Azure AD "Description" field missing when sync'd using Azure AD Connect

0
votes

We're using Azure AD Connect to sync our on-premises Active Directory to Azure AD. We have the free version that comes with the Office 365 business plans.

Azure AD Connect shows the Description field as being synchronized to Azure AD, yet, the field does not appear anywhere.

We're using a third-party service to read data from our user profiles to generate email signatures, but the service cannot read the data as it doesn't "exist" in Azure.

I even tried going into our Azure AD Connect configuration, enabled Directory extension attribute sync and added the Description field for user accounts...but it created a new "description" field with a weird name instead.

Is there something I'm missing ? Do we perhaps need to have Azure AD Premium ?

Thanks for your help people!

1
azureazure-active-directoryazure-connect

1 Answers

1
votes

Based on the official documentation, the attribute for Description has been synced to Azure AD. You can verify it by open Synchronization Service Manager, and check the properties for the specific user by Metaverse Search.

However, if you need to retrieve the attribute values for specific user, you must use Azure AD Graph API. For your scenario, the third-party service may leverage Azure AD Graph API for retrieving user properties.

Then, if you check the Graph API reference, you can find that Description is not included in the list, which means you can't retrieve the Description attribute from Azure AD.

As a workaround, you can use Directory extension, but the attributes are prefixed with extension_{AppClientId}_. The AppClientId has the same value for all attributes in your Azure AD tenant.

Also, you can submit your requirements to the following website, which collects feedbacks for Azure AD from users.

https://feedback.azure.com/forums/169401-azure-active-directory?query=attribute