Use AD security groups to automatically create MS Teams memberships
How can companies maintain control over access rights in Microsoft Teams without drowning in a sea of manual maintenance processes? Active Directory (AD) security groups provide a proven basis for this. By using these existing structures, access rights can be mapped consistently and without duplicating maintenance efforts in Microsoft Teams.
However, synchronising AD and M365 groups manually is a time-consuming and error-prone process. Solutions such as DynamicSync make it possible to automate this process, ensuring seamless, secure and scalable integration into hybrid IT environments.
Index
Why AD security groups are useful for MS Teams
Using local AD groups for Microsoft Teams offers companies several advantages. In many organisations, AD groups are structures that have grown over years, and already contain proven and clearly defined access rights and user assignments. These established groups ensure consistent rights management, which can be mapped in Microsoft Teams without additional effort.
Furthermore, the central administration of users and groups in Active Directory remains in place, providing administrators with a familiar and efficient environment. By using existing groups, there is no need to maintain duplicate user structures in AD and M365. This not only saves valuable administrative time, but also ensures maximum security – every change to user permissions in AD is automatically and seamlessly applied to the cloud services.
Missing automation in Entra ID
Many companies that rely on Active Directory (AD) want to continue using their existing group memberships in the cloud, especially for collaboration in MS Teams. However, this is where the native functionality of Microsoft Entra ID reaches its limits:
- A direct synchronization of AD security groups to M365 groups, which are required for teams, is not possible.
- Instead, administrators have to maintain group memberships manually.
For companies and managed services providers with many end customers, manually maintaining team memberships that are supposed to be based on AD groups quickly becomes a nightmare. Every change in AD groups – be it a new employee, a change of department or the removal of a user – has to be maintained twice: once locally and once in Microsoft 365.
This time-consuming, error-prone process ties up resources, causes frustration and increases the risk of access rights being mismanaged. Without automation, you have no choice – the endless ‘manual work’ quickly becomes a burden, both for efficiency and for security.
Automation with DynamicSync
Automatic synchronization of group members
Our DynamicSync service offers a solution to this problem:
- The tool automates the synchronization of AD security groups with Microsoft 365 groups, enabling the continued use of existing group structures in Microsoft Teams.
- Thanks to DynamicSync, it is no longer necessary to manually manage group memberships in the cloud.
- DynamicSync recognizes changes in AD groups, such as new members or deleted users, and automatically transfers them to the corresponding Microsoft 365 groups. This ensures that Teams memberships are always up to date and correct.
DynamicSync integrates with existing IT infrastructures and requires neither extensive customization nor complex scripting. Once set up, the tool ensures continuous synchronization in the background. This has several advantages:
- Time savings: automation reduces the manual effort required to manage group memberships.
- Consistency: Changes in AD groups are applied in Microsoft 365 and Teams.
- Security: Updated group structures minimize security risks due to outdated access rights.
- Scalability: DynamicSync is suitable for companies with a large number of security groups, as it can efficiently manage even complex structures.
- Easy implementation: The tool can be easily integrated into existing environments and does not require specialized knowledge.
Integration in hybrid environments
DynamicSync is suitable for companies with hybrid IT environments in which on-premises AD structures continue to play an important role. In such scenarios, DynamicSync acts as a bridge between the on-premises infrastructure and the cloud. The tool enables dynamic synchronization that not only transfers existing group memberships but also automatically updates changes.
In DynamicSync, select a source group and a target group in Entra ID to synchronize the members.
Hybrid use ensures that on-premises IT systems and cloud services remain connected. This allows administrators to maintain centralized user and group management in AD while using Microsoft Teams as a collaboration platform in the cloud. DynamicSync reduces the complexity of hybrid operations and prevents potential inconsistencies between on-premises and cloud-based environments.
Challenges of manually maintaining AD groups in Microsoft Teams
Significant additional work due to double administration
Without DynamicSync, using AD groups in the cloud means a significant amount of additional work for administrators. Admins have to go through several steps to correctly implement changes when maintaining Teams memberships manually:
- First, they check the affected groups in the on-premises AD environment to determine current user lists and changes.
- Then they log in to the Microsoft 365 admin center and navigate to the desired Microsoft 365 groups connected to Teams.
- There they manually adjust the memberships by adding or removing users.
This process not only requires precise knowledge of the current user structures, but also double maintenance. Every change in the local AD group must be tracked separately in the cloud system. This process quickly becomes confusing and time-consuming, especially in larger organizations where members and permissions change frequently. In addition, there is a risk of errors, such as forgotten updates or accidentally deleted members, which can affect the integrity of the teams groups.
In addition, this process unnecessarily burdens IT departments, which could instead be focusing on other important tasks. Manual maintenance quickly becomes an impractical solution, especially in dynamic business environments.
Security risks due to outdated Teams memberships
If users remain members of Microsoft Teams even though they are no longer authorized, significant security risks and organizational problems arise. Such outdated memberships mean that former employees or internal users continue to have access to sensitive documents, internal discussions and protected data. This can not only endanger confidential information, but also violate compliance regulations that govern access to certain data.
In addition, there is an increased risk that these unnecessary access rights will be exploited by attackers, for example through compromised accounts or social engineering attacks. From an organizational point of view, superfluous members also make effective collaboration more difficult, as team structures become confusing and the overview of active users is lost. Regular and correct maintenance of team memberships is therefore important to comply with security standards and ensure productive teamwork.
Summary
Without additional solutions such as DynamicSync, using AD groups in Microsoft Teams involves a considerable amount of work. Every change to group memberships, such as when departments change, new employees are hired or employees leave, requires manual updates in Microsoft 365 groups. This can quickly lead to inconsistencies, especially in companies with many users or complex team structures.
DynamicSync automates the synchronization of on-premises AD security groups with Microsoft 365 groups, making them available for use in Microsoft Teams. The tool detects changes in the AD groups, such as the addition or removal of members, and automatically transfers them to the corresponding cloud groups. This eliminates the need for manual maintenance of group memberships. DynamicSync enables integration into existing hybrid IT environments and ensures up-to-date, consistent and secure access rights in Microsoft Teams.
Dynamic groups in Entra ID – Find out more
DynamicSync is an automation software for cloud groups from FirstAttribute AG. As a pure cloud service (SaaS), DynamicSync specializes in dynamic and automatic group synchronization in
Entra ID.
In addition to the free online demo, our friendly staff are also available to answer your questions by phone. Call us on +49 81 969 984 330.