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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.
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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).
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 - 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
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.
January 2025
General Availability - Microsoft Entra PowerShell
Type: New feature
Service category: MS Graph
Product capability: Developer Experience
Manage and automate Microsoft Entra resources programmatically with the scenario-focused Microsoft Entra PowerShell module. For more information, see: Microsoft Entra PowerShell module now generally available.
General Availability - Improving visibility into downstream tenant sign-ins
Type: New feature
Service category: Reporting
Product capability: Monitoring & Reporting
Microsoft Security wants to ensure that all customers are aware of how to notice when a partner is accessing a downstream tenant's resources. Interactive sign-in logs currently provide a list of sign in events, but there's no clear indication of which logins are from partners accessing downstream tenant resources. For example, when reviewing the logs, you might see a series of events, but without any additional context, it’s difficult to tell whether these logins are from a partner accessing another tenant’s data.
Here's a list of steps that one can take to clarify which logins are associated with partner tenants:
- Take note of the "ServiceProvider" value in the CrossTenantAccessType column:
- This filter can be applied to refine the log data. When activated, it immediately isolates events related to partner logins.
- Utilize the "Home Tenant ID" and "Resource Tenant ID" Columns:
- These two columns identify logins coming from the partner’s tenant to a downstream tenant.
After seeing a partner logging into a downstream tenant’s resources, an important follow-up activity to perform is to validate the activities that might have occurred in the downstream environment. Some examples of logs to look at are Microsoft Entra Audit logs for Microsoft Entra ID events, Microsoft 365 Unified Audit Log (UAL) for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Entra ID events, and/or the Azure Monitor activity log for Azure events. By following these steps, you're able to clearly identify when a partner is logging into a downstream tenant’s resources and subsequent activity in the environment, enhancing your ability to manage and monitor cross-tenant access efficiently.
To increase visibility into the aforementioned columns, Microsoft Entra will begin enabling these columns to display by default when loading the sign-in logs UX starting on March 7, 2025.
Public Preview - Auditing administrator events in Microsoft Entra Connect
Type: New feature
Service category: Microsoft Entra Connect
Product capability: Microsoft Entra Connect
We have released a new version of Microsoft Entra Connect, version 2.4.129.0, that supports the logging of the changes an administrator makes on the Connect Sync Wizard and PowerShell. For more information, see: Auditing administrator events in Microsoft Entra Connect Sync (Public Preview).
Where supported, we'll also autoupgrade customers to this version of Microsoft Entra Connect in February 2025. For customers who wish to be autoupgraded, ensure that you have auto-upgrade configured.
For upgrade-related guidance, see Microsoft Entra Connect: Upgrade from a previous version to the latest.
Public Preview - Flexible Federated Identity Credentials
Type: New feature
Service category: Authentications (Logins)
Product capability: Developer Experience
Flexible Federated Identity Credentials extend the existing Federated Identity Credential model by providing the ability to use wildcard matching against certain claims. Currently available for GitHub, GitLab, and Terraform Cloud scenarios, this functionality can be used to lower the total number of FICs required to managed similar scenarios. For more information, see: Flexible federated identity credentials (preview).
General Availability - Protected actions for hard deletions
Type: New feature
Service category: Other
Product capability: Identity Security & Protection
Customers can now configure Conditional Access policies to protect against early hard deletions. Protected action for hard deletion protects hard deletion of users, Microsoft 365 groups, and applications. For more information, see: What are protected actions in Microsoft Entra ID?.
Public Preview - Elevate Access events are now exportable via Microsoft Entra Audit Logs
Type: New feature
Service category: RBAC
Product capability: Monitoring & Reporting
This feature enables administrators to export and stream Elevate Access events to both first-party and third-party SIEM solutions via Microsoft Entra Audit logs. It enhances detection and improves logging capabilities, allowing visibility into who in their tenant has utilized Elevate Access. For more information on how to use the feature, see: View elevate access log entries.
Deprecated - Action Required by February 1, 2025: Azure AD Graph retirement
Type: Deprecated
Service category: Azure AD Graph
Product capability: Developer Experience
The Azure AD Graph API service was [deprecated] in 2020. Retirement of the Azure AD Graph API service began in September 2024, and the next phase of this retirement starts February 1, 2025. This phase will impact new and existing applications unless action is taken. The latest updates on Azure AD Graph retirement can be found here: Take action by February 1: Azure AD Graph is retiring.
Starting from February 1, both new and existing applications will be prevented from calling Azure AD Graph APIs, unless they're configured for an extension. You might not see impact right away, as we’re rolling out this change in stages across tenants. We anticipate full deployment of this change around the end of February, and by the end of March for national cloud deployments.
If you haven't already, it's now urgent to review the applications on your tenant to see which ones depend on Azure AD Graph API access, and mitigate or migrate these before the February 1 cutoff date. For applications that haven't migrated to Microsoft Graph APIs, an extension can be set to allow the application access to Azure AD Graph through June 30, 2025.
Microsoft Entra Recommendations are the best tool to identify applications that are using Azure AD Graph APIs in your tenant and require action. Reference this blog post: Action required: Azure AD Graph API retirement for step by step guidance.
General Availability - Microsoft Entra Connect Version 2.4.129.0
Type: Changed feature
Service category: Microsoft Entra Connect
Product capability: Microsoft Entra Connect
On January 15, 2025, we released Microsoft Entra Connect Sync Version 2.4.129.0 which supports auditing administrator events. More details are available in the release notes. We'll automatically upgrade eligible customers to this latest version of Microsoft Entra Connect in February 2025. For customers who wish to be autoupgraded, ensure that you have auto-upgrade configured.
Deprecated - Take action to avoid impact when legacy MSOnline and AzureAD PowerShell modules retire
Type: Deprecated
Service category: Legacy MSOnline and AzureAD PowerShell modules
Product capability: Developer Experience
As announced in Microsoft Entra change announcements and in the Microsoft Entra Blog, the MSOnline, and Azure AD PowerShell modules (for Microsoft Entra ID) retired on March 30, 2024.
The retirement for MSOnline PowerShell module starts in early April 2025, and ends in late May 2025. If you're using MSOnline PowerShell, you must take action by March 30, 2025 to avoid impact after the retirement by migrating any use of MSOnline to Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK or Microsoft Entra PowerShell.
Key points
- MSOnline PowerShell will retire, and stop working, between early April 2025 and late May 2025
- AzureAD PowerShell will no longer be supported after March 30, 2025, but its retirement will happen in early July 2025. This postponement is to allow you time to finish the MSOnline PowerShell migration
- To ensure customer readiness for MSOnline PowerShell retirement, a series of temporary outage tests will occur for all tenants between January 2025 and March 2025.
For more information, see: Action required: MSOnline and AzureAD PowerShell retirement - 2025 info and resources.
December 2024
General Availability - What's new in Microsoft Entra
Type: New feature
Service category: Reporting
Product capability: Monitoring & Reporting
What's new in Microsoft Entra offers a comprehensive view of Microsoft Entra product updates including product roadmap (like Public Previews and recent GAs), and change announcements (like deprecations, breaking changes, feature changes and Microsoft-managed policies). It's a one stop shop for Microsoft Entra admins to discover the product updates.
Public Preview - Microsoft Entra ID Governance: Approvers can revoke access in MyAccess
Type: New feature
Service category: Entitlement Management
Product capability: Entitlement Management
For Microsoft Entra ID Governance users, approvers of access package requests can now revoke their decision in MyAccess. Only the person who took the approve action is able to revoke access. To opt into this feature, admins can go to the Identity Governance settings page, and enable the feature. For more information, see: What is the My Access portal?.
General Availability - Expansion of SSPR Policy Audit Logging
Type: New feature
Service category: Self Service Password Reset
Product capability: Monitoring & Reporting
Starting Mid-January, we are improving the audit logs for changes made to the SSPR Policy.
With this improvement, any change to the SSPR policy configuration, including enablement or disablement, will result in an audit log entry that includes details about the change made. Additionally, both the previous values and current values from the change will be recorded within the audit log. This additional information can be found by selecting an audit log entry and selecting the Modified Properties tab within the entry.
These changes are rolled out in phases:
Phase 1 includes logging for the Authentication Methods, Registration, Notifications, and Customization configuration settings.
Phase 2 includes logging for the On-premises integration configuration settings.
This change occurs automatically, so admins take no action. For more information and details regarding this change, see: Microsoft Entra audit log categories and activities.
General Availability - Update Profile Photo in MyAccount
Type: New feature
Service category: My Profile/Account
Product capability: End User Experiences
Users can now update their profile photo directly from their MyAccount portal. This change exposes a new edit button on the profile photo section of the user’s account.
In some environments, it’s necessary to prevent users from making this change. Global Administrators can manage this using a tenant-wide policy with Microsoft Graph API, following the guidance in the Manage user profile photo settings in Microsoft 365 document.
Public Preview - Microsoft Entra ID Governance: access package request suggestions
Type: New feature
Service category: Entitlement Management
Product capability: Entitlement Management
Opt-In As communicated earlier, we're excited to introduce a new feature in My Access: a curated list of suggested access packages. This capability allows users to quickly view the most relevant access packages (based off their peers' access packages and previous requests) without scrolling through a long list. In December you can enable the preview in the Opt-in Preview Features for Identity Governance. From January, this setting is enabled by default.
Public Preview - Security Copilot embedded in Microsoft Entra
Type: New feature
Service category: Other
Product capability: Identity Security & Protection
We’ve announced the public preview of Microsoft Security Copilot embedded in the Microsoft Entra admin Center. This integration brings all identity skills previously made generally available for the Security Copilot standalone experience in April 2024, along with new identity capabilities for admins and security analysts to use directly within the Microsoft Entra admin center. We've also added brand new skills to help improve identity-related risk investigation. In December, we broaden the scope even further to include a set of skills specifically for App Risk Management in both standalone and embedded experiences of Security Copilot and Microsoft Entra. These capabilities allow identity admins and security analysts to better identify, understand, and remediate the risks impacting applications and workload identities registered in Microsoft Entra.
With Security Copilot now embedded in Microsoft Entra, identity admins get AI-driven, natural-language summaries of identity context and insights tailored for handling security incidents, equipping them to better protect against identity compromise. The embedded experience also accelerates troubleshooting tasks like resolving identity-related risks and sign-in issues, without ever leaving the admin center.
Public Preview - Provision custom security attributes from HR sources
Type: New feature
Service category: Provisioning
Product capability: Inbound to Entra ID
With this feature, customers can automatically provision "custom security attributes" in Microsoft Entra ID from authoritative HR sources. Supported authoritative sources include: Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, and any HR system integrated using API-driven provisioning.
General Availability - Microsoft Entra External ID Custom URL Domains
Type: New feature
Service category: Authentications (Logins)
Product capability: Identity Lifecycle Management
This feature allows users to customize their Microsoft default sign in authentication endpoint with their own brand names. Custom URL Domains help users to change Ext ID endpoint < tenant-name >.ciamlogin.com to login.contoso.com.
General Availability - Privileged Identity Management integration in Azure Role Based Access Control
Type: New feature
Service category: RBAC
Product capability: Access Control
Privileged Identity Management (PIM) capabilities are now integrated into the Azure Role Based Access Control (Azure RBAC) UI. Before this integration, RBAC admins could only manage standing access (active permanent role assignments) from the Azure RBAC UI. With this integration, just-in-time access and timebound access, which are functionalities supported by PIM, are now brought into the Azure RBAC UI for customers with either a P2, or Identity Governance, license.
RBAC admins can create assignments of type eligible and timebound duration from the Azure RBAC add role assignment flow, see the list of different states of role assignment in a single view, as well as convert the type and duration of their role assignments from the Azure RBAC UI. In addition, end users now see all their role assignments of different state straight from the Azure RBAC UI landing page, from where they can also activate their eligible role assignments. For more information, see: List role assignments at a scope.
General Availability - Dedicated new 1st party resource application to enable Active Directory to Microsoft Entra ID sync using Microsoft Entra Connect Sync
Type: Changed feature
Service category: Provisioning
Product capability: Directory
As part of ongoing security hardening, Microsoft deployed Microsoft Entra AD Synchronization Service, a dedicated first-party application to enable the synchronization between Active Directory and Microsoft Entra ID. This new application, with Application Id 6bf85cfa-ac8a-4be5-b5de-425a0d0dc016, was provisioned in customer tenants that use Microsoft Entra Connect Sync service.
November 2024
Public Preview - Updating profile photo in MyAccount
Type: New feature
Service category: My Profile/Account
Product capability: End User Experiences
On November 13, 2024, users received the ability to update their profile photo directly from their MyAccount portal. This change exposes a new edit button on the profile photo section of the user’s account.
In some environments, it’s necessary to prevent users from making this change. Global Administrators can manage this using a tenant-wide policy with Microsoft Graph API, following the guidance in the Manage user profile photo settings in Microsoft 365 document.
General Availability - Microsoft Entra Health Monitoring, Health Metrics Feature
Type: New feature
Service category: Reporting
Product capability: Monitoring & Reporting
Microsoft Entra health monitoring, available from the Health pane, includes a set of low-latency pre-computed health metrics that can be used to monitor the health of critical user scenarios in your tenant. The first set of health scenarios includes MFA, CA-compliant devices, CA-managed devices, and SAML authentications. This set of monitor scenarios will grow over time. These health metrics are now released as general availability data streams with the public preview of an intelligent alerting capability.
General Availability - Microsoft Entra Connect Sync Version 2.4.27.0
Type: Changed feature
Service category: Provisioning
Product capability: Identity Governance
On November 14, 2025, we released Microsoft Entra Connect Sync Version 2.4.27.0 that uses the OLE DB version 18.7.4 that further hardens our service. Upgrade to this latest version of connect sync to improve your security. More details are available in the release notes.
Public Preview - Microsoft Entra Health Monitoring, Alerts Feature
Type: Changed feature
Service category: Other
Product capability: Monitoring & Reporting
Intelligent alerts in Microsoft Entra health monitoring notify tenant admins, and security engineers, whenever a monitored scenario breaks from its typical pattern. Microsoft Entra's alerting capability watches the low-latency health signals of each scenario, and fires a notification if an anomaly is detected. The set of alert-ready health signals and scenarios will grow over time. This alerts feature is now available in Microsoft Entra Health as an API-only public preview release (UX release is scheduled for February 2025). For more information, see: How to use Microsoft Entra Health monitoring alerts (preview).
General Availability - Log analytics sign-in logs schema is in parity with MSGraph schema
Type: Plan for change
Service category: Authentications (Logins)
Product capability: Monitoring & Reporting
To maintain consistency in our core logging principles, we've addressed a legacy parity issue where the Azure Log Analytics sign-in logs schema didn't align with the MSGraph sign-in logs schema. The updates include fields such as ClientCredentialType, CreatedDateTime, ManagedServiceIdentity, NetworkLocationDetails, tokenProtectionStatus, SessionID, among others. These changes take effect in the first week of December 2024.
We believe this enhancement provides a more consistent logging experience. As always, you can perform pre-ingestion transformations to remove any unwanted data from your Azure Log Analytics storage workspaces. For guidance on how to perform these transformations, see: Data collection transformations in Azure Monitor.
Deprecated - MIM hybrid reporting agent
Type: Deprecated
Service category: Microsoft Identity Manager
Product capability: Monitoring & Reporting
The hybrid reporting agent, used to send a MIM Service event log to Microsoft Entra to surface in password reset and self-service group management reports, is deprecated. The recommended replacement is to use Azure Arc to send the event logs to Azure Monitor. For more information, see: Microsoft Identity Manager 2016 reporting with Azure Monitor.