I'm curious about how those of you with hybrid Active Directory (AD) and Office 365 setups are handling user account management. Are you still creating accounts and distribution lists on-premises before syncing, or have you moved to creating everything directly in the cloud? I tend to stick to the old school method of using AD for most things, largely because there are instances where the accounts need to be created in AD for specific reasons. What's working for you?
3 Answers
You really need to balance things if you're going hybrid. Cloud-only accounts can’t access any AD resources, so it makes sense to keep accounts on-prem if they need to interact with those resources. I debated a lot about group management; I’ve decided to stick to AD for mail-enabled groups since managing everything in one place is smoother for us. The loss of dynamic groups in Entra has been a discussion point, but for us, the basic needs can be managed adequately right now.
I've shifted to doing everything I can in Entra now. The plan is to completely eliminate on-prem AD by the end of this year or early next year. It’s just more efficient that way!
I'm trying to make the shift to Entra as our primary management tool. Right now, the only on-prem elements we have are the servers themselves. The efficiencies in user management are definitely noticeable. Keeping it all in the cloud makes it easier to handle!
I feel your pain! It’s a juggling act for sure. We can’t just ditch AD yet either, so we keep making things on-prem. I’m running into issues remembering where I created items, though, especially with the cloud resources. Managing everything in AD definitely helps keep things organized!