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Microsoft Entra releases and announcements

This article provides information about the latest releases and change announcements across the Microsoft Entra family of products over the last six months (updated monthly). If you're looking for information that's older than six months, see: Archive for What's new in Microsoft Entra.

Get notified about when to revisit this page for updates by copying and pasting this URL: https://learn.microsoft.com/api/search/rss?search=%22Release+notes+-+Azure+Active+Directory%22&locale=en-us into your RSS feed reader icon feed reader.

July 2025

General Availability - Microsoft Entra External ID: Custom 3rd party email OTP provider

Type: New feature
Service category: B2C - Consumer Identity Management
Product capability: 3rd Party Integration

Use a 3rd Party Email OTP Provider to customize the Email OTP notifications for sign-in and sign-up flows for Microsoft Entra External ID. A new "Custom Email OTP Provider" Custom Authentication Extension allows you to use Azure Communication Service (ACS) or a 3rd party provider, such as SendGrid, to maintain branding consistency through your end user authentication experiences. For more information, see: Configure a custom email provider for one time passcode send events.

General Availability - Application Based Authentication on Microsoft Entra Connect Sync

Type: New feature
Service category: Microsoft Entra Connect
Product capability: Microsoft Entra Connect

The Application-Based Authentication (ABA) feature is now the default authentication method for Microsoft Entra Connect. It enables Microsoft Entra Connect to securely authenticate with Microsoft Entra ID without relying on a locally stored password. This feature uses a Microsoft Entra ID application identity and Oauth 2.0 client credential flow to authenticate with Microsoft Entra ID. Microsoft Entra Connect automatically creates a single-tenant third-party application in the customer’s Entra ID tenant, registers a certificate as the application’s credential, and grants the required permissions for directory synchronization.

The Microsoft Entra Connect Sync .msi installation file for this change is exclusively available on Microsoft Entra Admin Center under Microsoft Entra Connect.

Check our version history page for more details of the change.

General Availability – Security Copilot in Microsoft Entra

Type: New feature
Service category: Copilot
Product capability: Identity Security & Protection

You can now interact with Copilot in Microsoft Entra to investigate threats, manage the identity lifecycle of employees and guests, and take action quickly across users, apps, and access. All of this works through natural language, without writing custom queries or scripts. For more information, see: Copilot in Microsoft Entra.

General Availability - Conditional Access Optimization Agent in Microsoft Entra

Type: New feature
Service category: Conditional Access
Product capability: Identity Security & Protection

Conditional Access Optimization Agent in Microsoft Entra monitors for new users or apps not covered by existing policies, identifies necessary updates to close security gaps, and recommends quick fixes for identity teams to apply with a single selection. For more information, see: Microsoft Entra Conditional Access optimization agent with Microsoft Security Copilot.

General Availability - Conditional Access Agent Supports Disabling Agent Creation of Report-Only Policies

Type: New feature
Service category: Conditional Access
Product capability: Identity Security & Protection

The Conditional Access Optimization Agent now supports a new setting that allows admins to configure if the agent can or cannot create report-only mode policies autonomously. If turned off, the agent will only create policies upon admin approval. For more information, see: Microsoft Entra Conditional Access optimization agent with Microsoft Security Copilot.

General Availability - New Lifecycle Workflows task to revoke refresh tokens

Type: New feature
Service category: Lifecycle Workflows
Product capability: Identity Governance

Customers can now configure a Lifecycle Workflows task to automatically revoke access tokens when employees move within, or leave, the organization. For more information, see: Revoke all refresh tokens for user.

General Availability - Audit administrator events in Microsoft Entra Connect Sync

Type: New feature
Service category: Provisioning
Product capability: Microsoft Entra Connect

The Admin Audit Logging feature enables organizations to monitor changes made to Microsoft Entra Connect Sync configurations by Global Administrators or Hybrid Administrators. It captures actions performed through the Microsoft Entra Connect Sync Wizard, PowerShell, or Synchronization Rules Editor—including changes to synchronization rules, authentication settings (such as enabling or disabling features), and Federation settings. These events are logged in a dedicated Microsoft Entra Connect Sync audit log channel within the Windows Event Viewer, providing greater visibility into identity infrastructure changes. This feature supports troubleshooting, operational accountability, and regulatory compliance.

The Microsoft Entra Connect Sync .msi installation file for this change is exclusively available on the Microsoft Entra Admin Center within the Microsoft Entra Connect pane.

Check our version history page for more details of the change.

General Availability - Bicep templates for Microsoft Graph resources

Type: New feature
Service category: MS Graph
Product capability: Developer Experience

Bicep templates for Microsoft Graph resources allows you to author, deploy and manage a limited set of Microsoft Graph resources (mostly Microsoft Entra ID resources) using Bicep template files, alongside Azure resources.

  • Azure customers can use familiar tools to deploy Azure resources and the Microsoft Entra resources they depend on, such as applications and service principals, using Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) and DevOps practices.
  • It also opens the door for existing Microsoft Entra customers to use Bicep templates and IaC practices to deploy and manage their tenant's Microsoft Entra resources.

For more information, see: Bicep templates for Microsoft Graph.

General Availability - Conditional Access What If API

Type: New feature
Service category: Conditional Access
Product capability: Access Control

The Conditional access What If API can be used to programmatically test the impact of policies on user and workload identity sign-ins.

General Availability - Enterprise App SSO via pre-integrated gallery app or customer SAML apps

Type: Changed feature
Service category: B2C - Consumer Identity Management
Product capability: SSO

Enterprise apps SSO & User Provisioning SAML-based Single Sign-On (SSO) and gallery apps with user provisioning flows are now Generally Available (GA). These features help streamline secure access and automate user lifecycle management across your enterprise applications. For more information, see:

Public Preview - Convert Source of Authority of synced Active Directory groups to the cloud

Type: New feature
Service category: Group Management
Product capability: Microsoft Entra Connect and Microsoft Entra Cloud Sync

The Source of Authority (SOA) at the object level allows administrators to convert specific groups synced from Active Directory (AD) to Microsoft Entra ID into cloud-editable objects, which are no longer synced from AD and act as if originally created in the cloud. This feature supports a gradual migration process, decreasing dependencies on AD while aiming to minimize user and operational impact. Both Entra Connect Sync and Cloud Sync recognize the SOA switch for these objects. Additionally, administrators can govern Kerberos-based applications associated with AD security groups from the cloud using Microsoft Entra Governance by including these SOA-converted security groups for Group Provision to AD. The option to switch the SOA of synced groups from AD to Microsoft Entra ID is currently available in Public Preview. For more information, see: Embrace cloud-first posture: Convert Group Source of Authority to the cloud (Preview).

General Availability - Restricted Management Administrative Units

Type: New feature
Service category: RBAC
Product capability: AuthZ/Access Delegation

Restricted management administrative units enable you to easily restrict access to users, groups, or devices to the specific users or applications you specify. Tenant-level administrators (including Global Administrators) can't modify members of restricted management administrative units unless they're explicitly assigned a role scoped to the administrative unit. This makes it easy to lock down a set of sensitive groups or user accounts in your tenant without having to remove tenant-level role assignments. For more information, see: Restricted management administrative units in Microsoft Entra ID.

June 2025

General Availability – Update to Microsoft Entra Work or School Default Background Image

Type: Changed feature
Service category: Authentications (Login)
Product capability: User Authentication

Starting September 29, 2025, we'll be making a change to the default background image of our Microsoft Entra work or school authentication screens. This new background was designed to help users focus on signing into their accounts, enhancing productivity, and minimizing distractions. With this, we aim to ensure visual consistency and a clean, simplified user experience throughout Microsoft’s authentication flows – aligning with Microsoft’s modernized Fluent design language. When our experiences look and feel consistent, it gives our users a familiar experience that they know and trust.

What’s changing?

This update is solely a visual user interface refresh with no changes to functionality. This change will only affect screens where Company Branding doesn't apply or where users see the default background image. We recommend updating any documentation that contains screenshots and notifying your help desk. If you have configured a custom background image in Company Branding for your tenant, there will be no change for your users.

Additional Details:

  1. Tenants without a custom background configured:
    a. Tenants without a custom background will see the change on every authentication screen.
    b. To change this background and use a custom background, configure Company Branding.

  2. Tenants with a custom background configured:
    a. Tenants with a custom background configured will only see the change wherever the URL doesn't have a specified tenant ID parameter (For example, login.microsoftonline.com directly without a ___domain hint or custom URL).
    b. For all other screens, tenants with a custom background configured will see no change to their experience on all clients.

  3. Entra External ID Tenants will not see any change to their experience on all clients

What do you need to do?

No action is required. The update will be applied automatically starting September 29, 2025.

General Availability - API-driven provisioning in US Gov cloud

Type: New feature
Service category: Provisioning
Product capability: Identity Governance

API-driven provisioning is now generally available in US Gov cloud. With this capability, customers in US Gov cloud can now ingest identity data from any authoritative source into Microsoft Entra ID and on-premises Active Directory. For more information, see: Quickstart API-driven inbound provisioning with Graph Explorer.

Deprecated - Conditional Access Overview Monitoring Tab to Retire

Type: Deprecated
Service category: Conditional Access
Product capability: Identity Security & Protection

We're retiring the Conditional Access Overview Monitoring Tab in the Microsoft Entra Admin Center starting July 18 and completing by August 1. After this date, admins will no longer have access to this tab. We encourage customers to transition to Conditional Access Per-Policy Reporting and the Insights and Reporting Dashboard, both of which are more reliable, offer greater accuracy, and have received significantly better feedback from customers. Learn more about Per-Policy Reporting and Insights and Reporting.

General Availability - Manage Lifecycle Workflows with Microsoft Security CoPilot in Microsoft Entra

Type: New feature
Service category: Lifecycle Workflows
Product capability: Identity Governance

Now customers can manage and customize Lifecycle Workflows using natural language with Microsoft Security CoPilot in Microsoft Entra. Our Lifecycle Workflows (LCW) Copilot solution provides step-by-step guidance to perform key workflow configuration and execution tasks using natural language. It allows customers to quickly get rich insights to help monitor and troubleshoot workflows for compliance. For more information, see: Manage employee lifecycle using Microsoft Security Copilot.

General Availability - Provision custom security attributes from HR sources

Type: New feature
Service category: Provisioning
Product capability: Identity Governance

With this feature, customers can automatically provision "custom security attributes" in Microsoft Entra ID from authoritative HR sources. Supported authoritative sources: Workday, SAP SuccessFactors and any HR system integrated using API-driven provisioning. For more information, refer to: Provision custom security attributes from HR sources.

General Availability - Conditional Access audience reporting

Type: New feature
Service category: Conditional Access
Product capability: Access Control

Conditional Access audience reporting in the sign-in logs lets admins view all the resources evaluated by Conditional Access as part of a sign-in event. For more information, see: Audience reporting.

Public Preview - Cross-tenant synchronization (cross-cloud)

Type: New feature
Service category: Provisioning
Product capability: Identity Governance

Automate creating, updating, and deleting users across tenants across Microsoft clouds. The following combinations are supported:

  • Commercial -> US Gov
  • US Gov -> Commercial
  • Commercial -> China

For more information, see: Configure cross-tenant synchronization

General Availability - Conditional Access support for all Microsoft apps

Type: New feature
Service category: Conditional Access
Product capability: Identity Security & Protection

Administrators can assign a Conditional Access policy to all cloud apps from Microsoft as long as the service principal appears in their tenant. For more information, see: Microsoft cloud applications.

General Availability - Two-Way Forest Trusts for Microsoft Entra Domain Services

Type: New feature
Service category: Microsoft Entra Domain Services
Product capability: Microsoft Entra Domain Services

Two-Way Forest Trusts for Microsoft Entra Domain Services are now generally available. This capability allows organizations to establish trust relationships between Microsoft Entra Domain Services domains and on-premises Active Directory (AD) domains. Forest trusts can now be configured in three directions: one-way outbound (as before), one-way inbound, and bi-directional, depending on organizational needs. Forest trusts can be used to enable resource access across trusted domains in hybrid environments. This capability offers more control and flexibility over how to manage your hybrid identity environment with Microsoft Entra Domain Services. Trusts require an Enterprise or Premium SKU license. For more information, see: How trust relationships work for forests in Active Directory.

General Availability - Certificate Authority (CA) Trust Store

Type: New feature
Service category: Authentications (Login)
Product capability: User Authentication

The new PKI-based CA Trust Store replaces the legacy flat-list model with a more robust structure and no limitations on the size or the number of CAs. It supports bulk PKI uploads, CRL updates, issuer hints, and prioritization of the new store over the legacy one. Sign-in logs now indicate which store was used, helping admins phase out legacy configurations. For more information, see: How to configure Microsoft Entra certificate-based authentication.

General Availability - Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Fail Safe

Type: New feature
Service category: Authentications (Login)
Product capability: User Authentication

CRL Fail Safe ensures that CBA auth fails if the end user certificate issuing CA does not have a Certificate Revocation List (CRL) configured. This closes a critical security gap where certificates could previously be accepted without revocation validation. Admins can enable this at the tenant level and configure exceptions for specific CAs as needed. For more information, see: Understanding CRL validation.

Public Preview - Certificate Authority (CA) Scoping

Type: New feature
Service category: Authentications (Login)
Product capability: User Authentication

CA Scoping allows admins to bind specific CAs to defined user groups. This ensures that users can only authenticate using certificates from trusted sources scoped to them. This enhances compliance, and reduces exposure to mis-issued or rogue certificates. For more information, see: Certificate Authority (CA) Scoping (Preview).

May 2025

General Availability - Microsoft Entra External ID: User authentication with SAML/WS-Fed Identity Providers

Type: New feature
Service category: B2C - Consumer Identity Management
Product capability: B2B/B2C

Set up a SAML or WS-Fed identity provider to enable users to sign up and sign in to, your applications using their own account with the identity provider. Users will be redirected to the identity provider, and then redirected back to Microsoft Entra after successful sign in. For more information, see: SAML/WS-Fed identity providers.

General Availability - Pre/Post Attribute Collection Custom Extensions in Microsoft Entra External ID

Type: New feature
Service category: B2C - Consumer Identity Management
Product capability: Extensibility

Use Pre/Post Attribute Collection Custom Extensions to customize your self-service sign-up flow. This includes blocking sign-up, or prefilling, validating, and modifying attribute values. For more information, see: Create a custom authentication extension for attribute collection start and submit events.

Public Preview - Roll out of Application Based Authentication on Microsoft Entra Connect Sync

Type: New feature
Service category: Microsoft Entra Connect
Product capability: Microsoft Entra Connect

Microsoft Entra Connect creates and uses a Microsoft Entra Connector account to authenticate and sync identities from Active Directory to Microsoft Entra ID. The account uses a locally stored password to authenticate with Microsoft Entra ID. To enhance the security of the Microsoft Entra Connect sync process with the application, we've rolled out support for "Application based Authentication" (ABA), which uses a Microsoft Entra ID application identity and Oauth 2.0 client credential flow to authenticate with Microsoft Entra ID. To enable this, Microsoft Entra Connect creates a single tenant 3rd party application in the customer's Microsoft Entra ID tenant, registers a certificate as the credential for the application, and authorizes the application to perform on-premises directory synchronization.

The Microsoft Entra Connect Sync .msi installation file for this change is exclusively available on Microsoft Entra Admin Center within the Microsoft Entra Connect pane.

Check our version history page for more details of the change.

General Availability – Analyze Conditional Access Policy impact

Type: New feature
Service category: Conditional Access
Product capability: Identity Security & Protection

The policy impact view for individual Conditional Access policies enables admins to understand how each policy has affected recent sign-ins. The feature provides a clear, built-in graph in the Microsoft Entra admin center, making it easy to visualize and assess the impact without needing additional tools and resources, such as Log Analytics. For more information, see: Policy impact.

Public Preview – Deployment logs support for Global Secure Access

Type: New feature
Service category: Reporting
Product capability: Monitoring & Reporting

Deployment logs feature provide visibility into the status and progress of configuration changes made in Global Secure Access. Deployment logs publish updates to admins and monitor the process for any errors. Unlike other logging features, deployment logs focus specifically on tracking configuration updates. These logs help administrators track and troubleshoot deployment updates, such as forwarding profile redistributions and remote network updates, across the global network. For more information, see: How to use the Global Secure Access deployment logs (preview).

April 2025

Public Preview - Conditional Access Optimization Agent in Microsoft Entra

Type: New feature
Service category: Conditional Access
Product capability: Identity Security & Protection

Conditional Access Optimization Agent in Microsoft Entra monitors for new users or apps not covered by existing policies, identifies necessary updates to close security gaps, and recommends quick fixes for identity teams to apply with a single selection. For more information, see: Microsoft Entra Conditional Access optimization agent.

Public Preview - Microsoft Entra ID Governance: Suggested access packages in My Access

Type: New feature
Service category: Entitlement Management
Product capability: Entitlement Management

In December 2024, we introduced a new feature in My Access: a curated list of suggested access packages. Users view the most relevant access packages, based on their peers' access packages and previous assignments, without scrolling through a long list. By May 2025, suggestions will be enabled by default and we'll introduce a new card in the Microsoft Entra Admin Center Entitlement Management control configurations for admins to see My Access settings. We recommend admins turn on the peer-based insights for suggested access packages via this setting. For more information, see: Suggested access packages in My Access (Preview).

Public Preview - Conditional Access What If evaluation API

Type: New feature
Service category: Conditional Access
Product capability: Access Control

Conditional Access What If evaluation API – Leverage the What If tool using the Microsoft Graph API to programmatically evaluate the applicability of Conditional Access policies in your tenant on user and service principal sign-ins. For more information, see: conditionalAccessRoot: evaluate.

Public Preview - Manage refresh tokens for mover and leaver scenarios with Lifecycle Workflows

Type: New feature
Service category: Lifecycle Workflows
Product capability: Identity Governance

Now customers can configure a Lifecycle workflows task to automatically revoke access tokens when employees move within, or leave, the organization. For more information, see: Revoke all refresh tokens for user.

General Availability - Use managed identities as credentials in Microsoft Entra apps

Type: New feature
Service category: Managed identities for Azure resources
Product capability: Identity Security & Protection

You can now use managed identities as federated credentials for Microsoft Entra apps, enabling secure, secret-less authentication in both single- and multi-tenant scenarios. This eliminates the need to store and manage client secrets or certificates when using Microsoft Entra app to access Azure resources across tenants. This capability aligns with Microsoft’s Secure Future Initiative pillar of protecting identities and secrets across systems. Learn how to configure this capability in the official documentation.

Plan for change - Roll out of Application Based Authentication on Microsoft Entra Connect Sync

Type: Plan for change
Service category: Microsoft Entra Connect
Product capability: Microsoft Entra Connect

What is changing

Microsoft Entra Connect creates and uses a Microsoft Entra Connector account to authenticate and sync identities from Active Directory to Microsoft Entra ID. The account uses a locally stored password to authenticate with Microsoft Entra ID. To enhance the security of the Microsoft Entra Connect application sync process, we will, in the coming week roll out support for "Application based Authentication" (ABA), which uses a Microsoft Entra ID application based identity and Oauth 2.0 client credential flow to authenticate with Microsoft Entra ID. To enable this, Microsoft Entra Connect will create a single tenant 3rd party application in customer's Microsoft Entra ID tenant, register a certificate as the credential for the application, and authorize the application to perform on-premises directory synchronization

The Microsoft Entra Connect Sync .msi installation file for this change will be exclusively available in the Microsoft Entra admin center within the Microsoft Entra Connect pane.

Check our version history page in the next week for more details of the change.

March 2025

Microsoft Entra Permissions Management end of sale and retirement

Type: Plan for change
Service category: Other
Product capability: Permissions Management

Effective April 1, 2025, Microsoft Entra Permissions Management (MEPM) will no longer be available for sale to new Enterprise Agreement or direct customers. Additionally, starting May 1, it will not be available for sale to new CSP customers. Effective October 1, 2025, we will retire Microsoft Entra Permissions Management and discontinue support of this product. 

Existing customers will retain access to this product until September 30, 2025, with ongoing support for current functionalities. We have partnered with Delinea to provide an alternative solution, Privilege Control for Cloud Entitlements (PCCE), that offers similar capabilities to those provided by Microsoft Entra Permissions Management. The decision to phase out Microsoft Entra Permissions Management was done after deep consideration of our innovation portfolio and how we can focus on delivering the best innovations aligned to our differentiating areas and partner with the ecosystem on adjacencies. We remain committed to delivering top-tier solutions across the Microsoft Entra portfolio. For more information, see: Important change announcement: Microsoft Entra Permissions Management end of sale and retirement.

Public Preview - Track and investigate identity activities with linkable identifiers in Microsoft Entra

Type: New feature
Service category: Authentications (Logins)
Product capability: User Authentication

Microsoft will standardize the linkable token identifiers, and expose them in both Microsoft Entra and workflow audit logs. This allows customers to join the logs to track, and investigate, any malicious activity. Currently linkable identifiers are available in Microsoft Entra sign in logs, Exchange Online audit logs, and MSGraph Activity logs.

For more information, see: Track and investigate identity activities with linkable identifiers in Microsoft Entra (preview).

General Availability- Conditional Access reauthentication policy

Type: New feature
Service category: Conditional Access
Product capability: Identity Security & Protection

Require reauthentication every time can be used for scenarios where you want to require a fresh authentication, every time a user performs specific actions like accessing sensitive applications, securing resources behind VPN, or Securing privileged role elevation in PIM​. For more information, see: Require reauthentication every time.

General Availability- Custom Attributes support for Microsoft Entra Domain Services

Type: New feature
Service category: Microsoft Entra Domain Services
Product capability: Microsoft Entra Domain Services

Custom Attributes for Microsoft Entra Domain Services is now Generally Available. This capability allows customers to use Custom Attributes in their managed domains. Legacy applications often rely on custom attributes created in the past to store information, categorize objects, or enforce fine-grained access control over resources. For example, these applications might use custom attributes to store an employee ID in their directory and rely on these attributes in their application LDAP calls. Modifying legacy applications can be costly and risky, and customers might lack the necessary skills or knowledge to make these changes. Microsoft Entra Domain Services now supports custom attributes, enabling customers to migrate their legacy applications to the Azure cloud without modification. It also provides support to synchronize custom attributes from Microsoft Entra ID, allowing customers to benefit from Microsoft Entra ID services in the cloud. For more information, see: Custom attributes for Microsoft Entra Domain Services.

Public Preview - Conditional Access Per-Policy Reporting

Type: New feature
Service category: Conditional Access
Product capability: Identity Security & Protection

Conditional Access Per-Policy Reporting enables admins to easily evaluate the impact of enabled and report-only Conditional Access policies on their organization, without using Log Analytics. This feature surfaces a graph for each policy in the Microsoft Entra Admin Center, visualizing the policy’s impact on the tenant’s past sign-ins. For more information, see: Policy impact (Preview).

Public Preview - Limit creation or promotion of multitenant apps

Type: New feature
Service category: Directory Management
Product capability: Developer Experience

A new feature has been added to the App Management Policy Framework that allows restriction on creation or promotion of multitenant applications, providing administrators with greater control over their app environments.

Administrators can now configure tenant default or custom app policy using the new 'audiences' restriction to block new app creation if the signInAudience value provided in the app isn't permitted by the policy. In addition, existing apps can be restricted from changing their signInAudience if the target value isn't permitted by the policy. These policy changes are applied during app creation or update operations, offering control over application deployment and usage. For more information, see: audiencesConfiguration resource type.

General Availability - Download Microsoft Entra Connect Sync on the Microsoft Entra admin center

Type: Plan for change
Service category: Microsoft Entra Connect
Product capability: Identity Governance

The Microsoft Entra Connect Sync .msi installation files are also available on Microsoft Entra admin center within the Microsoft Entra Connect pane. As part of this change, we'll stop uploading new installation files on the Microsoft Download Center.

General Availability - New Microsoft-managed Conditional Access policies designed to limit device code flow and legacy authentication flows

Type: Changed feature
Service category: Conditional Access
Product capability: Access Control

As part of our ongoing commitment to enhance security and protect our customers from evolving cyber threats, we're rolling out two new Microsoft-managed Conditional Access policies designed to limit device code flow and legacy authentication flows. These policies are aligned to the secure by default principle of our broader Secure Future Initiative, which aims to provide robust security measures to safeguard your organization by default.

Deprecated - Upgrade your Microsoft Entra Connect Sync version to avoid impact on the Sync Wizard

Type: Deprecated
Service category: Microsoft Entra Connect
Product capability: Microsoft Entra Connect

As announced in the Microsoft Entra What's New Blog and in Microsoft 365 Center communications, customers should upgrade their connect sync versions to at least 2.4.18.0 for commercial clouds and 2.4.21.0 for non-commercial clouds before April 7, 2025. A breaking change on the Connect Sync Wizard will affect all requests that require authentication such as schema refresh, configuration of staging mode, and user sign in changes. For more information, see: Minimum versions.

February 2025

General Availability - Authentication methods migration wizard

Type: New feature
Service category: MFA
Product capability: User Authentication

The authentication methods migration guide in the Microsoft Entra Admin Center lets you automatically migrate method management from the legacy MFA and SSPR policies to the converged authentication methods policy. In 2023, it was announced that the ability to manage authentication methods in the legacy MFA and SSPR policies would be retired in September 2025. Until now, organizations had to manually migrate methods themselves by using the migration toggle in the converged policy. Now, you can migrate in just a few selections by using the migration guide. The guide evaluates what your organization currently has enabled in both legacy policies, and generates a recommended converged policy configuration for you to review and edit as needed. From there, confirm the configuration, and we set it up for you and mark your migration as complete. For more information, see: How to migrate MFA and SSPR policy settings to the Authentication methods policy for Microsoft Entra ID.

Public Preview – QR code authentication, a simple and fast authentication method for Frontline Workers

Type: New feature
Service category: Authentications (Logins)
Product capability: User Authentication

We're thrilled to announce public preview of QR code authentication in Microsoft Entra ID, providing an efficient and simple authentication method for frontline workers.

You see a new authentication method ‘QR code’ in Microsoft Entra ID Authentication method Policies. You can enable and add QR code for your frontline workers via Microsoft Entra ID, My Staff, or MS Graph APIs. All users in your tenant see a new link ‘Sign in with QR code’ on navigating to https://login.microsoftonline.com > ‘Sign-in options’ > ‘Sign in to an organization’ page. This new link is visible only on mobile devices (Android/iOS/iPadOS). Users can use this auth method only if you add and provide a QR code to them. QR code auth is also available in BlueFletch and Jamf. MHS QR code auth support is generally available by early March.

The feature has a ‘preview’ tag until it's generally available. For more information, see: Authentication methods in Microsoft Entra ID - QR code authentication method (Preview).

Public Preview - Enhanced user management in Admin Center UX

Type: New feature
Service category: User Management
Product capability: User Management

Admins are now able to multi-select and edit users at once through the Microsoft Entra Admin Center. With this new capability, admins can bulk edit user properties, add users to groups, edit account status, and more. This UX enhancement will significantly improve efficiency for user management tasks in the Microsoft Entra admin center. For more information, see: Add or update a user's profile information and settings in the Microsoft Entra admin center.

Public Preview - Custom SAML/WS-Fed External Identity Provider Support in Microsoft Entra External ID

Type: New feature
Service category: B2C - Consumer Identity Management
Product capability: B2B/B2C

By setting up federation with a custom-configured identity provider that supports the SAML 2.0 or WS-Fed protocol, you enable your users to sign up and sign in to your applications using their existing accounts from the federated external provider.

This feature also includes ___domain-based federation, so a user who enters an email address on the sign-in page that matches a predefined ___domain in any of the external identity providers will be redirected to authenticate with that identity provider.

For more information, see: Custom SAML/WS-Fed identity providers.

Public Preview - External Auth Methods support for system preferred MFA

Type: New feature
Service category: MFA
Product capability: 3rd Party Integration

Support for external auth methods as a supported method begins rolling out at the beginning of March 2025. When this is live in a tenant where system preferred is enabled and users are in scope of an external auth methods policy, those users will be prompted for their external authentication method if their most secure registered method is Microsoft Authenticator notification. External Authentication Method will appear as third in the list of most secure methods. If the user has a Temporary Access Pass (TAP) or Passkey (FIDO2) device registered, they'll be prompted for those. In addition, users in the scope of an external auth methods policy will have the ability to delete all registered second factor methods from their account, even if the method being deleted is specified as the default sign in method or is system preferred. For more information, see: System-preferred multifactor authentication - Authentication methods policy.

General Availability - Granular Microsoft Graph permissions for Lifecycle workflows

Type: New feature
Service category: Lifecycle Workflows
Product capability: Identity Governance

Now new, lesser privileged permissions can be used for managing specific read and write actions in Lifecycle workflows scenarios. The following granular permissions were introduced in Microsoft Graph:

  • LifecycleWorkflows-Workflow.ReadBasic.All
  • LifecycleWorkflows-Workflow.Read.All
  • LifecycleWorkflows-Workflow.ReadWrite.All
  • LifecycleWorkflows-Workflow.Activate
  • LifecycleWorkflows-Reports.Read.All
  • LifecycleWorkflows-CustomExt.Read.All
  • LifecycleWorkflows-CustomExt.ReadWrite.All

For more information, see: Microsoft Graph permissions reference.