.
TIP
If you plan to federate your on-premises Windows Server AD with Azure AD, then you need to select the I plan to
configure this domain for single sign-on with my local Active Directory checkbox when you run the Azure AD
Connect tool to synchronize your directories. You also need to register the same domain name you select for
federating with your on-premises directory in the Azure AD Domain step in the wizard. You can see what that step
in the wizard looks like in these instructions. If you do not have the Azure AD Connect tool, you can download it
here.
2. Create your new directory by following the steps in Create a new tenant for your organization.
IMPORTANT
The person who creates the tenant is automatically the Global administrator for that tenant. The Global
administrator can add additional administrators to the tenant.
Add your custom domain name to Azure AD

After you create your directory, you can add your custom domain name.
1. Select Custom domain names, and then select Add custom domain.
2. Type your organization's new domain name into the Custom domain name box (for example,
contoso.com), and then select Add domain.
The unverified domain is added and the Contoso page appears showing you your DNS info.
IMPORTANT
You must include .com, .net, or any other top-level extension for this to work properly.
3. Copy the DNS info from the Contoso page. For example, MS=ms64983159.
Add your DNS information to the domain registrar
After you add your custom domain name to Azure AD, you must return to your domain registrar and add the
Azure AD DNS information from your copied TXT file. Creating this TXT record for your domain "verifies"
ownership of your domain name.
Go back to your domain registrar, create a new TXT record for your domain based on your copied DNS
information, set the TTL (time to live) to 3600 seconds (60 minutes), and then save the information.
IMPORTANT
You can register as many domain names as you want. However, each domain gets its own TXT record from Azure
AD. Be careful when entering your TXT file information at the domain registrar. If you enter the wrong, or duplicate
information by mistake, you'll have to wait until the TTL times out (60 minutes) before you can try again.
Verify your custom domain name

After you register your custom domain name, you need to make sure it's valid in Azure AD. The propagation from
your domain registrar to Azure AD can be instantaneous or it can take up to a few days, depending on your
domain registrar.
To verify your custom domain name
1. Sign in to the Azure portal using a Global administrator account for the directory.
2. Select Azure Active Directory, and then select Custom domain names.
3. On the Fabrikam - Custom domain names page, select the custom domain name, Contoso.
4. On the Contoso page, select Verify to make sure your custom domain is properly registered and is valid
for Azure AD.
After you've verified your custom domain name, you can delete your verification TXT or MX file.
Common verification issues

If Azure AD can't verify a custom domain name, try the following suggestions:
Wait at least an hour and try again. DNS records must propagate before Azure AD can verify the
domain and this process can take an hour or more.
Make sure the DNS record is correct. Go back to the domain name registrar site and make sure
the entry is there, and that it matches the DNS entry information provided by Azure AD.
If you can't update the record on the registrar site, you must share the entry with someone that has
the right permissions to add the entry and verify it's accurate.
Make sure the domain name isn't already in use in another directory. A domain name can only be
verified in one directory, which means that if your domain name is currently verified in another directory, it
can't also be verified in the new directory. To fix this duplication problem, you must delete the domain name
from the old directory. For more information about deleting domain names, see Manage custom domain
names.
Make sure you don't have any unmanaged Power BI tenants. If your users have activated Power BI
through self-service sign-up and created an unmanaged tenant for your organization, you must take over
management as an internal or external admin, using PowerShell. To learn more about how to take over an
unmanaged directory, see Take over an unmanaged directory as administrator in Azure Active Directory.
Next steps
Add another Global administrator to your directory. For more information, see How to assign roles and
administrators.
Add users to your domain, see How to add or delete users.
Manage your domain name information in Azure AD. For more information, see Managing custom domain
names.
If you have on-premises versions of Windows Server that you want to use alongside Azure Active
Directory, see Integrate your on-premises directories with Azure Active Directory.
Add branding to your organization's Azure Active
Directory sign-in page
Use your organization's logo and custom color schemes to provide a consistent look-and-feel on your Azure Active
Directory (Azure AD ) sign-in pages. Your sign-in pages appear when users sign in to your organization's web-
based apps, such as Office 365, which uses Azure AD as your identity provider.
NOTE
Adding custom branding requires you to use Azure Active Directory Premium 1, Premium 2, or Basic editions, or to have an
Office 365 license. For more information about licensing and editions, see Sign up for Azure AD Premium.
Azure AD Premium and Basic editions are available for customers in China using the worldwide instance of Azure Active
Directory. Azure AD Premium and Basic editions aren't currently supported in the Azure service operated by 21Vianet in
China. For more information, talk to us using the Azure Active Directory Forum.
Customize your Azure AD sign-in page

You can customize your Azure AD sign-in pages, which appear when users sign in to your organization's tenant-
specific apps, such as https://outlook.com/contoso.com, or when passing a domain variable, such as
https://passwordreset.microsoftonline.com/?whr=contoso.com.
Your custom branding won't immediately appear when your users go to sites such as, www.office.com. Instead, the
user has to sign-in before your customized branding appears.
NOTE
All branding elements are optional. For example, if you specify a banner logo with no background image, the sign-in page will
show your logo with a default background image from the destination site (for example, Office 365).
Additionally, sign-in page branding doesn’t carry over to personal Microsoft accounts. If your users or business guests sign
in using a personal Microsoft account, the sign-in page won't reflect the branding of your organization.
To customize your branding

2. Select Azure Active Directory, and then select Company branding, and then select Configure.
3. On the Configure company branding page, provide any or all of the following information.
IMPORTANT
All the custom images you add on this page have image size (pixels), and potentially file size (KB), restrictions. Because
of these restrictions, you'll most-likely need to use a photo editor to create the right-sized images.
General settings
Language. The language is automatically set as your default and can't be changed.
Sign-in page background image. Select a .png or .jpg image file to appear as the
background for your sign-in pages.
The image can't be larger than 1920x1080 pixels in size and must have a file size of less than
300 KB.
Banner logo. Select a .png or .jpg version of your logo to appear on the sign-in page after the
user enters a username and on the My Apps portal page.
The image can't be taller than 36 pixels or wider than 245 pixels. We recommend using a
transparent image since the background might not match your logo background. We also
recommend not adding padding around the image or it might make your logo look small.
Username hint. Type the hint text that appears to users if they forget their username. This
text must be Unicode, without links or code, and can't exceed 64 characters. If guests sign in to
your app, we suggest not adding this hint.
Sign-in page text. Type the text that appears on the bottom of the sign-in page. You can use
this text to communicate additional information, such as the phone number to your help desk
or a legal statement. This text must be Unicode and not exceed 256 characters. We also
suggest not including links or HTML tags.
Advanced settings
Sign-in page background color. Specify the hexadecimal color (for example, white is
#FFFFFF ) that will appear in place of your background image in low -bandwidth connection
situations. We recommend using the primary color of your banner logo or your organization
color.
Square logo image. Select a .png (preferred) or .jpg image of your organization’s logo to
appear to users during the setup process for new Windows 10 Enterprise devices. This image
is only used for Windows authentication and appears only on tenants that are using Windows
Autopilot for deployment or for password entry pages in other Windows 10 experiences.
The image can’t be larger than 240x240 pixels in size and must have a file size of less than 10
KB. We recommend using a transparent image since the background might not match your
logo background. We also recommend not adding padding around the image or it might make
your logo look small.
Square logo image, dark theme. Same as the square logo image above. This logo image
takes the place of the square logo image when used with a dark background, such as with
Windows 10 Azure AD joined screens during the out-of-box experience (OOBE ). If your logo
looks good on white, dark blue, and black backgrounds, you don’t need to add this image.
Show option to remain signed in. You can choose to let your users remain signed in to
Azure AD until explicitly signing out. If you choose No, this option is hidden, and users must
sign in each time the browser is closed and reopened.
NOTE
Some features of SharePoint Online and Office 2010 depend on users being able to choose to remain
signed in. If you set this option to No, your users may see additional and unexpected prompts to
sign-in.
4. After you've finished adding your branding, select Save.

If this process creates your first custom branding configuration, it becomes the default for your tenant. If
you have additional configurations, you'll be able to choose your default configuration.
IMPORTANT
To add more corporate branding configurations to your tenant, you must choose New language on the Contoso -
Company branding page. This opens the Configure company branding page, where you can follow the same
steps as above.
Update your custom branding

After you've created your custom branding, you can go back and change anything you want.
To edit your custom branding
2. Select Azure Active Directory, and then select Company branding, and then select Configure.
3. On the Configure company branding page, add, remove, or change any of the information, based on the
descriptions in the Customize your Azure AD sign-in page section of this article.
4. Select Save.
It can take up to an hour for any changes you made to the sign-in page branding to appear.
Add language-specific company branding to your directory

You can't change your original configuration's language from your default language. However, if you need a
configuration in a different language, you can create a new configuration.
To add a language -specific branding configuration
2. Select Azure Active Directory, and then select Company branding, and then select New language.
3. On the Configure company branding page, select your language (for example, French) and then add your
translated information, based on the descriptions in the Customize your Azure AD sign-in page section of
this article.
4. Select Save.
The Contoso – Company branding page updates to show your new French configuration.
Add your custom branding to pages

Add your custom branding to pages by modifying the end of the URL with the text, ?whr=yourdomainname . This
modification works on several pages, including the Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) setup page, the Self-service
Password Reset (SSPR ) setup page, and the sign in page.
Examples:
Original URL: https://aka.ms/MFASetup
Custom URL: https://account.activedirectory.windowsazure.com/proofup.aspx?whr=contoso.com
Original URL: https://aka.ms/SSPR
Custom URL: https://passwordreset.microsoftonline.com/?whr=contoso.com
Associate or add an Azure subscription to your
Azure Active Directory tenant
An Azure subscription has a trust relationship with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ), which means that the
subscription trusts Azure AD to authenticate users, services, and devices. Multiple subscriptions can trust the
same Azure AD directory, but each subscription can only trust a single directory.
If your subscription expires, you lose access to all the other resources associated with the subscription. However,
the Azure AD directory remains in Azure, letting you associate and manage the directory using a different Azure
subscription.
All of your users have a single home directory for authentication. However, your users can also be guests in other
directories. You can see both the home and guest directories for each user in Azure AD.
IMPORTANT
When you associate a subscription to a different directory, users that have roles assigned using role-based access control
(RBAC) will lose their access. Classic subscription administrators (Service Administrator and Co-Administrators) will also lose
access.
Additionally, moving your Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster to a different subscription, or moving the cluster-owning
subscription to a new tenant, causes the cluster to lose functionality due to lost role assignments and service principals
rights. For more information about AKS, see Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).
Before you begin

Before you can associate or add your subscription, you must perform the following tasks:
1. Review the following list of changes and how you might be affected:
Users that have been assigned roles using RBAC will lose their access
Service Administrator and Co-Administrators will lose access
If you have any key vaults, they'll be inaccessible and you'll have to fix them after association
If you have a registered Azure Stack, you'll have to re-register it after association
2. Sign in using an account that:
Has an Owner role assignment for the subscription. For information about how to assign the Owner
role, see Manage access to Azure resources using RBAC and the Azure portal.
Exists in both the current directory that's associated with the subscription and in the new directory that's
where you want to associate the subscription going forward. For more information about getting access
to another directory, see How do Azure Active Directory admins add B2B collaboration users?.
3. Make sure you're not using an Azure Cloud Service Providers (CSP ) subscription (MS -AZR -0145P, MS -
AZR -0146P, MS -AZR -159P ), a Microsoft Internal subscription (MS -AZR -0015P ), or a Microsoft Imagine
subscription (MS -AZR -0144P ).
To associate an existing subscription to your Azure AD directory

1. Sign in and select the subscription you want to use from the Subscriptions page in Azure portal.
2. Select Change directory.
3. Review any warnings that appear, and then select Change.
The directory is changed for the subscription and you get a success message.
4. Use the Directory switcher to go to your new directory. It might take up to 10 minutes for everything to
show up properly.
Changing the subscription directory is a service-level operation, so it doesn't affect subscription billing ownership.
The Account Admin can still change the Service Admin from the Account Center. To delete the original directory,
you must transfer the subscription billing ownership to a new Account Admin. To learn more about transferring
billing ownership, see Transfer ownership of an Azure subscription to another account.
Post association steps

After you associate a subscription to a different directory, there might be additional steps that you must perform
to resume operations.
1. If you have any key vaults, you must change the key vault tenant ID. For more information, see Change a
key vault tenant ID after a subscription move.
2. If you have registered an Azure Stack using this subscription, you must re-register. For more information,
see Register Azure Stack with Azure.
Next steps
To create a new Azure AD tenant, see Access Azure Active Directory to create a new tenant
To learn more about how resource access is controlled in Microsoft Azure, see Understanding resource
access in Azure
To learn more about how to assign roles in Azure AD, see How to assign directory roles to users with Azure
Active Directory
Add your organization's privacy info using Azure
Active Directory
This article explains how a tenant admin can add privacy-related info to an organization’s Azure Active Directory
(Azure AD ) tenant, through the Azure portal.
We strongly recommend you add both your global privacy contact and your organization’s privacy statement, so
your internal employees and external guests can review your policies. Because privacy statements are uniquely
created and tailored for each business, we strongly recommend you contact a lawyer for assistance.
NOTE
If you’re interested in viewing or deleting personal data, please see the Azure Data Subject Requests for the GDPR article. If
you’re looking for general info about GDPR, see the GDPR section of the Service Trust portal.
Add your privacy info on Azure AD

You add your organization's privacy information in the Properties area of Azure AD.
To access the Properties area and add your privacy information
1. Sign in to the Azure portal as a tenant administrator.
2. On the left navbar, select Azure Active Directory, and then select Properties.
The Properties area appears.
3. Add your privacy info for your employees:

Technical contact. Type the email address for the person to contact for technical support within
your organization.
Global privacy contact. Type the email address for the person to contact for inquiries about
personal data privacy. This person is also who Microsoft contacts if there's a data breach. If there's no
person listed here, Microsoft contacts your global administrators.
Privacy statement URL. Type the link to your organization’s document that describes how your
organization handles both internal and external guest's data privacy.
IMPORTANT
If you don’t include either your own privacy statement or your privacy contact, your external guests will see
text in the Review Permissions box that says, <your org name> has not provided links to their terms
for you to review. For example, a guest user will see this message when they receive an invitation to access
an organization through B2B collaboration.
4. Select Save.
Next steps
Azure Active Directory B2B collaboration invitation redemption
Add or change profile information for a user in Azure Active Directory
Create a basic group and add members using Azure
Active Directory
You can create a basic group using the Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ) portal. For the purposes of this article,
a basic group is added to a single resource by the resource owner (administrator) and includes specific members
(employees) that need to access that resource. For more complex scenarios, including dynamic memberships and
rule creation, see the Azure Active Directory user management documentation.
Create a basic group and add members

You can create a basic group and add your members at the same time.
To create a basic group and add members
2. Select Azure Active Directory, Groups, and then select New group.
3. In the Group page, fill out the required information.

Group type (required). Select a pre-defined group type. This includes:
Security. Used to manage member and computer access to shared resources for a group of
users. For example, you can create a security group for a specific security policy. By doing it
this way, you can give a set of permissions to all the members at once, instead of having to
add permissions to each member individually. For more info about managing access to
resources, see Manage access to resources with Azure Active Directory groups.
Office 365. Provides collaboration opportunities by giving members access to a shared
mailbox, calendar, files, SharePoint site, and more. This option also lets you give people
outside of your organization access to the group. For more info about Office 365 Groups,
see Learn about Office 365 Groups.
Group name (required). Add a name for the group, something that you'll remember and that
makes sense.
Group description. Add an optional description to your group.
Membership type (required). Select a pre-defined membership type. This includes:
Assigned. Lets you add specific users to be members of this group and to have unique
permissions. For the purposes of this article, we're using this option.
Dynamic user. Lets you use dynamic membership rules to automatically add and remove
members. If a member's attributes change, the system looks at your dynamic group rules for
the directory to see if the member meets the rule requirements (is added) or no longer
meets the rules requirements (is removed).
Dynamic device. Lets you use dynamic group rules to automatically add and remove
devices. If a device's attributes change, the system looks at your dynamic group rules for the
directory to see if the device meets the rule requirements (is added) or no longer meets the
rules requirements (is removed).
IMPORTANT
You can create a dynamic group for either devices or users, but not for both. You also can't create a
device group based on the device owners' attributes. Device membership rules can only reference
device attributions. For more info about creating a dynamic group for users and devices, see Create
a dynamic group and check status.
4. Select Create.
Your group is created and ready for you to add members.
5. Select the Members area from the Group page, and then begin searching for the members to add to
your group from the Select members page.
6. When you're done adding members, choose Select.

The Group Overview page updates to show the number of members who are now added to the group.
Turn on or off welcome email
When any new Office 365 group is created, whether with dynamic or static membership, a welcome notification
is sent to all users who are added to the group. When any attributes of a user or device change, all dynamic
group rules in the organization are processed for potential membership changes. Users who are added then also
receive the welcome notification. You can turn this behavior off in Exchange PowerShell.
Next steps
Now that you've added a group and at least one user, you can:
View your groups and members
Manage group membership
Manage dynamic rules for users in a group
Edit your group settings
Manage access to resources using groups
Manage access to SaaS apps using groups
Manage groups using PowerShell commands
Associate or add an Azure subscription to Azure Active Directory
Add or remove group members using Azure Active
Directory
Using Azure Active Directory, you can continue to add and remove group members.
To add group members

2. Select Azure Active Directory, and then select Groups.
3. From the Groups - All groups page, search for and select the group you want to add the member to. In
this case, use our previously created group, MDM policy - West.
4. From the MDM policy - West Overview page, select Members from the Manage area.
5. Select Add members, and then search and select each of the members you want to add to the group, and
then choose Select.
You'll get a message that says the members were added successfully.
6. Refresh the screen to see all of the member names added to the group.
To remove group members

1. From the Groups - All groups page, search for and select the group you want to remove the member
from. Again we'll use, MDM policy - West.
2. Select Members from the Manage area, search for and select the name of the member to remove, and
then select Remove.
Next steps
Delete a group using Azure Active Directory
You can delete an Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ) group for any number of reasons, but typically it will be
because you:
Incorrectly set the Group type to the wrong option.
Created the wrong or a duplicate group by mistake.
No longer need the group.
To delete a group
3. From the Groups - All groups page, search for and select the group you want to delete. For these steps,
we'll use MDM policy - East.
4. On the MDM policy - East Overview page, and then select Delete.
The group is deleted from your Azure Active Directory tenant.
Next steps
If you delete a group by mistake, you can create it again. For more information, see How to create a basic
group and add members.
If you delete an Office 365 group by mistake, you might be able to restore it. For more information, see
Restore a deleted Office 365 group.
Add or remove a group from another group using
This article helps you to add and remove a group from another group using Azure Active Directory.
NOTE
If you're trying to delete the parent group, see How to update or delete a group and its members.
Add a group to another group

You can add an existing Security group to another existing Security group (also known as nested groups), creating
a member group (subgroup) and a parent group. The member group inherits the attributes and properties of the
parent group, saving you configuration time.
IMPORTANT
We don't currently support:
Adding groups to a group synced with on-premises Active Directory.
Adding Security groups to Office 365 groups.
Adding Office 365 groups to Security groups or other Office 365 groups.
Assigning apps to nested groups.
Applying licenses to nested groups.
To add a group as a member of another group

3. On the Groups - All groups page, search for and select the group that's to become a member of another
group. For this exercise, we're using the MDM policy - West group.
NOTE
You can add your group as a member to only one group at a time. Additionally, the Select Group box filters the
display based on matching your entry to any part of a user or device name. However, wildcard characters aren't
supported.
4. On the MDM policy - West - Group memberships page, select Group memberships, select Add, locate
the group you want your group to be a member of, and then choose Select. For this exercise, we're using
the MDM policy - All org group.
The MDM policy - West group is now a member of the MDM policy - All org group, inheriting all the
properties and configuration of the MDM policy - All org group.
5. Review the MDM policy - West - Group memberships page to see the group and member relationship.
6. For a more detailed view of the group and member relationship, select the group name (MDM policy - All
org) and take a look at the MDM policy - West page details.
Remove a group from another group

You can remove an existing Security group from another Security group. However, removing the group also
removes any inherited attributes and properties for its members.
To remove a member group from another group
1. On the Groups - All groups page, search for and select the group that's to be removed as a member of
another group. For this exercise, we're again using the MDM policy - West group.
2. On the MDM policy - West overview page, select Group memberships.
3. Select the MDM policy - All org group from the MDM policy - West - Group memberships page, and
then select Remove from the MDM policy - West page details.
Additional information
These articles provide additional information on Azure Active Directory.
Add or remove members from a group
Using a group to manage access to SaaS applications
Scenarios, limitations, and known issues using groups to manage licensing in Azure Active Directory
Edit your group information using Azure Active
Directory
Using Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ), you can edit a group's settings, including updating its name, description,
or membership type.
To edit your group settings

The Groups - All groups page appears, showing all of your active groups.
3. From the Groups - All groups page, type as much of the group name as you can into the Search box. For
the purposes of this article, we're searching for the MDM policy - West group.
The search results appear under the Search box, updating as you type more characters.
4. Select the group MDM policy - West, and then select Properties from the Manage area.
5. Update the General settings information as needed, including:
Group name. Edit the existing group name.

Group description. Edit the existing group description.
Group type. You can't change the type of group after it's been created. To change the Group type,
you must delete the group and create a new one.
Membership type. Change the membership type. For more info about the various available
membership types, see How to: Create a basic group and add members using the Azure Active
Directory portal.
Object ID. You can't change the Object ID, but you can copy it to use in your PowerShell commands
for the group. For more info about using PowerShell cmdlets, see Azure Active Directory cmdlets for
configuring group settings.
Next steps
These articles provide additional information on Azure Active Directory.
How to add or remove members from a group
Manage memberships of a group
Add or remove group owners in Azure Active
Directory
Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ) groups are owned and managed by group owners. Group owners are assigned
to manage a group and its members by a resource owner (administrator). Group owners aren't required to be
members of the group. After a group owner has been assigned, only a resource owner can add or remove owners.
In some cases, you as the administrator might decide not to assign a group owner. In this case, you become the
group owner. Additionally, owners can assign other owners to their group, unless you've restricted this in the
group settings.
Add an owner to a group

Add additional group owners to a group using Azure AD.
To add a group owner
2. Select Azure Active Directory, select Groups, and then select the group for which you want to add an
owner (for this example, MDM policy - West).
3. On the MDM policy - West Overview page, select Owners.
4. On the MDM policy - West - Owners page, select Add owners, and then search for and select the user
that will be the new group owner, and then choose Select.
After you select the new owner, you can refresh the Owners page and see the name added to the list of
owners.
Remove an owner from a group

Remove an owner from a group using Azure AD.
To remove an owner
2. Select Azure Active Directory, select Groups, and then select the group for which you want to remove an
owner (for this example, MDM policy - West).
3. On the MDM policy - West Overview page, select Owners.
4. On the MDM policy - West - Owners page, select the user you want to remove as a group owner, choose
Remove from the user's information page, and select Yes to confirm your decision.
After you remove the owner, you can return to the Owners page and see the name has been removed from
the list of owners.
Next steps
Managing access to resources with Azure Active Directory groups
Azure Active Directory cmdlets for configuring group settings
Use groups to assign access to an integrated SaaS app
Integrating your on-premises identities with Azure Active Directory
Azure Active Directory cmdlets for configuring group settings
Add or delete users using Azure Active Directory
Add new users or delete existing users from your Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ) organization.
Add a new user

You can create a new user using the Azure Active Directory portal.
To add a new user
1. Sign in to the Azure portal as a User administrator for the organization.
2. Select Azure Active Directory, select Users, and then select New user.
3. On the User page, fill out the required information.

Name (required). The first and last name of the new user. For example, Mary Parker.
User name (required). The user name of the new user. For example, mary@contoso.com.
The domain part of the user name must use either the initial default domain name,
<yourdomainname>.onmicrosoft.com, or a custom domain name, such as contoso.com. For more
information about how to create a custom domain name, see How to add a custom domain name
to Azure Active Directory.
Profile. Optionally, you can add more information about the user. You can also add user
information at a later time. For more information about adding user info, see How to add or
change user profile information.
Groups. Optionally, you can add the user to one or more existing groups. You can also add the
user to groups at a later time. For more information about adding users to groups, see How to
create a basic group and add members.
Directory role. Optionally, you can add the user to an Azure AD administrator role. You can
assign the user to be a Global administrator or one or more of the limited administrator roles in
Azure AD. For more information about assigning roles, see How to assign roles to users.
4. Copy the auto-generated password provided in the Password box. You'll need to give this password to
the user for the initial sign-in process.
5. Select Create.
The user is created and added to your Azure AD tenant.
Add a new user within a hybrid environment
If you have an environment with both Azure Active Directory (cloud) and Windows Server Active Directory (on-
premises), you can add new users by syncing the existing user account data. For more information about hybrid
environments and users, see Integrate your on-premises directories with Azure Active Directory.
Delete a user
You can delete an existing user using Azure Active Directory portal.
To delete a user
1. Sign in to the Azure portal using a User administrator account for the organization.
2. Select Azure Active Directory, select Users, and then search for and select the user you want to delete
from your Azure AD tenant. For example, Mary Parker.
3. Select Delete user.
The user is deleted and no longer appears on the Users - All users page. The user can be seen on the
Deleted users page for the next 30 days and can be restored during that time. For more information
about restoring a user, see How to restore or permanently remove a recently deleted user. When a user is
deleted, any licenses consumed by the user are made available for other users to be consumed.
NOTE
You must use Windows Server Active Directory to update the identity, contact info, or job info for users whose
source of authority is Windows Server Active Directory. After you complete your update, you must wait for the
next synchronization cycle to complete before you'll see the changes.
Next steps
After you've added your users, you can perform the following basic processes:
Add or change profile information
Work with dynamic groups and users
Or you can perform other user management tasks, such as adding guest users from another directory or
restoring a deleted user. For more information about other available actions, see Azure Active Directory user
management documentation.
Add or update a user's profile information using
Add user profile information, including a profile picture, job-specific information, and some settings using Azure
Active Directory (Azure AD ). For more information about adding new users, see How to add or delete users in
Azure Active Directory.

As you'll see, there's more information available in a user's profile than what you're able to add during the user's
creation. All this additional information is optional and can be added as needed by your organization.
To add or change profile information

1. Sign in to the Azure portal as a User administrator for the organization.
2. Select Azure Active Directory, select Users, and then select a user. For example, Alain Charon.
The Alain Charon - Profile page appears.
3. Select Edit to optionally add or update the information included in each of the available sections.
Profile picture. Select a thumbnail image for the user's account. This picture appears in Azure
Active Directory and on the user's personal pages, such as the myapps.microsoft.com page.
Identity. Add or update an additional identity value for the user, such as a married last name. You
can set this name independently from the values of First name and Last name. For example, you
could use it to include initials, a company name, or to change the sequence of names shown. In
another example, for two users whose names are ‘Chris Green’ you could use the Identity string to
set their names to 'Chris B. Green' 'Chris R. Green (Contoso).'
Job info. Add any job-related information, such as the user's job title, department, or manager.
Settings. Decide whether the user can sign in to Azure Active Directory tenant. You can also specify
the user's global location.
Contact info. Add any relevant contact information for the user. For example, a street address or a
mobile phone number.
Authentication contact info. Verify this information to make sure there's an active phone number
and email address for the user. This information is used by Azure Active Directory to make sure the
user is really the user during sign-in. Authentication contact info can be updated only by a global
administrator.
4. Select Save.
All your changes are saved for the user.
NOTE
You must use Windows Server Active Directory to update the identity, contact info, or job info for users whose
source of authority is Windows Server Active Directory. After you complete your update, you must wait for the next
synchronization cycle to complete before you'll see the changes.
Next steps
After you've updated your users' profiles, you can perform the following basic processes:
Add or delete users
Or you can perform other user management tasks, such as assigning delegates, using policies, and sharing user
accounts. For more information about other available actions, see Azure Active Directory user management
documentation.
Reset a user's password using Azure Active Directory
As an administrator, you can reset a user's password if the password is forgotten, if the user gets locked out of a
device, or if the user never received a password.
NOTE
Unless your Azure AD tenant is the home directory for a user, you won't be able reset their password. This means that if your
user is signing in to your organization using an account from another organization, a Microsoft account, or a Google account,
you won't be able to reset their password.
If your user has a source of authority as Windows Server Active Directory, you'll only be able to reset the password if you've
turned on password writeback.
If your user has a source of authority as External Azure AD, you won't be able to reset the password. Only the user, or an
adminsitrator in External Azure AD, can reset the password.
NOTE
If you're not an administrator and are instead looking for instructions about how to reset your own work or school password,
see Reset your work or school password.
To reset a password
1. Sign in to the Azure portal as a user administrator, or password administrator. For more information about
the available roles, see Assigning administrator roles in Azure Active Directory
2. Select Azure Active Directory, select Users, search for and select the user that needs the reset, and then
select Reset Password.
The Alain Charon - Profile page appears with the Reset password option.
3. In the Reset password page, select Reset password.
A temporary password is auto-generated for the user.
4. Copy the password and give it to the user. The user will be required to change the password during the next
sign-in process.
NOTE
The temporary password never expires. The next time the user signs in, the password will still work, regardless how
much time has passed since the temporary password was generated.
Next steps
After you've reset your user's password, you can perform the following basic processes:
Add or delete users
Or you can perform more complex user scenarios, such as assigning delegates, using policies, and sharing user
documentation.
Assign administrator and non-administrator roles to
users with Azure Active Directory
If a user in your organization needs permission to manage Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ) resources, you
must assign the user an appropriate role in Azure AD, based on the actions the user needs permission to
perform.
For more information about the available roles, see Assigning administrator roles in Azure Active Directory. For
more information about adding users, see Add new users to Azure Active Directory.
Assign roles
A common way to assign Azure AD roles to a user is on the Directory role page for a user.
You can also assign roles using Privileged Identity Management (PIM ). For more detailed information about
how to use PIM, see Privileged Identity Management.
To assign a role to a user
2. Select Azure Active Directory, select Users, and then search for and select the user getting the role
assignment. For example, Alain Charon.
3. On the Alain Charon - Profile page, select Directory role.
The Alain Charon - Directory role page appears.
4. Select Add role, select the role to assign to Alain (for example, Application administrator), and then
choose Select.
The Application administrator role is assigned to Alain Charon and it appears on the Alain Charon -
Directory role page.
Remove a role assignment

If you need to remove the role assignment from a user, you can also do that from the Alain Charon - Directory
role page.
To remove a role assignment from a user
1. Select Azure Active Directory, select Users, and then search for and select the user getting the role
assignment removed. For example, Alain Charon.
2. Select Directory role, select Application administrator, and then select Remove role.
The Application administrator role is removed from Alain Charon and it no longer appears on the Alain
Charon - Directory role page.
Next steps
Add or delete users
Add guest users from another directory
Or you can perform other user management tasks, such as assigning delegates, using policies, and sharing user
documentation.
Assign or remove licenses using the Azure Active
Directory portal
Many Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ) services require you to activate an Azure AD product and to license each
of your users or groups (and associated members) for that product. Only users with active licenses will be able to
access and use the licensed Azure AD services.
Available product editions

There are several editions available for the Azure AD product.
Azure AD Free
Azure AD Basic
Azure AD Premium 1 (Azure AD P1)
Azure AD Premium 2 (Azure AD P2)
For specific information about each product edition and the associated licensing details, see What license do I
need?.
View your product edition and license details

You can view your available products, including the individual licenses, checking for any pending expiration dates
and the number of assignments available.
To find your product and license details
2. Select Azure Active Directory, and then select Licenses.
The Licenses page appears.
3. Select the Purchased products link to view the Products page and to see the Assigned, Available, and
Expiring soon details for each specific product edition.
4. Select a product edition name to see its licensed users and groups.
Assign licenses to users or groups

Make sure that anyone needing to use a licensed Azure AD service has the appropriate license. It's up to you
whether you want to add the licensing rights to individual users or to an entire group.
NOTE
Group-based licensing is a public preview feature of Azure AD and is available with any paid Azure AD license plan. For more
information about previews, see Supplemental Terms of Use for Microsoft Azure Previews.
For detailed information about how to add users, see How to add or delete users in Azure Active Directory. For detailed
information about how to create groups and add members, see Create a basic group and add members.
To assign a license to a specific user

1. On the Products page, select the name of the edition you want to assign to the user. For example, Azure
Active Directory Premium Plan 2.
2. On the Azure Active Directory Premium Plan 2 page, select Assign.

3. On the Assign page, select Users and groups, and then search for and select the user you're assigning the
license. For example, Mary Parker.
4. Select Assignment options, make sure you have the appropriate license options turned on, and then select
OK.
The Assign license page updates to show that a user is selected and that the assignments are configured.
NOTE
Not all Microsoft services are available in all locations. Before a license can be assigned to a user, you must specify the
Usage location. You can set this value in the Azure Active Directory > Users > Profile > Settings area in Azure
AD.
5. Select Assign.
The user is added to the list of licensed users and has access to the included Azure AD services.
To assign a license to an entire group
1. On the Products page, select the name of the edition you want to assign to the user. For example, Azure
Active Directory Premium Plan 2.
2. On the Azure Active Directory Premium Plan 2 page, select Assign.

3. On the Assign page, select Users and groups, and then search for and select the group you're assigning
the license. For example, MDM policy - West.
4. Select Assignment options, make sure you have the appropriate license options turned on, and then select
OK.
The Assign license page updates to show that a user is selected and that the assignments are configured.
NOTE
Not all Microsoft services are available in all locations. Before a license can be assigned to a group, you must specify
the Usage location for all members. You can set this value in the Azure Active Directory > Users > Profile >
Settings area in Azure AD. Any user whose usage location is not specified inherits the location of the tenant.
5. Select Assign.
The group is added to the list of licensed groups and all of the members have access to the included Azure
AD services.
Remove a license
You can remove a license from either a user or a group from the Licenses page.
To remove a license from a specific user
1. On the Licensed users page for the product edition, select the user that should no longer have the license.
For example, Alain Charon.
2. Select Remove license.
To remove a license from a group
1. On the Licensed groups page for the product edition, select the group that should no longer have the
license. For example, MDM policy - West.
2. Select Remove license.
IMPORTANT
Licenses inherited by a user from a group can't be removed directly. Instead, you have to remove the user from the group
from which they're inheriting the license.
Next steps
After you've assigned your licenses, you can perform the following processes:
Identify and resolve license assignment problems
Add licensed users to a group for licensing
Scenarios, limitations, and known issues using groups to manage licensing in Azure Active Directory
Restore or remove a recently deleted user using
After you delete a user, the account remains in a suspended state for 30 days. During that 30-day window, the user
account can be restored, along with all its properties. After that 30-day window passes, the user is automatically,
and permanently, deleted.
You can view your restorable users, restore a deleted user, or permanently delete a user using Azure Active
Directory (Azure AD ) in the Azure portal.
IMPORTANT
Neither you nor Microsoft customer support can restore a permanently deleted user.
Required permissions
You must have one of the following roles to restore and permanently delete users.
Global administrator
Partner Tier1 Support
Partner Tier2 Support
User administrator
View your restorable users

You can see all the users that were deleted less than 30 days ago. These users can be restored.
To view your restorable users
1. Sign in to the Azure portal using a Global administrator account for the organization.
2. Select Azure Active Directory, select Users, and then select Deleted users.
Review the list of users that are available to restore.
Restore a recently deleted user
When a user account is deleted from the organization, the account is in a suspended state and all the related
organization information is preserved. When you restore a user, this organization information is also restored.
NOTE
Once a user is restored, licenses that were assigned to the user at the time of deletion are also restored even if there are no
seats available for those licenses. If you are then consuming more licenses more than you purchased, your organization could
be temporarily out of compliance for license usage.
To restore a user
1. On the Users - Deleted users page, search for and select one of the available users. For example, Mary
Parker.
2. Select Restore user.
Permanently delete a user

You can permanently delete a user from your organization without waiting the 30 days for automatic deletion. A
permanently deleted user can't be restored by you, another administrator, nor by Microsoft customer support.
NOTE
If you permanently delete a user by mistake, you'll have to create a new user and manually enter all the previous information.
For more information about creating a new user, see Add or delete users.
To permanently delete a user

1. On the Users - Deleted users page, search for and select one of the available users. For example, Rae Huff.
2. Select Delete permanently.
Next steps
After you've restored or deleted your users, you can perform the following basic processes:
Add or delete users
Add guest users from another organization
For more information about other available user management tasks, Azure AD user management documentation.
Find help and open a support ticket for Azure Active
Directory
Microsoft provides global technical, pre-sales, billing, and subscription support for Azure Active Directory (Azure
AD ). Support is available both online and by phone for Microsoft Azure paid and trial subscriptions. Phone support
and online billing support are available in additional languages.
Find help without opening a support ticket

Before creating a support ticket, check out the following resources for answers and information.
For content such as how -to information or code samples for IT professionals and developers, see the
technical documentation at docs.microsoft.com.
The Microsoft Technical Community is the place for our IT pro partners and customers to collaborate, share,
and learn. The Microsoft Technical Community Info Center is used for announcements, blog posts, ask-me-
anything (AMA) interactions with experts, and more. You can also join the community to submit your ideas.
Open a support ticket

If you are unable to find answers by using self-help resources, you can open an online support ticket. You should
open each support ticket for only a single problem, so that we can connect you to the support engineers who are
subject matter experts for your problem. Also, Azure Active Directory engineering teams prioritize their work
based on incidents that are generated, so you're often contributing to service improvements.
How to open a support ticket for Azure AD in the Azure portal
NOTE
For billing or subscription issues, you must use the Microsoft 365 admin center.
1. Sign in to the Azure portal and open Azure Active Directory.

2. Scroll down to Troubleshooting + Support and select New support request.
3. On the Basics blade, for Issue type, select Technical.
4. For Service, select Azure Active Directory, and then select Next.
5. On the Problem blade, select a Severity.
6. Select a Problem type, and then select a Category for that type. At this point, you are also offered self-help
information for your problem category.
7. Add the rest of your problem information and click Next.
8. Provide your contact information and select Create.
How to open a support ticket for Azure AD in the Microsoft 365 admin center
NOTE
Support for Azure AD in the Microsoft 365 admin center is offered for administrators only.
1. Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center with an account that has an Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS )
license.
2. On the Support tile, select New service request:
3. On the Support Overview page, select Identity management or User and domain management:
4. For Feature, select the Azure AD feature for which you want support.
5. For Symptom, select an appropriate symptom, summarize your issue and provide relevant details, and then
select Next.
6. Select one of the offered self-help resources, or select Yes, continue or No, cancel request.
7. If you continue, you are asked for more details. You can attach any files you have that represent the problem,
and then select Next.
8. Provide your contact information and select Submit request.
Get phone support

See the Contact Microsoft for support page to obtain support phone numbers.
Next steps
Microsoft Tech Community
Technical documentation at docs.microsoft.com
Frequently asked questions about Azure Active
Directory
Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ) is a comprehensive identity as a service (IDaaS ) solution that spans all aspects
of identity, access management, and security.
For more information, see What is Azure Active Directory?.
Access Azure and Azure Active Directory

Q: Why do I get “No subscriptions found” when I try to access Azure AD in the Azure portal?
A: To access the Azure portal, each user needs permissions with an Azure subscription. If you have a paid Office
365 or Azure AD subscription, go to https://aka.ms/accessAAD for a one-time activation step. Otherwise, you will
need to activate a free Azure account or a paid subscription.
How Azure subscriptions are associated with Azure Active Directory
Q: What’s the relationship between Azure AD, Office 365, and Azure?
A: Azure AD provides you with common identity and access capabilities to all web services. Whether you are using
Office 365, Microsoft Azure, Intune, or others, you're already using Azure AD to help turn on sign-on and access
management for all these services.
All users who are set up to use web services are defined as user accounts in one or more Azure AD instances. You
can set up these accounts for free Azure AD capabilities like cloud application access.
Azure AD paid services like Enterprise Mobility + Security complement other web services like Office 365 and
Microsoft Azure with comprehensive enterprise-scale management and security solutions.
Q: What are the differences between Owner and Global Administrator?

A: By default, the person who signs up for an Azure subscription is assigned the Owner role for Azure resources.
An Owner can use either a Microsoft account or a work or school account from the directory that the Azure
subscription is associated with. This role is authorized to manage services in the Azure portal.
If others need to sign in and access services by using the same subscription, you can assign them the appropriate
built-in role. For additional information, see Manage access using RBAC and the Azure portal.
By default, the person who signs up for an Azure subscription is assigned the Global Administrator role for the
directory. The Global Administrator has access to all Azure AD directory features. Azure AD has a different set of
administrator roles to manage the directory and identity-related features. These administrators will have access to
various features in the Azure portal. The administrator's role determines what they can do, like create or edit users,
assign administrative roles to others, reset user passwords, manage user licenses, or manage domains. For
additional information on Azure AD directory admins and their roles, see Assign a user to administrator roles in
Azure Active Directory and Assigning administrator roles in Azure Active Directory.
Additionally, Azure AD paid services like Enterprise Mobility + Security complement other web services, such as
Office 365 and Microsoft Azure, with comprehensive enterprise-scale management and security solutions.
Q: Is there a report that shows when my Azure AD user licenses will expire?
A: No. This is not currently available.
Get started with Hybrid Azure AD

Q: How do I leave a tenant when I am added as a collaborator?
A: When you are added to another organization's tenant as a collaborator, you can use the "tenant switcher" in the
upper right to switch between tenants. Currently, there is no way to leave the inviting organization, and Microsoft is
working on providing this functionality. Until this feature is available, you can ask the inviting organization to
remove you from their tenant.
Q: How can I connect my on-premises directory to Azure AD?

A: You can connect your on-premises directory to Azure AD by using Azure AD Connect.
For more information, see Integrating your on-premises identities with Azure Active Directory.
Q: How do I set up SSO between my on-premises directory and my cloud applications?

A: You only need to set up single sign-on (SSO ) between your on-premises directory and Azure AD. As long as
you access your cloud applications through Azure AD, the service automatically drives your users to correctly
authenticate with their on-premises credentials.
Implementing SSO from on-premises can be easily achieved with federation solutions such as Active Directory
Federation Services (AD FS ), or by configuring password hash sync. You can easily deploy both options by using
the Azure AD Connect configuration wizard.
For more information, see Integrating your on-premises identities with Azure Active Directory.
Q: Does Azure AD provide a self-service portal for users in my organization?

A: Yes, Azure AD provides you with the Azure AD Access Panel for user self-service and application access. If you
are an Office 365 customer, you can find many of the same capabilities in the Office 365 portal.
For more information, see Introduction to the Access Panel.
Q: Does Azure AD help me manage my on-premises infrastructure?

A: Yes. The Azure AD Premium edition provides you with Azure AD Connect Health. Azure AD Connect Health
helps you monitor and gain insight into your on-premises identity infrastructure and the synchronization services.
For more information, see Monitor your on-premises identity infrastructure and synchronization services in the
cloud.
Password management
Q: Can I use Azure AD password write-back without password sync? (In this scenario, is it possible to use
Azure AD self-service password reset (SSPR) with password write-back and not store passwords in the
cloud?)
A: You do not need to synchronize your Active Directory passwords to Azure AD to enable write-back. In a
federated environment, Azure AD single sign-on (SSO ) relies on the on-premises directory to authenticate the
user. This scenario does not require the on-premises password to be tracked in Azure AD.
Q: How long does it take for a password to be written back to Active Directory on-premises?
A: Password write-back operates in real time.
For more information, see Getting started with password management.
Q: Can I use password write-back with passwords that are managed by an admin?
A: Yes, if you have password write-back enabled, the password operations performed by an admin are written back
to your on-premises environment.
For more answers to password-related questions, see Password management frequently asked questions.
Q: What can I do if I can't remember my existing Office 365/Azure AD password while trying to change
my password?
A: For this type of situation, there are a couple of options. Use self-service password reset (SSPR ) if it's available.
Whether SSPR works depends on how it's configured. For more information, see How does the password reset
portal work.
For Office 365 users, your admin can reset the password by using the steps outlined in Reset user passwords.
For Azure AD accounts, admins can reset passwords by using one of the following:
Reset accounts in the Azure portal
Using PowerShell
Security
Q: Are accounts locked after a specific number of failed attempts or is there a more sophisticated
strategy used?
We use a more sophisticated strategy to lock accounts. This is based on the IP of the request and the passwords
entered. The duration of the lockout also increases based on the likelihood that it is an attack.
Q: Certain (common) passwords get rejected with the messages ‘this password has been used to many
times’, does this refer to passwords used in the current active directory?
This refers to passwords that are globally common, such as any variants of “Password” and “123456”.
Q: Will a sign-in request from dubious sources (botnets, tor endpoint) be blocked in a B2C tenant or
does this require a Basic or Premium edition tenant?
We do have a gateway that filters requests and provides some protection from botnets, and is applied for all B2C
tenants.
Application access
Q: Where can I find a list of applications that are pre-integrated with Azure AD and their capabilities?
A: Azure AD has more than 2,600 pre-integrated applications from Microsoft, application service providers, and
partners. All pre-integrated applications support single sign-on (SSO ). SSO lets you use your organizational
credentials to access your apps. Some of the applications also support automated provisioning and de-
provisioning.
For a complete list of the pre-integrated applications, see the Active Directory Marketplace.
Q: What if the application I need is not in the Azure AD marketplace?

A: With Azure AD Premium, you can add and configure any application that you want. Depending on your
application’s capabilities and your preferences, you can configure SSO and automated provisioning.
Configuring single sign-on to applications that are not in the Azure Active Directory application gallery
Using SCIM to enable automatic provisioning of users and groups from Azure Active Directory to applications
Q: How do users sign in to applications by using Azure AD?

A: Azure AD provides several ways for users to view and access their applications, such as:
The Azure AD access panel
The Office 365 application launcher
Direct sign-in to federated apps
Deep links to federated, password-based, or existing apps
For more information, see End user experiences for applications.
Q: What are the different ways Azure AD enables authentication and single sign-on to applications?
A: Azure AD supports many standardized protocols for authentication and authorization, such as SAML 2.0,
OpenID Connect, OAuth 2.0, and WS -Federation. Azure AD also supports password vaulting and automated sign-
in capabilities for apps that only support forms-based authentication.
Authentication Scenarios for Azure AD
Active Directory authentication protocols
Single sign-on for applications in Azure AD
Q: Can I add applications I’m running on-premises?

A: Azure AD Application Proxy provides you with easy and secure access to on-premises web applications that you
choose. You can access these applications in the same way that you access your software as a service (SaaS ) apps
in Azure AD. There is no need for a VPN or to change your network infrastructure.
For more information, see How to provide secure remote access to on-premises applications.
Q: How do I require multi-factor authentication for users who access a particular application?
A: With Azure AD conditional access, you can assign a unique access policy for each application. In your policy, you
can require multi-factor authentication always, or when users are not connected to the local network.
For more information, see Securing access to Office 365 and other apps connected to Azure Active Directory.
Q: What is automated user provisioning for SaaS apps?

A: Use Azure AD to automate the creation, maintenance, and removal of user identities in many popular cloud
SaaS apps.
For more information, see Automate user provisioning and deprovisioning to SaaS applications with Azure Active
Directory.
Q: Can I set up a secure LDAP connection with Azure AD?

A: No. Azure AD does not support the LDAP protocol. However, you can configure secure LDAP with Azure AD
Domain Services.
Azure Active Directory deployment plans
Looking for end-to-end guidance about how to deploy some of Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ) capabilities?
The following deployment plans walk through the business value, planning considerations, design, and operational
procedures needed to successfully roll a few of the more common Azure AD capabilities.
Within the documents you will find e-mail templates, system architecture diagrams, common test cases, and more.
We'd love your feedback on the documents. Take this short survey about how the documents worked for you.
SCENARIO DESCRIPTION
Multi-Factor Authentication Azure Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is Microsoft's two-

step verification solution. Using admin-approved
authentication methods, Azure MFA helps safeguard your
access to data and applications, while meeting the demand for
a simple sign-in process.
Conditional access downloadable plan or online plan With conditional access, you can implement automated access
control decisions for who can access your cloud apps, based
on conditions.
Self-service password reset Self-service password reset helps your users reset their
password, without administrator intervention, when and
where they need to.
Privileged Identity Management Azure AD Privileged Identity Management (PIM) helps you
manage privileged administrative roles across Azure AD, Azure
resources, and other Microsoft Online Services. PIM provides
solutions like just-in-time access, request approval workflows,
and fully integrated access reviews so you can identify,
uncover, and prevent malicious activities of privileged roles in
real time.
Single sign-on Single sign-on helps you access all the apps and resources you
need to do business, while signing in only once, using a single
user account. After you've signed in, you can go from
Microsoft Office to SalesForce, to Box without being required
to authenticate (for example, type a password) a second time.
Seamless SSO Azure Active Directory Seamless Single Sign-On (Azure AD

Seamless SSO) automatically signs users in when they are on
their corporate devices connected to your corporate network.
After you turn on this feature, users won't need to type in
their passwords to sign in to Azure AD, and usually, won't
even need to type in their usernames. This feature provides
your users easy access to your cloud-based applications
without needing any additional on-premises components.
Access Panel Offer your users a simple hub to discover and access all their
applications. Enable them to be more productive with self-
service capabilities, such as the ability to request access to new
apps and groups, or manage access to these resources on
behalf of others.
SCENARIO DESCRIPTION
ADFS to Password Hash Sync downloadable plan or online With Password Hash Synchronization, hashes of user
plan passwords are synchronized from on-premises Active
Directory to Azure AD, letting Azure AD to authenticate users
with no interaction with the on-premises Active Directory
ADFS to Pass Through Authentication downloadable plan or Azure AD Pass-through Authentication helps your users sign
online plan in to both on-premises and cloud-based applications, using
the same passwords. This feature provides your users a better
experience - one less password to remember, and reduces IT
helpdesk costs because your users are less likely to forget how
to sign in. When people sign in using Azure AD, this feature
validates users' passwords directly against your on-premises
Active Directory.
Azure AD Application Proxy Employees today want to be productive at any place, at any
time, and from any device. They want to work on their own
devices, whether they are tablets, phones, or laptops. And
employees expect to be able to access all their applications,
both SaaS apps in the cloud and corporate apps on-premises.
Providing access to on-premises applications has traditionally
involved virtual private networks (VPNs) or demilitarized zones
(DMZs). Not only are these solutions complex and hard to
make secure, but they are costly to set up and manage. There
is a better way! - Azure AD Application Proxy
User provisioning Azure AD helps you automate the creation, maintenance, and
removal of user identities in cloud (SaaS) applications, such as
Dropbox, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and more.
Workday-driven Inbound User Provisioning Workday-driven Inbound User Provisioning to Active

Directory creates a foundation for ongoing identity
governance and enhances the quality of business processes
that rely on authoritative identity data. Using this feature, you
can seamlessly manage the identity lifecycle of employees and
contingent workers by configuring rules that map Joiner-
Mover-Leaver processes (such as New Hire, Terminate,
Transfer) to IT provisioning actions (such as Create, Enable,
Disable, Delete accounts).
Archive for What's new? in Azure Active Directory
The primary What's new release notes article contains the latest 6 months of information, while this article
includes all the older information.
The What's new release notes provide you with information about:
The latest releases
Known issues
Bug fixes
Deprecated functionality
Plans for changes
August 2018
Changes to Azure Active Directory IP address ranges
Product capability: Platform
We're introducing larger IP ranges to Azure AD, which means if you've configured Azure AD IP address ranges for
your firewalls, routers, or Network Security Groups, you'll need to update them. We're making this update so you
won't have to change your firewall, router, or Network Security Groups IP range configurations again when Azure
AD adds new endpoints.
Network traffic is moving to these new ranges over the next two months. To continue with uninterrupted service,
you must add these updated values to your IP Addresses before September 10, 2018:
20.190.128.0/18
40.126.0.0/18
We strongly recommend not removing the old IP Address ranges until all of your network traffic has moved to the
new ranges. For updates about the move and to learn when you can remove the old ranges, see Office 365 URLs
and IP address ranges.
Change notice: Authorization codes will no longer be available for reuse

Starting on November 15, 2018, Azure AD will stop accepting previously used authentication codes for apps. This
security change helps to bring Azure AD in line with the OAuth specification and will be enforced on both the v1
and v2 endpoints.
If your app reuses authorization codes to get tokens for multiple resources, we recommend that you use the code
to get a refresh token, and then use that refresh token to acquire additional tokens for other resources.
Authorization codes can only be used once, but refresh tokens can be used multiple times across multiple
resources. An app that attempts to reuse an authentication code during the OAuth code flow will get an
invalid_grant error.
For this and other protocols-related changes, see the full list of what's new for authentication.
Converged security info management for self-service password (SSPR ) and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA )
Type: New feature
This new feature helps people manage their security info (such as, phone number, mobile app, and so on) for SSPR
and MFA in a single location and experience; as compared to previously, where it was done in two different
locations.
This converged experience also works for people using either SSPR or MFA. Additionally, if your organization
doesn't enforce MFA or SSPR registration, people can still register any MFA or SSPR security info methods
allowed by your organization from the My Apps portal.
This is an opt-in public preview. Administrators can turn on the new experience (if desired) for a selected group or
for all users in a tenant. For more information about the converged experience, see the Converged experience blog
New HTTP-Only cookies setting in Azure AD Application proxy apps

Type: New feature
There's a new setting called, HTTP -Only Cookies in your Application Proxy apps. This setting helps provide extra
security by including the HTTPOnly flag in the HTTP response header for both Application Proxy access and
session cookies, stopping access to the cookie from a client-side script and further preventing actions like copying
or modifying the cookie. Although this flag hasn't been used previously, your cookies have always been encrypted
and transmitted using an SSL connection to help protect against improper modifications.
This setting isn't compatible with apps using ActiveX controls, such as Remote Desktop. If you're in this situation,
we recommend that you turn off this setting.
For more information about the HTTP -Only Cookies setting, see Publish applications using Azure AD Application
Proxy.
Privileged Identity Management (PIM ) for Azure resources supports Management Group resource types
Type: New feature
Just-In-Time activation and assignment settings can now be applied to Management Group resource types, just
like you already do for Subscriptions, Resource Groups, and Resources (such as VMs, App Services, and more). In
addition, anyone with a role that provides administrator access for a Management Group can discover and manage
that resource in PIM.
For more information about PIM and Azure resources, see Discover and manage Azure resources by using
Privileged Identity Management
Application access (preview) provides faster access to the Azure AD portal

Type: New feature
Today, when activating a role using PIM, it can take over 10 minutes for the permissions to take effect. If you
choose to use Application access, which is currently in public preview, administrators can access the Azure AD
portal as soon as the activation request completes.
Currently, Application access only supports the Azure AD portal experience and Azure resources. For more
information about PIM and Application access, see What is Azure AD Privileged Identity Management?
New Federated Apps available in Azure AD app gallery - August 2018

Type: New feature
In August 2018, we've added these 16 new apps with Federation support to the app gallery:
Hornbill, Bridgeline Unbound, Sauce Labs - Mobile and Web Testing, Meta Networks Connector, Way We Do,
Spotinst, ProMaster (by Inlogik), SchoolBooking, 4me, Dossier, N2F - Expense reports, Comm100 Live Chat,
SafeConnect, ZenQMS, eLuminate, Dovetale.
Native Tableau support is now available in Azure AD Application Proxy

With our update from the OpenID Connect to the OAuth 2.0 Code Grant protocol for our pre-authentication
protocol, you no longer have to do any additional configuration to use Tableau with Application Proxy. This
protocol change also helps Application Proxy better support more modern apps by using only HTTP redirects,
which are commonly supported in JavaScript and HTML tags.
For more information about our native support for Tableau, see Azure AD Application Proxy now with native
Tableau support.
New support to add Google as an identity provider for B2B guest users in Azure Active Directory (preview)
Type: New feature
By setting up federation with Google in your organization, you can let invited Gmail users sign in to your shared
apps and resources using their existing Google account, without having to create a personal Microsoft Account
(MSAs) or an Azure AD account.
This is an opt-in public preview. For more information about Google federation, see Add Google as an identity
provider for B2B guest users.
July 2018
Improvements to Azure Active Directory email notifications
Product capability: Identity lifecycle management
Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ) emails now feature an updated design, as well as changes to the sender email
address and sender display name, when sent from the following services:
Azure AD Access Reviews
Azure AD Connect Health
Azure AD Identity Protection
Azure AD Privileged Identity Management
Enterprise App Expiring Certificate Notifications
Enterprise App Provisioning Service Notifications
The email notifications will be sent from the following email address and display name:
Email address: azure-noreply@microsoft.com
Display name: Microsoft Azure
For an example of some of the new e-mail designs and more information, see Email notifications in Azure AD PIM.
Azure AD Activity Logs are now available through Azure Monitor

Type: New feature
The Azure AD Activity Logs are now available in public preview for the Azure Monitor (Azure's platform-wide
monitoring service). Azure Monitor offers you long-term retention and seamless integration, in addition to these
improvements:
Long-term retention by routing your log files to your own Azure storage account.
Seamless SIEM integration, without requiring you to write or maintain custom scripts.
Seamless integration with your own custom solutions, analytics tools, or incident management solutions.
For more information about these new capabilities, see our blog Azure AD activity logs in Azure Monitor
diagnostics is now in public preview and our documentation, Azure Active Directory activity logs in Azure Monitor
(preview ).
Conditional access information added to the Azure AD sign-ins report

Type: New feature
This update lets you see which policies are evaluated when a user signs in along with the policy outcome. In
addition, the report now includes the type of client app used by the user, so you can identify legacy protocol traffic.
Report entries can also now be searched for a correlation ID, which can be found in the user-facing error message
and can be used to identify and troubleshoot the matching sign-in request.
View legacy authentications through Sign-ins activity logs

Type: New feature
With the introduction of the Client App field in the Sign-in activity logs, customers can now see users that are
using legacy authentications. Customers will be able to access this information using the Sign-ins MS Graph API
or through the Sign-in activity logs in Azure AD portal where you can use the Client App control to filter on
legacy authentications. Check out the documentation for more details.
New Federated Apps available in Azure AD app gallery - July 2018
Type: New feature
In July 2018, we've added these 16 new apps with Federation support to the app gallery:
Innovation Hub, Leapsome, Certain Admin SSO, PSUC Staging, iPass SmartConnect, Screencast-O -Matic,
PowerSchool Unified Classroom, Eli Onboarding, Bomgar Remote Support, Nimblex, Imagineer WebVision,
Insight4GRC, SecureW2 JoinNow Connector, Kanbanize, SmartLPA, Skills Base
New user provisioning SaaS app integrations - July 2018

Type: New feature
Azure AD allows you to automate the creation, maintenance, and removal of user identities in SaaS applications
such as Dropbox, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and more. For July 2018, we have added user provisioning support for
the following applications in the Azure AD app gallery:
Cisco Spark
Cisco WebEx
Bonusly
For a list of all applications that support user provisioning in the Azure AD gallery, see SaaS application integration
with Azure Active Directory.
Connect Health for Sync - An easier way to fix orphaned and duplicate attribute sync errors
Type: New feature
Service category: AD Connect
Azure AD Connect Health introduces self-service remediation to help you highlight and fix sync errors. This feature
troubleshoots duplicated attribute sync errors and fixes objects that are orphaned from Azure AD. This diagnosis
has the following benefits:
Narrows down duplicated attribute sync errors, providing specific fixes
Applies a fix for dedicated Azure AD scenarios, resolving errors in a single step
No upgrade or configuration is required to turn on and use this feature
For more information, see Diagnose and remediate duplicated attribute sync errors
Visual updates to the Azure AD and MSA sign-in experiences

Service category: Azure AD
We've updated the UI for Microsoft's online services sign-in experience, such as for Office 365 and Azure. This
change makes the screens less cluttered and more straightforward. For more information about this change, see
the Upcoming improvements to the Azure AD sign-in experience blog.
New release of Azure AD Connect - July 2018

Product capability: Identity Lifecycle Management
The latest release of Azure AD Connect includes:
Bug fixes and supportability updates
General Availability of the Ping-Federate integration
Updates to the latest SQL 2012 client
For more information about this update, see Azure AD Connect: Version release history
Updates to the Terms of Use (ToU ) end-user UI

We're updating the acceptance string in the TOU end-user UI.
Current text. In order to access [tenantName] resources, you must accept the terms of use.
New text. In order to access [tenantName] resource, you must read the terms of use.
Current text: Choosing to accept means that you agree to all of the above terms of use.
New text: Please click Accept to confirm that you have read and understood the terms of use.
Pass-through Authentication supports legacy protocols and applications

Pass-through Authentication now supports legacy protocols and apps. The following limitations are now fully
supported:
User sign-ins to legacy Office client applications, Office 2010 and Office 2013, without requiring modern
authentication.
Access to calendar sharing and free/busy information in Exchange hybrid environments on Office 2010 only.
User sign-ins to Skype for Business client applications without requiring modern authentication.
User sign-ins to PowerShell version 1.0.
The Apple Device Enrollment Program (Apple DEP ), using the iOS Setup Assistant.
Converged security info management for self-service password reset and Multi-Factor Authentication
Type: New feature
This new feature lets users manage their security info (for example, phone number, email address, mobile app, and
so on) for self-service password reset (SSPR ) and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) in a single experience. Users
will no longer have to register the same security info for SSPR and MFA in two different experiences. This new
experience also applies to users who have either SSPR or MFA.
If an organization isn't enforcing MFA or SSPR registration, users can register their security info through the My
Apps portal. From there, users can register any methods enabled for MFA or SSPR.
This is an opt-in public preview. Admins can turn on the new experience (if desired) for a selected group of users or
all users in a tenant.
Use the Microsoft Authenticator app to verify your identity when you reset your password
This feature lets non-admins verify their identity while resetting a password using a notification or code from
Microsoft Authenticator (or any other authenticator app). After admins turn on this self-service password reset
method, users who have registered a mobile app through aka.ms/mfasetup or aka.ms/setupsecurityinfo can use
their mobile app as a verification method while resetting their password.
Mobile app notification can only be turned on as part of a policy that requires two methods to reset your password.
June 2018
Change notice: Security fix to the delegated authorization flow for apps using Azure AD Activity Logs API
Due to our stronger security enforcement, we’ve had to make a change to the permissions for apps that use a
delegated authorization flow to access Azure AD Activity Logs APIs. This change will occur by June 26, 2018.
If any of your apps use Azure AD Activity Log APIs, follow these steps to ensure the app doesn’t break after the
change happens.
To update your app permissions
1. Sign in to the Azure portal, select Azure Active Directory, and then select App Registrations.
2. Select your app that uses the Azure AD Activity Logs API, select Settings, select Required permissions,
and then select the Windows Azure Active Directory API.
3. In the Delegated permissions area of the Enable access blade, select the box next to Read directory
data, and then select Save.
4. Select Grant permissions, and then select Yes.
NOTE
You must be a Global administrator to grant permissions to the app.
For more information, see the Grant permissions area of the Prerequisites to access the Azure AD reporting API
article.
Configure TLS settings to connect to Azure AD services for PCI DSS compliance
Type: New feature
Service category: N/A
Transport Layer Security (TLS ) is a protocol that provides privacy and data integrity between two communicating
applications and is the most widely deployed security protocol used today.
The PCI Security Standards Council has determined that early versions of TLS and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL )
must be disabled in favor of enabling new and more secure app protocols, with compliance starting on June 30,
2018. This change means that if you connect to Azure AD services and require PCI DSS -compliance, you must
disable TLS 1.0. Multiple versions of TLS are available, but TLS 1.2 is the latest version available for Azure Active
Directory Services. We highly recommend moving directly to TLS 1.2 for both client/server and browser/server
combinations.
Out-of-date browsers might not support newer TLS versions, such as TLS 1.2. To see which versions of TLS are
supported by your browser, go to the Qualys SSL Labs site and click Test your browser. We recommend you
upgrade to the latest version of your web browser and preferably enable only TLS 1.2.
To enable TLS 1.2, by browser
Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer (both are set using Internet Explorer)
1. Open Internet Explorer, select Tools > Internet Options > Advanced.
2. In the Security area, select use TLS 1.2, and then select OK.
3. Close all browser windows and restart Internet Explorer.
Google Chrome
1. Open Google Chrome, type chrome://settings/ into the address bar, and press Enter.
2. Expand the Advanced options, go to the System area, and select Open proxy settings.
3. In the Internet Properties box, select the Advanced tab, go to the Security area, select use TLS 1.2,
and then select OK.
4. Close all browser windows and restart Google Chrome.
Mozilla Firefox
1. Open Firefox, type about:config into the address bar, and then press Enter.
2. Search for the term, TLS, and then select the security.tls.version.max entry.
3. Set the value to 3 to force the browser to use up to version TLS 1.2, and then select OK.
NOTE
Firefox version 60.0 supports TLS 1.3, so you can also set the security.tls.version.max value to 4.
4. Close all browser windows and restart Mozilla Firefox.
New Federated Apps available in Azure AD app gallery - June 2018

Type: New feature
In June 2018, we've added these 15 new apps with Federation support to the app gallery:
Skytap, Settling music, SAML 1.1 Token enabled LOB App, Supermood, Autotask, Endpoint Backup, Skyhigh
Networks, Smartway2, TonicDM, Moconavi, Zoho One, SharePoint on-premises, ForeSee CX Suite, Vidyard,
ChronicX
Azure AD Password Protection is available in public preview

Type: New feature
Use Azure AD Password Protection to help eliminate easily guessed passwords from your environment.
Eliminating these passwords helps to lower the risk of compromise from a password spray type of attack.
Specifically, Azure AD Password Protection helps you:
Protect your organization's accounts in both Azure AD and Windows Server Active Directory (AD ).
Stops your users from using passwords on a list of more than 500 of the most commonly used passwords, and
over 1 million character substitution variations of those passwords.
Administer Azure AD Password Protection from a single location in the Azure AD portal, for both Azure AD
and on-premises Windows Server AD.
For more information about Azure AD Password Protection, see Eliminate bad passwords in your organization.
New "all guests" conditional access policy template created during Terms of Use (ToU ) creation
Type: New feature
During the creation of your Terms of Use (ToU ), a new conditional access policy template is also created for "all
guests" and "all apps". This new policy template applies the newly created ToU, streamlining the creation and
enforcement process for guests.
For more information, see Azure Active Directory Terms of use feature.
New "custom" conditional access policy template created during Terms of Use (ToU ) creation
Type: New feature
During the creation of your Terms of Use (ToU ), a new “custom” conditional access policy template is also created.
This new policy template lets you create the ToU and then immediately go to the conditional access policy creation
blade, without needing to manually navigate through the portal.
For more information, see Azure Active Directory Terms of use feature.
New and comprehensive guidance about deploying Azure Multi-Factor Authentication

Type: New feature
We've released new step-by-step guidance about how to deploy Azure Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) in your
organization.
To view the MFA deployment guide, go to the Identity Deployment Guides repo on GitHub. To provide feedback
about the deployment guides, use the Deployment Plan Feedback form. If you have any questions about the
deployment guides, contact us at IDGitDeploy.
Azure AD delegated app management roles are in public preview
Type: New feature
Admins can now delegate app management tasks without assigning the Global Administrator role. The new roles
and capabilities are:
New standard Azure AD admin roles:
Application Administrator. Grants the ability to manage all aspects of all apps, including
registration, SSO settings, app assignments and licensing, App proxy settings, and consent (except to
Azure AD resources).
Cloud Application Administrator. Grants all of the Application Administrator abilities, except for
App proxy because it doesn't provide on-premises access.
Application Developer. Grants the ability to create app registrations, even if the allow users to
register apps option is turned off.
Ownership (set up per-app registration and per-enterprise app, similar to the group ownership
process:
App Registration Owner. Grants the ability to manage all aspects of owned app registration,
including the app manifest and adding additional owners.
Enterprise App Owner. Grants the ability to manage many aspects of owned enterprise apps,
including SSO settings, app assignments, and consent (except to Azure AD resources).
For more information about public preview, see the Azure AD delegated application management roles are in
public preview! blog. For more information about roles and permissions, see Assigning administrator roles in
Azure Active Directory.
May 2018
ExpressRoute support changes
Software as a Service offering, like Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ) are designed to work best by going directly
through the Internet, without requiring ExpressRoute or any other private VPN tunnels. Because of this, on August
1, 2018, we will stop supporting ExpressRoute for Azure AD services using Azure public peering and Azure
communities in Microsoft peering. Any services impacted by this change might notice Azure AD traffic gradually
shifting from ExpressRoute to the Internet.
While we're changing our support, we also know there are still situations where you might need to use a dedicated
set of circuits for your authentication traffic. Because of this, Azure AD will continue to support per-tenant IP range
restrictions using ExpressRoute and services already on Microsoft peering with the "Other Office 365 Online
services" community. If your services are impacted, but you require ExpressRoute, you must do the following:
If you're on Azure public peering. Move to Microsoft peering and sign up for the Other Office 365
Online services (12076:5100) community. For more info about how to move from Azure public peering to
Microsoft peering, see the Move a public peering to Microsoft peering article.
If you're on Microsoft peering. Sign up for the Other Office 365 Online service (12076:5100)
community. For more info about routing requirements, see the Support for BGP communities section of the
ExpressRoute routing requirements article.
If you must continue to use dedicated circuits, you'll need to talk to your Microsoft Account team about how to get
authorization to use the Other Office 365 Online service (12076:5100) community. The MS Office-managed
review board will verify whether you need those circuits and make sure you understand the technical implications
of keeping them. Unauthorized subscriptions trying to create route filters for Office 365 will receive an error
message.
Microsoft Graph APIs for administrative scenarios for TOU

Type: New feature
Product capability: Developer Experience
We've added Microsoft Graph APIs for administration operation of Azure AD Terms of Use. You are able to create,
update, delete the Terms of Use object.
Add Azure AD multi-tenant endpoint as an identity provider in Azure AD B2C

Type: New feature
Using custom policies, you can now add the Azure AD common endpoint as an identity provider in Azure AD B2C.
This allows you to have a single point of entry for all Azure AD users that are signing into your applications. For
more information, see Azure Active Directory B2C: Allow users to sign in to a multi-tenant Azure AD identity
provider using custom policies.
Use Internal URLs to access apps from anywhere with our My Apps Sign-in Extension and the Azure AD
Application Proxy
Type: New feature
Users can now access applications through internal URLs even when outside your corporate network by using the
My Apps Secure Sign-in Extension for Azure AD. This will work with any application that you have published using
Azure AD Application Proxy, on any browser that also has the Access Panel browser extension installed. The URL
redirection functionality is automatically enabled once a user logs into the extension. The extension is available for
download on Microsoft Edge, Chrome, and Firefox.
Azure Active Directory - Data in Europe for Europe customers

Type: New feature
Product capability: GoLocal
Customers in Europe require their data to stay in Europe and not replicated outside of European datacenters for
meeting privacy and European laws. This article provides the specific details on what identity information will be
stored within Europe and also provide details on information that will be stored outside European datacenters.
New user provisioning SaaS app integrations - May 2018

Type: New feature
Azure AD allows you to automate the creation, maintenance, and removal of user identities in SaaS applications
such as Dropbox, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and more. For May 2018, we have added user provisioning support for
the following applications in the Azure AD app gallery:
BlueJeans
Cornerstone OnDemand
Zendesk
For a list of all applications that support user provisioning in the Azure AD gallery, see https://aka.ms/appstutorial.
Azure AD access reviews of groups and app access now provides recurring reviews
Type: New feature
Access review of groups and apps is now generally available as part of Azure AD Premium P2. Administrators will
be able to configure access reviews of group memberships and application assignments to automatically recur at
regular intervals, such as monthly or quarterly.
Azure AD Activity logs (sign-ins and audit) are now available through MS Graph
Type: New feature
Azure AD Activity logs, which, includes Sign-ins and Audit logs, are now available through MS Graph. We have
exposed two end points through MS Graph to access these logs. Check out our documents for programmatic
access to Azure AD Reporting APIs to get started.
Improvements to the B2B redemption experience and leave an org

Type: New feature
Just in time redemption: Once you share a resource with a guest user using B2B API – you don’t need to send
out a special invitation email. In most cases, the guest user can access the resource and will be taken through the
redemption experience just in time. No more impact due to missed emails. No more asking your guest users “Did
you click on that redemption link the system sent you?”. This means once SPO uses the invitation manager –
cloudy attachments can have the same canonical URL for all users – internal and external – in any state of
redemption.
Modern redemption experience: No more split screen redemption landing page. Users will see a modern
consent experience with the inviting organization's privacy statement, just like they do for third-party apps.
Guest users can leave the org: Once a user’s relationship with an org is over, they can self-serve leaving the
organization. No more calling the inviting org’s admin to “be removed”, no more raising support tickets.
New Federated Apps available in Azure AD app gallery - May 2018

Type: New feature
In May 2018, we've added these 18 new apps with Federation support to our app gallery:
AwardSpring, Infogix Data3Sixty Govern, Yodeck, Jamf Pro, KnowledgeOwl, Envi MMIS, LaunchDarkly, Adobe
Captivate Prime, Montage Online, まなびポケット, OpenReel, Arc Publishing - SSO, PlanGrid, iWellnessNow,
Proxyclick, Riskware, Flock, Reviewsnap
For more information about the apps, see SaaS application integration with Azure Active Directory.
For more information about listing your application in the Azure AD app gallery, see List your application in the
Azure Active Directory application gallery.
New step-by-step deployment guides for Azure Active Directory

Type: New feature
New, step-by-step guidance about how to deploy Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ), including self-service
password reset (SSPR ), single sign-on (SSO ), conditional access (CA), App proxy, User provisioning, Active
Directory Federation Services (ADFS ) to Pass-through Authentication (PTA), and ADFS to Password hash sync
(PHS ).
To view the deployment guides, go to the Identity Deployment Guides repo on GitHub. To provide feedback about
the deployment guides, use the Deployment Plan Feedback form. If you have any questions about the deployment
guides, contact us at IDGitDeploy.
Enterprise Applications Search - Load More Apps

Type: New feature
Having trouble finding your applications / service principals? We've added the ability to load more applications in
your enterprise applications all applications list. By default, we show 20 applications. You can now click, Load more
to view additional applications.
The May release of AADConnect contains a public preview of the integration with PingFederate, important
security updates, many bug fixes, and new great new troubleshooting tools.
Service category: AD Connect
The May release of AADConnect contains a public preview of the integration with PingFederate, important security
updates, many bug fixes, and new great new troubleshooting tools. You can find the release notes here.
Azure AD access reviews: auto -apply

Access reviews of groups and apps are now generally available as part of Azure AD Premium P2. An administrator
can configure to automatically apply the reviewer's changes to that group or app as the access review completes.
The administrator can also specify what happens to the user's continued access if reviewers didn't respond, remove
access, keep access, or take system recommendations.
ID tokens can no longer be returned using the query response_mode for new apps.
Apps created on or after April 25, 2018 will no longer be able to request an id_token using the query
response_mode. This brings Azure AD inline with the OIDC specifications and helps reduce your apps attack
surface. Apps created before April 25, 2018 are not blocked from using the query response_mode with a
response_type of id_token. The error returned, when requesting an id_token from AAD, is AADSTS70007:
‘query’ is not a supported value of ‘response_mode’ when requesting a token.
The fragment and form_post response_modes continue to work - when creating new application objects (for
example, for App Proxy usage), ensure use of one of these response_modes before they create a new application.
April 2018
Azure AD B2C Access Token are GA
Type: New feature
You can now access Web APIs secured by Azure AD B2C using access tokens. The feature is moving from public
preview to GA. The UI experience to configure Azure AD B2C applications and web APIs has been improved, and
other minor improvements were made.
For more information, see Azure AD B2C: Requesting access tokens.
Test single sign-on configuration for SAML -based applications

Type: New feature
When configuring SAML -based SSO applications, you're able to test the integration on the configuration page. If
you encounter an error during sign in, you can provide the error in the testing experience and Azure AD provides
you with resolution steps to solve the specific issue.
Configuring single sign-on to applications that are not in the Azure Active Directory application gallery
How to debug SAML -based single sign-on to applications in Azure Active Directory
Azure AD Terms of Use now has per user reporting

Type: New feature
Product capability: Compliance
Administrators can now select a given ToU and see all the users that have consented to that ToU and what
date/time it took place.
For more information, see the Azure AD terms of use feature.
Azure AD Connect Health: Risky IP for AD FS extranet lockout protection

Type: New feature
Connect Health now supports the ability to detect IP addresses that exceed a threshold of failed U/P logins on an
hourly or daily basis. The capabilities provided by this feature are:
Comprehensive report showing IP address and the number of failed logins generated on an hourly/daily basis
with customizable threshold.
Email-based alerts showing when a specific IP address has exceeded the threshold of failed U/P logins on an
hourly/daily basis.
A download option to do a detailed analysis of the data
For more information, see Risky IP Report.
Easy app config with metadata file or URL

Type: New feature
On the Enterprise applications page, administrators can upload a SAML metadata file to configure SAML based
sign-on for AAD Gallery and Non-Gallery application.
Additionally, you can use Azure AD application federation metadata URL to configure SSO with the targeted
application.
For more information, see Configuring single sign-on to applications that are not in the Azure Active Directory
application gallery.
Azure AD Terms of use now generally available

Type: New feature
Azure AD Terms of Use have moved from public preview to generally available.
For more information, see the Azure AD terms of use feature.
Allow or block invitations to B2B users from specific organizations

Type: New feature
You can now specify which partner organizations you want to share and collaborate with in Azure AD B2B
Collaboration. To do this, you can choose to create list of specific allow or deny domains. When a domain is blocked
using these capabilities, employees can no longer send invitations to people in that domain.
This helps you to control access to your resources, while enabling a smooth experience for approved users.
This B2B Collaboration feature is available for all Azure Active Directory customers and can be used in conjunction
with Azure AD Premium features like conditional access and identity protection for more granular control of when
and how external business users sign in and gain access.
For more information, see Allow or block invitations to B2B users from specific organizations.
New federated apps available in Azure AD app gallery

Type: New feature
In April 2018, we've added these 13 new apps with Federation support to our app gallery:
Criterion HCM, FiscalNote, Secret Server (On-Premises), Dynamic Signal, mindWireless, OrgChart Now, Ziflow,
AppNeta Performance Monitor, Elium , Fluxx Labs, Cisco Cloud, Shelf, SafetyNet
Grant B2B users in Azure AD access to your on-premises applications (public preview)
Type: New feature
As an organization that uses Azure Active Directory (Azure AD ) B2B collaboration capabilities to invite guest users
from partner organizations to your Azure AD, you can now provide these B2B users access to on-premises apps.
These on-premises apps can use SAML -based authentication or Integrated Windows Authentication (IWA) with
Kerberos constrained delegation (KCD ).
For more information, see Grant B2B users in Azure AD access to your on-premises applications.
Get SSO integration tutorials from the Azure Marketplace

If an application that is listed in the Azure marketplace supports SAML based single sign-on, clicking Get it now
provides you with the integration tutorial associated with that application.
Faster performance of Azure AD automatic user provisioning to SaaS applications

Previously, customers using the Azure Active Directory user provisioning connectors for SaaS applications (for
example Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Box) could experience slow performance if their Azure AD tenants contained
over 100,000 combined users and groups, and they were using user and group assignments to determine which
users should be provisioned.
On April 2, 2018, significant performance enhancements were deployed to the Azure AD provisioning service that
greatly reduce the amount of time needed to perform initial synchronizations between Azure Active Directory and
target SaaS applications.
As a result, many customers that had initial synchronizations to apps that took many days or never completed, are
now completing within a matter of minutes or hours.
For more information, see What happens during provisioning?
Self-service password reset from Windows 10 lock screen for hybrid Azure AD joined machines
We have updated the Windows 10 SSPR feature to include support for machines that are hybrid Azure AD joined.
This feature is available in Windows 10 RS4 allows users to reset their password from the lock screen of a
Windows 10 machine. Users who are enabled and registered for self-service password reset can utilize this feature.
For more information, see Azure AD password reset from the login screen.
March 2018
Certificate expire notification
Type: Fixed
Azure AD sends a notification when a certificate for a gallery or non-gallery application is about to expire.
Some users did not receive notifications for enterprise applications configured for SAML -based single sign-on.
This issue was resolved. Azure AD sends notification for certificates expiring in 7, 30 and 60 days. You are able to
see this event in the audit logs.
Manage Certificates for federated single sign-on in Azure Active Directory
Audit activity reports in the Azure Active Directory portal
Twitter and GitHub identity providers in Azure AD B2C

Type: New feature
You can now add Twitter or GitHub as an identity provider in Azure AD B2C. Twitter is moving from public preview
to GA. GitHub is being released in public preview.
For more information, see What is Azure AD B2B collaboration?.
Restrict browser access using Intune Managed Browser with Azure AD application-based conditional access for
iOS and Android
Type: New feature
Now in public preview!
Intune Managed Browser SSO: Your employees can use single sign-on across native clients (like Microsoft
Outlook) and the Intune Managed Browser for all Azure AD -connected apps.
Intune Managed Browser Conditional Access Support: You can now require employees to use the Intune
Managed browser using application-based conditional access policies.
Read more about this in our blog post.
Setup application-based conditional access
Configure managed browser policies
App Proxy Cmdlets in Powershell GA Module

Type: New feature
Support for Application Proxy cmdlets is now in the Powershell GA Module! This does require you to stay updated
on Powershell modules - if you become more than a year behind, some cmdlets may stop working.
For more information, see AzureAD.
Office 365 native clients are supported by Seamless SSO using a non-interactive protocol
Type: New feature
User using Office 365 native clients (version 16.0.8730.xxxx and above) get a silent sign-on experience using
Seamless SSO. This support is provided by the addition a non-interactive protocol (WS -Trust) to Azure AD.
For more information, see How does sign-in on a native client with Seamless SSO work?
Users get a silent sign-on experience, with Seamless SSO, if an application sends sign-in requests to Azure AD's
tenant endpoints
Type: New feature
Users get a silent sign-on experience, with Seamless SSO, if an application (for example,
https://contoso.sharepoint.com ) sends sign-in requests to Azure AD's tenant endpoints - that is,
https://login.microsoftonline.com/contoso.com/<..> or https://login.microsoftonline.com/<tenant_ID>/<..> -
instead of Azure AD's common endpoint ( https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/<...> ).
For more information, see Azure Active Directory Seamless Single Sign-On.
Need to add only one Azure AD URL, instead of two URLs previously, to users' Intranet zone settings to roll out
Seamless SSO
Type: New feature
To roll out Seamless SSO to your users, you need to add only one Azure AD URL to the users' Intranet zone
settings by using group policy in Active Directory: https://autologon.microsoftazuread-sso.com . Previously,
customers were required to add two URLs.
For more information, see Azure Active Directory Seamless Single Sign-On.
New Federated Apps available in Azure AD app gallery

Type: New feature
In March 2018, we've added these 15 new apps with Federation support to our app gallery:
Boxcryptor, CylancePROTECT, Wrike, SignalFx, Assistant by FirstAgenda, YardiOne, Vtiger CRM, inwink,
Amplitude, Spacio, ContractWorks, Bersin, Mercell, Trisotech Digital Enterprise Server, Qumu Cloud.
PIM for Azure Resources is generally available

Type: New feature
If you are using Azure AD Privileged Identity Management for directory roles, you can now use PIM's time-bound
access and assignment capabilities for Azure Resource roles such as Subscriptions, Resource Groups, Virtual
Machines, and any other resource supported by Azure Resource Manager. Enforce Multi-Factor Authentication
when activating roles Just-In-Time, and schedule activations in coordination with approved change windows. In
addition, this release adds enhancements not available during public preview including an updated UI, approval
workflows, and the ability to extend roles expiring soon and renew expired roles.
For more information, see PIM for Azure resources (Preview )
Adding Optional Claims to your apps tokens (public preview)

Type: New feature
Your Azure AD app can now request custom or optional claims in JWTs or SAML tokens. These are claims about
the user or tenant that are not included by default in the token, due to size or applicability constraints. This is
currently in public preview for Azure AD apps on the v1.0 and v2.0 endpoints. See the documentation for
information on what claims can be added and how to edit your application manifest to request them.
For more information, see Optional claims in Azure AD.
Azure AD supports PKCE for more secure OAuth flows

Type: New feature
Azure AD docs have been updated to note support for PKCE, which allows for more secure communication during
the OAuth 2.0 Authorization Code grant flow. Both S256 and plaintext code_challenges are supported on the v1.0
and v2.0 endpoints.
For more information, see Request an authorization code.
Support for provisioning all user attribute values available in the Workday Get_Workers API
Type: New feature
The public preview of inbound provisioning from Workday to Active Directory and Azure AD now supports the
ability to extract and provisioning all attribute values available in the Workday Get_Workers API. This adds
supports for hundreds of additional standard and custom attributes beyond the ones shipped with the initial
version of the Workday inbound provisioning connector.
For more information, see: Customizing the list of Workday user attributes
Changing group membership from dynamic to static, and vice versa

Type: New feature
It is possible to change how membership is managed in a group. This is useful when you want to keep the same
group name and ID in the system, so any existing references to the group are still valid; creating a new group
would require updating those references. We've updated the Azure AD Admin center to support this functionality.
Now, customers can convert existing groups from dynamic membership to assigned membership and vice-versa.
The existing PowerShell cmdlets are also still available.
For more information, see Dynamic membership rules for groups in Azure Active Directory
Improved sign-out behavior with Seamless SSO

Previously, even if users explicitly signed out of an application secured by Azure AD, they would be automatically
signed back in using Seamless SSO if they were trying to access an Azure AD application again within their
corpnet from their domain joined devices. With this change, sign out is supported. This allows users to choose the
same or different Azure AD account to sign back in with, instead of being automatically signed in using Seamless
SSO.
For more information, see Azure Active Directory Seamless Single Sign-On
Application Proxy Connector Version 1.5.402.0 Released

This connector version is gradually being rolled out through November. This new connector version includes the
following changes:
The connector now sets domain level cookies instead subdomain level. This ensures a smoother SSO
experience and avoids redundant authentication prompts.
Support for chunked encoding requests
Improved connector health monitoring
Several bug fixes and stability improvements
For more information, see Understand Azure AD Application Proxy connectors.
February 2018
Improved navigation for managing users and groups
Service category: Directory Management
The navigation experience for managing users and groups has been streamlined. You can now navigate from the
directory overview directly to the list of all users, with easier access to the list of deleted users. You can also
navigate from the directory overview directly to the list of all groups, with easier access to group management
settings. And also from the directory overview page, you can search for a user, group, enterprise application, or app
registration.
Availability of sign-ins and audit reports in Microsoft Azure operated by 21Vianet (Azure China 21Vianet)
Type: New feature
Service category: Azure Stack
Azure AD Activity log reports are now available in Microsoft Azure operated by 21Vianet (Azure China 21Vianet)
instances. The following logs are included:
Sign-ins activity logs - Includes all the sign-ins logs associated with your tenant.
Self service Password Audit Logs - Includes all the SSPR audit logs.
Directory Management Audit logs - Includes all the directory management-related audit logs like User
management, App Management, and others.
With these logs, you can gain insights into how your environment is doing. The provided data enables you to:
Determine how your apps and services are utilized by your users.
Troubleshoot issues preventing your users from getting their work done.
For more information about how to use these reports, see Azure Active Directory reporting.
Use "Report Reader" role (non-admin role ) to view Azure AD Activity Reports
Type: New feature
As part of customers feedback to enable non-admin roles to have access to Azure AD activity logs, we have
enabled the ability for users who are in the "Report Reader" role to access Sign-ins and Audit activity within the
Azure portal as well as using our Graph APIs.
For more information, how to use these reports, see Azure Active Directory reporting.
EmployeeID claim available as user attribute and user identifier

Type: New feature
You can configure EmployeeID as the User identifier and User attribute for member users and B2B guests in
SAML -based sign-on applications from the Enterprise application UI.
For more information, see Customizing claims issued in the SAML token for enterprise applications in Azure
Active Directory.
Simplified Application Management using Wildcards in Azure AD Application Proxy

Type: New feature
To make application deployment easier and reduce your administrative overhead, we now support the ability to
publish applications using wildcards. To publish a wildcard application, you can follow the standard application
publishing flow, but use a wildcard in the internal and external URLs.
For more information, see Wildcard applications in the Azure Active Directory application proxy
New cmdlets to support configuration of Application Proxy

Type: New feature
The latest release of the AzureAD PowerShell Preview module contains new cmdlets that allow customers to
configure Application Proxy Applications using PowerShell.
The new cmdlets are:
Get-AzureADApplicationProxyApplication
Get-AzureADApplicationProxyApplicationConnectorGroup
Get-AzureADApplicationProxyConnector
Get-AzureADApplicationProxyConnectorGroup
Get-AzureADApplicationProxyConnectorGroupMembers
Get-AzureADApplicationProxyConnectorMemberOf
New -AzureADApplicationProxyApplication
New -AzureADApplicationProxyConnectorGroup
Remove-AzureADApplicationProxyApplication
Remove-AzureADApplicationProxyApplicationConnectorGroup
Remove-AzureADApplicationProxyConnectorGroup
Set-AzureADApplicationProxyApplication
Set-AzureADApplicationProxyApplicationConnectorGroup
Set-AzureADApplicationProxyApplicationCustomDomainCertificate
Set-AzureADApplicationProxyApplicationSingleSignOn
Set-AzureADApplicationProxyConnector
Set-AzureADApplicationProxyConnectorGroup
New cmdlets to support configuration of groups

Type: New feature
The latest release of the AzureAD PowerShell module contains cmdlets to manage groups in Azure AD. These
cmdlets were previously available in the AzureADPreview module and are now added to the AzureAD module
The Group cmdlets that are now release for General Availability are:
Get-AzureADMSGroup
New -AzureADMSGroup
Remove-AzureADMSGroup
Set-AzureADMSGroup
Get-AzureADMSGroupLifecyclePolicy
New -AzureADMSGroupLifecyclePolicy
Remove-AzureADMSGroupLifecyclePolicy
Add-AzureADMSLifecyclePolicyGroup
Remove-AzureADMSLifecyclePolicyGroup
Reset-AzureADMSLifeCycleGroup
Get-AzureADMSLifecyclePolicyGroup
A new release of Azure AD Connect is available

Type: New feature
Service category: AD Sync
Azure AD Connect is the preferred tool to synchronize data between Azure AD and on premises data sources,
including Windows Server Active Directory and LDAP.
IMPORTANT
This build introduces schema and sync rule changes. The Azure AD Connect Synchronization Service triggers a Full Import
and Full Synchronization steps after an upgrade. For information on how to change this behavior, see How to defer full
synchronization after upgrade.
This release has the following updates and changes:

Fixed issues
Fix timing window on background tasks for Partition Filtering page when switching to next page.
Fixed a bug that caused Access violation during the ConfigDB custom action.
Fixed a bug to recover from sql connection timeout.
Fixed a bug where certificates with SAN wildcards fail pre-req check.
Fixed a bug that causes miiserver.exe crash during AAD connector export.
Fixed a bug where a bad password attempt logged on DC when running caused the AAD connect wizard to
change configuration
New features and improvements
Application telemetry - Administrators can switch this class of data on/off.
Azure AD Health data - Administrators must visit the health portal to control their health settings. Once the
service policy has been changed, the agents will read and enforce it.
Added device writeback configuration actions and a progress bar for page initialization.
Improved general diagnostics with HTML report and full data collection in a ZIP -Text / HTML Report.
Improved reliability of auto upgrade and added additional telemetry to ensure the health of the server can
be determined.
Restrict permissions available to privileged accounts on AD Connector account. For new installations, the
wizard restricts the permissions that privileged accounts have on the MSOL account after creating the
MSOL account. The changes affect express installations and custom installations with Auto-Create account.
Changed the installer to not require SA privilege on clean install of AADConnect.
New utility to troubleshoot synchronization issues for a specific object. Currently, the utility checks for the
following things:
UserPrincipalName mismatch between synchronized user object and the user account in Azure AD
Tenant.
If the object is filtered from synchronization due to domain filtering
If the object is filtered from synchronization due to organizational unit (OU ) filtering
New utility to synchronize the current password hash stored in the on-premises Active Directory for a
specific user account. The utility does not require a password change.
Applications supporting Intune App Protection policies added for use with Azure AD application-based
conditional access
We have added more applications that support application-based conditional access. Now, you can get access to
Office 365 and other Azure AD -connected cloud apps using these approved client apps.
The following applications will be added by the end of February:
Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft Launcher
Microsoft Invoicing
Approved client app requirement
Terms of Use update to mobile experience

When the terms of use are displayed, you can now click Having trouble viewing? Click here. Clicking this link
opens the terms of use natively on your device. Regardless of the font size in the document or the screen size of
device, you can zoom and read the document as needed.
January 2018
New Federated Apps available in Azure AD app gallery
Type: New feature
In January 2018, the following new apps with federation support were added in the app gallery:
IBM OpenPages, OneTrust Privacy Management Software, Dealpath, [IriusRisk Federated Directory, and Fidelity
NetBenefits.
Sign in with additional risk detected

Type: New feature
The insight you get for a detected risk event is tied to your Azure AD subscription. With the Azure AD Premium P2
edition, you get the most detailed information about all underlying detections.
With the Azure AD Premium P1 edition, detections that are not covered by your license appear as the risk event
Sign-in with additional risk detected.
For more information, see Azure Active Directory risk events.
Hide Office 365 applications from end user's access panels

Type: New feature
You can now better manage how Office 365 applications show up on your user's access panels through a new user
setting. This option is helpful for reducing the number of apps in a user's access panels if you prefer to only show
Office apps in the Office portal. The setting is located in the User Settings and is labeled, Users can only see
Office 365 apps in the Office 365 portal.
For more information, see Hide an application from user's experience in Azure Active Directory.
Seamless sign into apps enabled for Password SSO directly from app's URL
Type: New feature
The My Apps browser extension is now available via a convenient tool that gives you the My Apps single-sign on
capability as a shortcut in your browser. After installing, user's will see a waffle icon in their browser that provides
them quick access to apps. Users can now take advantage of:
The ability to directly sign in to password-SSO based apps from the app’s sign-in page
Launch any app using the quick search feature
Shortcuts to recently used apps from the extension
The extension is available for Microsoft Edge, Chrome, and Firefox.
For more information, see My Apps Secure Sign-in Extension.
Azure AD administration experience in Azure Classic Portal has been retired

Type: Deprecated
As of January 8, 2018, the Azure AD administration experience in the Azure classic portal has been retired. This
took place in conjunction with the retirement of the Azure classic portal itself. In the future, you should use the
Azure AD admin center for all your portal-based administration of Azure AD.
The PhoneFactor web portal has been retired

Type: Deprecated
As of January 8, 2018, the PhoneFactor web portal has been retired. This portal was used for the administration of
MFA server, but those functions have been moved into the Azure portal at portal.azure.com.
The MFA configuration is located at: Azure Active Directory > MFA Server
Deprecate Azure AD reports

Type: Deprecated
With the general availability of the new Azure Active Directory Administration console and new APIs now available
for both activity and security reports, the report APIs under "/reports" endpoint have been retired as of end of
December 31, 2017.
What's available?
As part of the transition to the new admin console, we have made 2 new APIs available for retrieving Azure AD
Activity Logs. The new set of APIs provides richer filtering and sorting functionality in addition to providing richer
audit and sign-in activities. The data previously available through the security reports can now be accessed through
the Identity Protection risk events API in Microsoft Graph.
Get started with the Azure Active Directory reporting API
Get started with Azure Active Directory Identity Protection and Microsoft Graph
December 2017
Terms of use in the Access Panel
Type: New feature
Service category: Terms of use
You now can go to the Access Panel and view the terms of use that you previously accepted.
Follow these steps:
1. Go to the MyApps portal, and sign in.
2. In the upper-right corner, select your name, and then select Profile from the list.
3. On your Profile, select Review terms of use.
4. Now you can review the terms of use you accepted.
For more information, see the Azure AD terms of use feature (preview ).
New Azure AD sign-in experience

Type: New feature
Product capability: User authentication
The Azure AD and Microsoft account identity system UIs were redesigned so that they have a consistent look and
feel. In addition, the Azure AD sign-in page collects the user name first, followed by the credential on a second
screen.
For more information, see The new Azure AD sign-in experience is now in public preview.
Fewer sign-in prompts: A new "keep me signed in" experience for Azure AD sign-in
Type: New feature
The Keep me signed in check box on the Azure AD sign-in page was replaced with a new prompt that shows up
after you successfully authenticate.
If you respond Yes to this prompt, the service gives you a persistent refresh token. This behavior is the same as
when you selected the Keep me signed in check box in the old experience. For federated tenants, this prompt
shows after you successfully authenticate with the federated service.
For more information, see Fewer sign-in prompts: The new "keep me signed in" experience for Azure AD is in
preview.
Add configuration to require the terms of use to be expanded prior to accepting

Type: New feature
An option for administrators requires their users to expand the terms of use prior to accepting the terms.
Select either On or Off to require users to expand the terms of use. The On setting requires users to view the
terms of use prior to accepting them.
For more information, see the Azure AD terms of use feature (preview ).
Scoped activation for eligible role assignments

Type: New feature
You can use scoped activation to activate eligible Azure resource role assignments with less autonomy than the
original assignment defaults. An example is if you're assigned as the owner of a subscription in your tenant. With
scoped activation, you can activate the owner role for up to five resources contained within the subscription (such
as resource groups and virtual machines). Scoping your activation might reduce the possibility of executing
unwanted changes to critical Azure resources.
For more information, see What is Azure AD Privileged Identity Management?.
New federated apps in the Azure AD app gallery

Type: New feature
Service category: Enterprise apps
In December 2017, we've added these new apps with Federation support to our app gallery:
Accredible, Adobe Experience Manager, EFI Digital StoreFront, Communifire CybSafe, FactSet, IMAGE WORKS,
MOBI, MobileIron Azure AD integration, Reflektive, SAML SSO for Bamboo by resolution GmbH, SAML SSO for
Bitbucket by resolution GmbH, Vodeclic, WebHR, Zenegy Azure AD Integration.
Approval workflows for Azure AD directory roles

Approval workflow for Azure AD directory roles is generally available.
With approval workflow, privileged-role administrators can require eligible-role members to request role activation
before they can use the privileged role. Multiple users and groups can be delegated approval responsibilities.
Eligible role members receive notifications when approval is finished and their role is active.
Pass-through authentication: Skype for Business support

Pass-through authentication now supports user sign-ins to Skype for Business client applications that support
modern authentication, which includes online and hybrid topologies.
For more information, see Skype for Business topologies supported with modern authentication.
Updates to Azure AD Privileged Identity Management for Azure RBAC (preview)

With the public preview refresh of Azure AD Privileged Identity Management (PIM ) for Azure Role-Based Access
Control (RBAC ), you can now:
Use Just Enough Administration.
Require approval to activate resource roles.
Schedule a future activation of a role that requires approval for both Azure AD and Azure RBAC roles.
For more information, see Privileged Identity Management for Azure resources (preview ).
November 2017
Access Control service retirement
Service category: Access Control service
Product capability: Access Control service
Azure Active Directory Access Control (also known as the Access Control service) will be retired in late 2018. More
information that includes a detailed schedule and high-level migration guidance will be provided in the next few
weeks. You can leave comments on this page with any questions about the Access Control service, and a team
member will answer them.
Restrict browser access to the Intune Managed Browser

You can restrict browser access to Office 365 and other Azure AD -connected cloud apps by using the Intune
Managed Browser as an approved app.
You now can configure the following condition for application-based conditional access:
Client apps: Browser
What is the effect of the change?
Today, access is blocked when you use this condition. When the preview is available, all access will require the use
of the managed browser application.
Look for this capability and more information in upcoming blogs and release notes.
For more information, see Conditional access in Azure AD.

The following apps are on the list of approved client apps:
Microsoft Kaizala
Microsoft StaffHub
Terms-of-use support for multiple languages

Type: New feature
Administrators now can create new terms of use that contain multiple PDF documents. You can tag these PDF
documents with a corresponding language. Users are shown the PDF with the matching language based on their
preferences. If there is no match, the default language is shown.
Real-time password writeback client status

Type: New feature
Service category: Self-service password reset
You now can review the status of your on-premises password writeback client. This option is available in the On-
premises integration section of the Password reset page.
If there are issues with your connection to your on-premises writeback client, you see an error message that
provides you with:
Information on why you can't connect to your on-premises writeback client.
A link to documentation that assists you in resolving the issue.
For more information, see on-premises integration.

Type: New feature
You now can restrict access to Office 365 and other Azure AD -connected cloud apps to approved client apps that
support Intune app protection policies by using Azure AD app-based conditional access. Intune app protection
policies are used to configure and protect company data on these client applications.
By combining app-based with device-based conditional access policies, you have the flexibility to protect data for
personal and company devices.
The following conditions and controls are now available for use with app-based conditional access:
Supported platform condition
iOS
Android
Client apps condition
Mobile apps and desktop clients
Access control
Require approved client app
For more information, see Azure AD app-based conditional access.
Manage Azure AD devices in the Azure portal

Type: New feature
Service category: Device registration and management
You now can find all your devices connected to Azure AD and the device-related activities in one place. There is a
new administration experience to manage all your device identities and settings in the Azure portal. In this release,
you can:
View all your devices that are available for conditional access in Azure AD.
View properties, which include your hybrid Azure AD -joined devices.
Find BitLocker keys for your Azure AD -joined devices, manage your device with Intune, and more.
Manage Azure AD device-related settings.
For more information, see Manage devices by using the Azure portal.
Support for macOS as a device platform for Azure AD conditional access

Type: New feature
You now can include (or exclude) macOS as a device platform condition in your Azure AD conditional access policy.
With the addition of macOS to the supported device platforms, you can:
Enroll and manage macOS devices by using Intune. Similar to other platforms like iOS and Android, a
company portal application is available for macOS to do unified enrollments. You can use the new company
portal app for macOS to enroll a device with Intune and register it with Azure AD.
Ensure macOS devices adhere to your organization's compliance policies defined in Intune. In Intune
on the Azure portal, you now can set up compliance policies for macOS devices.
Restrict access to applications in Azure AD to only compliant macOS devices. Conditional access policy
authoring has macOS as a separate device platform option. Now you can author macOS -specific conditional
access policies for the targeted application set in Azure.
Create a device compliance policy for macOS devices with Intune
Conditional access in Azure AD
Network Policy Server extension for Azure Multi-Factor Authentication
Type: New feature
Service category: Multi-factor authentication
The Network Policy Server extension for Azure Multi-Factor Authentication adds cloud-based Multi-Factor
Authentication capabilities to your authentication infrastructure by using your existing servers. With the Network
Policy Server extension, you can add phone call, text message, or phone app verification to your existing
authentication flow. You don't have to install, configure, and maintain new servers.
This extension was created for organizations that want to protect virtual private network connections without
deploying the Azure Multi-Factor Authentication Server. The Network Policy Server extension acts as an adapter
between RADIUS and cloud-based Azure Multi-Factor Authentication to provide a second factor of authentication
for federated or synced users.
For more information, see Integrate your existing Network Policy Server infrastructure with Azure Multi-Factor
Authentication.
Restore or permanently remove deleted users

Type: New feature
Service category: User management
In the Azure AD admin center, you can now:
Restore a deleted user.
Permanently delete a user.
To try it out:
1. In the Azure AD admin center, select All users in the Manage section.
2. From the Show list, select Recently deleted users.
3. Select one or more recently deleted users, and then either restore them or permanently delete them.

The following apps were added to the list of approved client apps:
Microsoft Planner
Azure Information Protection
Use "OR" between controls in a conditional access policy

You now can use "OR" (require one of the selected controls) for conditional access controls. You can use this
feature to create policies with "OR" between access controls. For example, you can use this feature to create a
policy that requires a user to sign in by using Multi-Factor Authentication "OR" to be on a compliant device.
For more information, see Controls in Azure AD conditional access.
Aggregation of real-time risk events

Service category: Identity protection
In Azure AD Identity Protection, all real-time risk events that originated from the same IP address on a given day
are now aggregated for each risk event type. This change limits the volume of risk events shown without any
change in user security.
The underlying real-time detection works each time the user signs in. If you have a sign-in risk security policy set
up to Multi-Factor Authentication or block access, it is still triggered during each risky sign-in.
October 2017
Deprecate Azure AD reports
The Azure portal provides you with:
A new Azure AD administration console.
New APIs for activity and security reports.
Due to these new capabilities, the report APIs under the /reports endpoint were retired on December 10, 2017.
Automatic sign-in field detection

Type: Fixed
Product capability: Single sign-on
Azure AD supports automatic sign-in field detection for applications that render an HTML user name and
password field. These steps are documented in How to automatically capture sign-in fields for an application. You
can find this capability by adding a Non-Gallery application on the Enterprise Applications page in the Azure
portal. Additionally, you can configure the Single Sign-on mode on this new application to Password-based
Single Sign-on, enter a web URL, and then save the page.
Due to a service issue, this functionality was temporarily disabled. The issue was resolved, and the automatic sign-
in field detection is available again.
New Multi-Factor Authentication features

Type: New feature
Service category: Multi-factor authentication
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is an essential part of protecting your organization. To make credentials more
adaptive and the experience more seamless, the following features were added:
Multi-factor challenge results are directly integrated into the Azure AD sign-in report, which includes
programmatic access to MFA results.
The MFA configuration is more deeply integrated into the Azure AD configuration experience in the Azure
portal.
With this public preview, MFA management and reporting are an integrated part of the core Azure AD
configuration experience. Now you can manage the MFA management portal functionality within the Azure AD
experience.
For more information, see Reference for MFA reporting in the Azure portal .
Terms of use
Type: New feature
You can use Azure AD terms of use to present information such as relevant disclaimers for legal or compliance
requirements to users.
You can use Azure AD terms of use in the following scenarios:
General terms of use for all users in your organization
Specific terms of use based on a user's attributes (for example, doctors vs. nurses or domestic vs. international
employees, done by dynamic groups)
Specific terms of use for accessing high-impact business apps, like Salesforce
For more information, see Azure AD terms of use.
Enhancements to Privileged Identity Management

Type: New feature
With Azure AD Privileged Identity Management, you can manage, control, and monitor access to Azure resources
(preview ) within your organization to:
Subscriptions
Resource groups
Virtual machines
All resources within the Azure portal that use the Azure RBAC functionality can take advantage of all the security
and lifecycle management capabilities that Azure AD Privileged Identity Management has to offer.
For more information, see Privileged Identity Management for Azure resources.
Access reviews
Type: New feature
Service category: Access reviews
Organizations can use access reviews (preview ) to efficiently manage group memberships and access to enterprise
applications:
You can recertify guest user access by using access reviews of their access to applications and memberships of
groups. Reviewers can efficiently decide whether to allow guests continued access based on the insights
provided by the access reviews.
You can recertify employee access to applications and group memberships with access reviews.
You can collect the access review controls into programs relevant for your organization to track reviews for
compliance or risk-sensitive applications.
For more information, see Azure AD access reviews.
Hide third-party applications from My Apps and the Office 365 app launcher
Type: New feature
Product capability: Single sign-on
You now can better manage apps that show up on your users' portals through a new hide app property. You can
hide apps to help in cases where app tiles show up for back-end services or duplicate tiles and clutter users' app
launchers. The toggle is in the Properties section of the third-party app and is labeled Visible to user? You also
can hide an app programmatically through PowerShell.
For more information, see Hide a third-party application from a user's experience in Azure AD.
What's available?
As part of the transition to the new admin console, two new APIs for retrieving Azure AD activity logs are available.
The new set of APIs provides richer filtering and sorting functionality in addition to providing richer audit and sign-
in activities. The data previously available through the security reports now can be accessed through the Identity
Protection Risk Events API in Microsoft Graph.
September 2017
Hotfix for Identity Manager
Service category: Identity Manager
Product capability: Identity lifecycle management
A hotfix roll-up package (build 4.4.1642.0) is available as of September 25, 2017, for Identity Manager 2016
Service Pack 1. This roll-up package:
Resolves issues and adds improvements.
Is a cumulative update that replaces all Identity Manager 2016 Service Pack 1 updates up to build 4.4.1459.0 for
Identity Manager 2016.
Requires you to have Identity Manager 2016 build 4.4.1302.0.
For more information, see Hotfix rollup package (build 4.4.1642.0) is available for Identity Manager 2016 Service
Pack 1.

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Who uses Azure AD?

What are the Azure AD licenses?

TERM OR CONCEPT DESCRIPTION

Azure tenant A dedicated and trusted instance of Azure AD that's

Single tenant Azure tenants that access other services in a dedicated

Multi-tenant Azure tenants that access other services in a shared

Azure AD account An identity created through Azure AD or another Microsoft

Account Administrator This classic subscription administrator role is conceptually the

Service Administrator This classic subscription administrator role enables you to

Azure AD Global administrator This administrator role is automatically assigned to whomever

For more information about the various administrator roles,

Which features work in Azure AD?

Authentication Manage Azure Active Directory self-service password reset,

Domain services Join Azure virtual machines to a domain without using

Enterprise users Manage license assignment, access to apps, and set up

Identity governance Manage your organization's identity through employee,

Identity protection Detect potential vulnerabilities affecting your organization's

New Federated Apps available in Azure AD app gallery - March 2019

New Audit Logs user experience now available

Improved end-user Terms of use experiences on mobile devices

New Azure AD Activity logs download experience available

Breaking change: Updates to condition evaluation by Exchange ActiveSync (EAS )

New Federated Apps available in Azure AD app gallery - February 2019

Enhanced combined MFA/SSPR registration

Updated policy management experience for user flows

Configurable end-user password requirements for B2C (GA )

New default templates for custom branded authentication experiences

New Federated Apps available in Azure AD app gallery - January 2019

New Azure AD Identity Protection enhancements (Public preview)

Enhanced Azure AD Privileged Identity Management (PIM ) export capabilities

FIELD NAME WHAT CHANGED OLD VALUES NEW VALUES

targetResources Includes Policy

loggedByService Provides the name of the Null Account Provisioning

Result Provides the result of the 0 Success

Changed fields in the Sign-in schema

FIELD NAME WHAT CHANGED OLD VALUES NEW VALUES

appliedConditionalAccessPoli This was the No change No change

conditionalAccessStatus Provides the result of the 0 Success

appliedConditionalAccessPoli Provides the result of the 0 Success

New Azure AD Cloud Device Administrator role (Public preview)

Administrators can require users to accept a Terms of use on each device

Administrators can configure a Terms of use to expire based on a recurring schedule

Group-based licensing is now generally available

New Federated Apps available in Azure AD app gallery - November 2018

New Federated Apps available in Azure AD app gallery - October 2018

Azure AD Domain Services Email Notifications

Azure Active Directory - Where is your data located? page

New deployment plan available for the My Apps Access panel

New approved client apps for Azure AD app-based conditional access

Change notice: Authorization codes will no longer be available for reuse

New Federated Apps available in Azure AD app gallery - September 2018

Support for additional claims transformations methods

Updated SAML -based app configuration UI (preview)

Sign in to the Azure portal

Create a new tenant for your organization

Sign in to the Azure portal

Create a new group

Create a new user