Common Use Cases and Benefits
- Rick Munoz
The capabilities of the Entra ID Connect app for JSM can support many common use cases and processes involving the management of Entra ID groups and users. Here are a few examples:
Employee Onboarding Automation
You could have a customer portal form that enables managers to ‘add’ new employees, triggering an automation rule that calls the app’s Service API to create a new Entra ID account for that new employee.
If you have an HR system that is the system of record for employees, you could have that system create a service request to JSM when a new employee gets hired that invokes the same Entra ID creation.
An automation rule could add a new employee to the appropriate Entra ID groups based on their job title or department, giving them access to specific applications or services.
Employee Offboarding Automation
On the flip side of onboarding, automation rules can also be called the service API to perform offboarding actions. For example, an automation rule could automatically disable a user’s account on their termination date.
Organizational Transfers
The automation rules can also support automatically adding or removing a user from specific Entra ID groups on internal transfers between departments or business units.
Self-service User Profile Updates
Depending on organizational policies, end users could be provided a portal form allowing them to update some of their Entra ID profile information without requiring a service desk person.
Service Desk invoked Password Reset
In a typical service desk scenario, users call to request their passwords be reset. Automation rules and other configurations can be set up without providing direct access to Entra ID to Service Desk agents, thereby enhancing security.
Self-service Password Reset
Also, depending on your organizational policies, you could allow managers to request that a team member's password be reset automatically without taking up a Service Desk Agent’s time.
Adding approvals and audit trails
In all the above use cases, the automation rules and associated customizations can incorporate approval paths to help ensure review and control over the requests before the rules call the API to make the Entra ID updates.
In addition to JSM's built-in logging mechanisms, additional steps, such as adding a relevant comment to the request issue, can be taken to track what Entra ID changes have been made and why.
Benefits from using the Entra ID Connect App
The above use cases, as well as ones, can help you realize several benefits to your organization, including:
Decreasing the workload on your Service Desk (often referred to as realizing “shift-left” benefits.)
Ability to respond faster to common requests, sometimes from hours to minutes.
Improving the quality, tracking, and visibility of Entra ID changes
Avoiding “loose end” security issues (e.g., forgetting to disable a user account)
Adding self-serve options for Employees (i.e., JSM ‘customers’)
Enrich Jira issues/tickets with information imported from Entra ID