User and group management

The Office 365 Provisioner synchronizes users and groups from your datastore to Office 365. The following describes the behavior of each provisioning capability.

You can configure the following capabilities and specify which users to provision when you get to the Configure outbound provisioning part of the setup process.

Synchronizing existing users

PingFederate synchronizes users based on the userPrincipalName attribute in Office 365. If a user already exists in your datastore and Office 365, mapping this attribute correctly links the two records together.

For example:

In Office 365, Janet’s userPrincipalName is bjensen@example.com.
In your datastore, Janet’s mail is bjensen@example.com.
On the Attribute Mapping tab of your provisioning connection configuration, map the userPrincipalName attribute to mail.
When the provisioning connector runs, the datastore user is provisioned with a userPrincipalName of bjensen@example.com. That matches Janet’s existing userPrincipalName in Office 365, so her information in the datastore is synchronized to her Office 365 account.

User provisioning

PingFederate provisions users when any of the following happens:

A user is added to the datastore group or filter that is targeted by the provisioning connector.
A user with disabled status is added to the datastore group or filter that is targeted by the provisioning connector, and the Provision disabled users provisioning option is enabled. This feature is not available in all provisioning connector versions.

You can define which users PingFederate targets for provisioning on the Source Location tab of your provisioning connection configuration.

User updates

PingFederate updates users when a user attribute changes in your datastore.

You can define which attributes PingFederate monitors for changes on the Attribute Mapping tab of your provisioning connection configuration.

User deprovisioning

PingFederate deprovisions users when any of the following happens:

A user is deleted from the user store.
A user is disabled in the user store.
A user is removed from the datastore group or filter that is targeted by the provisioning connector.

The Remove User Action setting in the connection configuration determines whether the deprovisioning action disables or deletes the user.

Synchronizing existing groups

PingFederate synchronizes groups from the datastore to the target service based on the group name.

For example:

In Office 365, there is a group is named Accounting.
In your datastore, there is a group with a CN of Accounting.
When the provisioning connector runs, the two groups are synchronized.

Group provisioning

PingFederate provisions groups when a group is added to the datastore filter that is targeted by the provisioning connector.

You can define which groups PingFederate targets for provisioning and monitors for changes on the Source Location tab in your provisioning connection configuration.

Group name updates

PingFederate renames groups when they are renamed in the datastore.

Group membership updates

PingFederate updates group memberships when memberships change in the datastore, whether the change is in the group’s properties or a user’s properties.

Group memberships in the datastore overwrite the group memberships in Office 365.

Group deletion

PingFederate deletes groups when any of the following happens:

The group is deleted in the datastore.
The group is removed from the datastore group or filter that is targeted by the provisioning connector.

Group deletions are permanent and cannot be undone.