More than 60 days - B2B account not in GAL or Distribution List

Question

Can a B2B account that is synced from Active Directory be published in the GAL?

I have three different support active calls with Microsoft and they cant answer this question.

We have external contractors that access our systems. Appropriately we create their accounts in Active Directory. These users end up with their external email address in Active Directory and belong to several distribution list groups. After the sync to Azure, we appropriately convert the accounts to b2b and send them an invite. The information completely in Entra is correct. Their external email is reflected in the distribution list group and all should be good. However, if you access Entra from admin.microsoft.com, Microsoft 365 admin center, the external email is not reflected on user properties and also not reflected in the distribution list. Furthermore, the global address list is not populated.

We have set many different variations of attributes in Active Directory to attempt to get these emails reflected in the global address list. Nothing has worked and Microsoft pretty much has zero response and as I stated under their direction opened up three different tickets.

Basic question, by design can a b2b account synced from Active Directory be reflected in the GAL?

Our legacy method in doing this was to create a contact and not utilize the external email address in the AD User Object. However, this will not allow for creating the correct b2b account as it should be created.

Answer 1

Hi @Evans, Kyle ,

Welcome to post our Q&A forum!

To answer your question, by design, a b2b account synced from Active Directory can be reflected in the GAL. However, it seems that you are experiencing issues with the GAL not being populated with the external email addresses of contractors who have been converted to b2b accounts and invited to your system. This could be due to a number of reasons, such as incorrect attribute settings or synchronization issues.

I recommend that you try the following steps to troubleshoot the issue:

1. Verify that the external email addresses of contractors are correctly set in Active Directory.
2. Check the synchronization status of the Azure AD Connect tool to ensure that it is working correctly.
3. Verify that the external email addresses of contractors are correctly set in Azure AD.
4. Check the synchronization status of the Azure AD Connect tool to ensure that it is working correctly.
5. Verify that the external email addresses of contractors are correctly set in Exchange Online.
6. Check the synchronization status of the Exchange Online tool to ensure that it is working correctly.

Grant locally managed partner accounts access to cloud resources using Microsoft Entra B2B collaboration

If none of these steps resolve the issue, I recommend that you contact Microsoft support again and provide them with detailed information about the issue, including any error messages that you may have received. They should be able to help you resolve the issue.

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