Could someone please tell me what the difference is between "enterprise application" and "app registration" in Azure.
Appreciate if you could give me an example & why some application cannot be registered under blade "Enterprise application" and vise versa.
An App Registration is a way of reserving your app and URL with Azure AD, allowing it to communicate with Azure AD, hooking up your reply urls, and enabling AAD services on it. When you have an application that you are developing and want to integrate with Azure, you need to register your application in App Registrations, where you will configure your reply URL, logout URL, and API access if needed. When you register your application, Azure AD assigns a unique Application ID to it and allows you to add certain capabilities such as credentials, permissions, and sign-ons. The default settings allow only users from the tenant under which your app is registered to sign into your application.
The Enterprise Applications blade might be confused with App Registrations because the Enterprise Application blade contains the list of your service principals. However, the term Enterprise App generally refers to applications published by other companies in the AAD gallery that can be used within your organization. For example, if you want to integrate Facebook and manage SSO within your organization, you can integrate it from the Enterprise Applications dropdown in the applications blade. Your own applications will also be represented in the Enterprise Applications blade as Service Principals, which are instantiations of your applications in the tenant.
App Registration: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/develop/quickstart-v1-add-azure-ad-app
Integrating an Enterprise application (G-Suite): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/saas-apps/google-apps-tutorial
This is, I agree, potentially confusing to a new-to-AAD developer or administrator. Nitin's answer does a good job of summarizing this but I wanted to add an answer with documentation references.
At https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/develop/app-objects-and-service-principals it says:
The application object is the global representation of your
application for use across all tenants, and the service principal is
the local representation for use in a specific tenant.
Then, at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/develop/active-directory-how-applications-are-added, it says:
You can manage application objects in the Azure portal through the
App Registrations experience.
Application objects describe the application
to Azure AD and can be considered the definition of the application,
allowing the service to know how to issue tokens to the application
based on its settings.
and
You can manage service principals in the Azure portal through the
Enterprise Applications experience. Service principals are what govern
an application connecting to Azure AD and can be considered the
instance of the application in your directory. For any given
application, it can have at most one application object (which is
registered in a "home" directory) and one or more service principal
objects representing instances of the application in every directory
in which it acts.
So, for third-party apps, you'll only have a service principal in Enterprise applications. For first-party apps that are internal, you'll have something in both places - one to define the app (App registrations) and one to allow the app to actually sign in to Azure AD (Enterprise applications). When you define the first-party app in the App registrations, you'll also automatically create an entry in Enterprise apps. If you look at the two entries, you'll see that the Application ID links the two together.
Shorter way to understand is...
App Registration are basically the apps local to the tenant/organization in which they have been registered to generate unique application id.
Enterprise apps blade shows global apps (belonging to other tenants) which can be configured and used within your tenant/organization.
The workflow is you create the App Registration (Application) in your tenant, which also creates the Enterprise Application (Service principal) in your tenant. Then when another tenant user wants to login to your app, they grant your app the permissions it requires and the Enterprise Application (Service Principal) is created in their tenant. This effectively mirrors your application in their tenant.
Additionally, within Application registration you can configure OpenId-Connect (OpenID/OAuth) based authentication. Within Enterprise Apps you can configure SAML based auth
Simple put:
Application Registration create an global application object which will allow the app to delegate to user identity for resource access, whereas the Enterprise application is the application identity(a service principle) in each AD tenant
Well, there're some good answers here but they are too verbose so I feel the simplest thing is show three pictures and one statement:
In the App Registration, we have "Application Objects":
To understand what you're seeing in the Enterprise Applications blade are "Service Principals":
And this is the relationship between the two in a multi-tenant example:
Adatum - The tenant used by the company that developed the HR app
Contoso - The tenant used by the Contoso organization, which is a consumer of the HR app
Fabrikam - The tenant used by the Fabrikam organization, which also consumes the HR app
And with that out of the way, we can understand this statement:
Similar to a class in object-oriented programming, the application
object has some static properties that are applied to all the created
service principals (or application instances).
The application object is the global representation of your
application for use across all tenants, and the service principal is
the local representation for use in a specific tenant. The application
object serves as the template from which common and default properties
are derived for use in creating corresponding service principal
objects.
Also said in a different way:
Application objects - Although there are exceptions, application
objects can be considered the definition of an application.
Service principals - Can be considered an instance of an application. Service
principals generally reference an application object, and one
application object can be referenced by multiple service principals
across directories.
Reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/develop/app-objects-and-service-principals
Related
I'm really struggling with these Azure AD concepts.
Here is my situation. I have a webapp with users belonging to Companies. I have a requirement that is to be able to authenticate those users through their Companies' Azure AD. Eventually, We would want to offer this in the Azure app gallery in the future.
I started registering the app through App Registration, which gives me the information to integrate using OIDC. We would like to support both, OIDC and SAML protocols (I see that there are apps in the gallery offering both).
I tested OIDC out and it's working correctly, but when I want to develop SAML integration, the documentation says that it has to be done using an enterprise application. I can't edit the SSO section of the enterprise app generated by my registration:
The single sign-on configuration is not available for this application in the Enterprise applications experience. MY APP was created using the App registrations experience.
so I tested creating a new enterprise app. Using this app I can do all the SAML flow correctly.
My questions here are:
Do I have to connect the registrated app with the enterprise app? How I do that?
Why I can't edit the SSO info in the enterprise generated app?
If it's done through the registration app. Where do I set up the SAML endpoints, certificates etc.?
By reading the docs, I understand that enterprise apps are like "an instance of a registered app". That leads me to think that I should configure all in the registered app, but I can't see how to support SAML.
As mentioned by #Srinath Menon in the above answer, If the application was registered using App registrations then the single sign-on capability is configured to use OIDC OAuth by default. In this case, the Single sign-on option won't show, For enterprise applications we have an option.
In both the ways applications are get registered in AAD, and there are two types of objects get created once the app registration is done.
The Application Object is what you see under App Registrations in AAD. The application object describes three aspects of an application: how the service can issue tokens to access the application, resources that the application might need to access, and the actions that the application can take.
. App Registration are basically the apps local to the tenant/organization.
The Service Principal Object is what you see under the Enterprise Registration blade in AAD. Every Application Object would create a corresponding Service Principal Object in the Enterprise Registration blade of AAD. A service principal is created in each tenant where the application is used and references the globally unique app object.
Enterprise apps blade shows global apps (other tenants) which can be configured and used within your tenant/organization.
Reference
Set up SAML-based single sign-on for an application
No, there is no specific reason to connect the 2 apps.
The reason for this is by default "App Registration" is wired for OIDC Auth. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/manage-apps/configure-saml-single-sign-on
This need to be done from the Enterprise apps for any SAML related functionality.
We are using VSTS/Azure DevOps to build and deploy our web services to Azure.
In the release step we use the Azure CLI build task to set up the environment for the web service. The build task uses a Service Connection to be authorized to do these actions.
The build task can create web services and deployment slots without issue, but when I try to instruct it to add a new reply url to the Azure AD application the web app uses to authenticate users, i see the following:
az ad app update --id 3e5a96e9-7311-4f92-869b-fbb5bbe8e41f --reply-urls http://mytestapp.azurewebsites.net
ERROR: Insufficient privileges to complete the operation.
The service connection used is an Azure RM service connection using a Service Principal. Is this correct? I'm guessing there is there a permission I need to set on the service principal, but which one?
Jayendran is correct. The user must be a member of Global Admin role in the directory because the Reply URL is added in the app registration.
You may also need to grant permissions to the app itself.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/develop/quickstart-v1-integrate-apps-with-azure-ad
If you're looking to follow the least privileges principle and not assign the highest possible privilege available (as per your comment), I see 3 possible options that could work for you -
Owner for only a specific application (and NOT the Owner/Global Administrator for entire Azure AD)
You can add the user as Owner for only the specific application, which they need to manage (in your case, change reply URL's for).
Pro: Obviously the good thing about this approach is that this user gets to manage the app registration for only this particular application and none of the others in your Azure AD.
How: Go to "App Registrations" in Azure AD and navigate to the specific application. Now click on "Settings" and select "Owners"
Application Administrator Role
This one is a little more generic and a higher privilege in comparison to single application owner, as it gives the user access to manage application registrations for all applications.
Pro: Role is specific to only managing application registrations. It helps in a scenario where all applications need to be managed by this user.
How: Go to "Users" in your Azure AD and then select the specific user. Now go to "Directory Role" and add "Application Administrator Role"
Application Developer Role
This one is very similar to option 2 i.e. "Application administrator". Difference being that "Application developer" gets permissions for only those applications which they are developing, so the registration was done by them.
Pro: Good for user that is about to create and manage registrations for multiple applications.
How: Very similar to option 2 above.
More information about all the available roles and granular permissions that are used by these roles in Microsoft Docs:
Available Roles
I'm wondering about the different types of applications.
What I understand:
If I add an application via app registration an application object and an service principal is created
If I consent to an application, only a service principal is created in my tenant , which is a copy of the application object.
If i understand the screenshot correctly only a service principal appears in my tenant.
However, the fact is if i add an gallery app like twitter i get both i can also open and modify the manifest file like it is "my" application.
For me it looks like im getting also a copy of the application object which source is the app gallery directory as mentioned here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/develop/active-directory-how-applications-are-added
Is this the general case when using apps from the gallery?
Can somebody give some insights on that whats happening in the background?
The Gallery Application is not same as Multi-tenant App which are usually used for Azure B2B.
If I add a gallery App, it will be registered in my tenant and created in my tenant as App for a single-tenant App (Expect it is Native App and it's default a multi-tenant App).
For Multi-tenant App:
It is developed and registered from one organization, If the owner make it to multi-tenant, it just need to be created as a Service principal in other tenant. Also, the owner of this multi-tenant App can use it for Azure AD B2B and can control who can access it, NOT any tenant can use it. The following dig is for Multi-tenant App:
For Gallery App :
It has been developed and published by 3rd party and NOT registered for multi-tenant to let the user's tenant use it. Any AAD tenant can add it and use it .
It means that you can add a Gallery App into your tenant and use it for your own tenant. Not like use a Multi-tenant which has been pre-configured from another tenant. For your tenant, it’s a new Application. So, it will also be registered in your Tenant.
Hope this helps!
I am currently use a multi-tenanted application, and have authentication working for a single azure AD. I would like to have multiple ADs connected to the authentication of the authentication page. How can I do so from within the Azure administrator console?
If I understood your question: you setup a multi-tenant app in the properties of the application in Azure, but currently your application only accepts user of one tenant to sign-in.
If this is the case, then what you have to do is to also adjust your application's code to be multi-tenant. In order to enable multi-tenancy on your application:
Double check you have set Multi-Tenanted property to Yes on your application registration's information in the Azure Portal (by default, applications created in the Azure Portal are configured as single-tenant)
Update your code to send requests to the 'common' endpoint (update the endpoint from https://login.microsoftonline.com/{yourtenant} to https://login.microsoftonline.com/common)
For some platforms, like ASP.NET, you need also to update your code to accept multiple issuers
For more information about multi-tenancy, see: How to sign in any Azure Active Directory (AD) user using the multi-tenant application pattern.
will setting "Application is Multitenat" make my application work with other tenants which are not registered in my azure subscription. which are not part of my active directory. will setting this option work with any #######.onmicrosoft.com. the image you see is from azure active directory web app page. i have register my web application to consume the office 365 api as describe in page https://github.com/OfficeDev/O365-WebApp-MultiTenant
In context of Azure AD:
A single tenant application is only available to users of Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) where this is created.
A multi tenant application is not only available to users of Azure AD where it is created but it also available in other Azure ADs. Users in other Azure ADs have to explicitly grant consent to the application in their Azure AD. When an application is added to another Azure AD, that application essentially becomes a user in that Azure AD as a Service Principal.
A single tenant application means application is hosted specific for a single client. Reasons may be specific business needs OR regulatory compliance OR they can be n numbers of real scenarios you can imagine.
In multi tenant application is available to group of clients. Reasons here can be common business needs, no regulatory compulsion, less cost in supporting maintenance & usage as same application is used for multiple clients.
Practical Example is below (Directly taken as it is from MSDN):
One of the first architectural decisions that the team at Tailspin had to make about how the Surveys application could best support multiple subscribers was whether it should be a single-tenant or multi-tenant application. Figure 1 shows the difference between these approaches at a high-level. The single-tenant model has a separate physical instance of the application for each subscriber, while the multi-tenant model has a single physical instance of the application shared by many subscribers.
It’s important to note that the multi-tenant model still offers separate views of the application’s data to its users. In the Surveys application, Client B must not be able to see or modify Client A’s surveys or data. Tailspin, as the owner of the application, will have full access to all the data stored in the application.
For more details : refer Hosting a Multi-Tenant Application on Windows Azure