Determine sequence of application onboarding and Entra Provisioning Integration
Implementation Effort: High – Sequencing and executing application onboarding for both SSO and provisioning requires significant coordination, system analysis, and phased rollout planning across IT, identity, and application teams.
User Impact: Low – Users experiences are not yet affected during this planning phase.
Overview
Determining the sequence of application onboarding and integration with Microsoft Entra is foundational to establishing centralized identity and access management. Organizations often begin with SaaS applications that support modern protocols like SAML, OAuth2, or SCIM. Some applications may already be integrated for Single Sign-On (SSO) but not yet for user provisioning, resulting in fragmented access lifecycle processes. Prioritization should be based on business criticality, compliance requirements, and technical feasibility.
For each application, administrators should assess whether Microsoft Entra supports automated provisioning. This includes evaluating application roles, claims, and group-based access needs. Applications integrated from the Microsoft Entra gallery may support importing of roles and automatic manifest updates post-provisioning configuration, simplifying setup. Additionally, roles and entitlements with elevated or sensitive access should be prioritized for governance.
This planning process supports the Zero Trust principle "Verify explicitly" by ensuring each application uses federated authentication and accurate claims for authorization decisions. It also enforces "Use least privilege access" by allowing fine-grained role assignments and ensuring only required users are provisioned. Failure to plan the onboarding sequence can lead to inconsistent identity states, manual errors, and ungoverned privileged access, increasing exposure to threat actors and audit deficiencies.