How to use Graph Change Notifications with an Entra External Id tenant?

Question

How to use Graph Change Notifications with an Entra External Id tenant?

DE 0

I spent a lot of time getting Graph Change Notification Subscriptions for User changes setup to work with Azure Event Hubs.

However, I got the following error when finally calling the subscription creation - and it was not mentioned ANYWHERE (at least obvious) that Entra External Id can't trigger Graph Change Notifications for Users.

Entra External id StartReceivingChangesOnTenant can not be initiated on a CIAM Tenant for service AadGraphNotifications

This is really concerning as being able to trigger off of user changes is incredibly important and is a really big hole in the offering.

Getting ready to go all-in leveraging Entra External Id for a very large consumer application but this is bringing things to a screeching halt.

Are there any ways to enable this, or alternatives, work arounds?

1 answer

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Answer 1

Gudivada Adi Navya Sri 21,080 Moderator

Hi @DE

Thank you for posting this in Microsoft Q&A.

I understand that you’ve put in a lot of effort to set up Graph Change Notifications with Azure Event Hubs, only to encounter an unexpected limitation-Microsoft Entra External ID does not support user change notifications. I understand how disappointing this can be. Apologies for the inconvenience.

As of now, the Microsoft Graph API change notifications feature is not available in Microsoft Entra External tenants.

You can find a list of available features in Microsoft Entra External tenants here: Microsoft Entra External ID - Supported Features

Unfortunately, there is currently no workaround for enabling this feature in Microsoft Entra External tenants.

I would request you to please share the feedback on our feedback channel https://feedback.azure.com/d365community/forum/22920db1-ad25-ec11-b6e6-000d3a4f0789Which would be open for the user community to upvote & comment on. This allows our product teams to effectively prioritize your request against our existing feature backlog and gives insight into the potential impact of implementing the suggested feature.

Hope this helps. Do let us know if you any further queries.

If this answers your query, do click Accept Answer and Yes for was this answer helpful. And, if you have any further query do let us know.

DE 0 Reputation points

2025-02-25T04:40:33.9266667+00:00

Nowhere on the page did it mention the change notifications were not supported. There was no category. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/external-id/customers/concept-supported-features-customers
Gudivada Adi Navya Sri 21,080 Reputation points Moderator

2025-02-25T05:43:50.95+00:00

Hi @DE

Thank you for following up on this.

I understand your concern that the document does not specifically categorize change notifications. The document only lists the supported features in Microsoft Entra External Tenant.
DE 0 Reputation points

2025-02-25T13:10:10.9033333+00:00

That's not quite true. The page highlights important items to note, not every capability. It doesn't say for example that it allows you to create users. Not having the ability to use change notifications is a key thing to highlight.
Shweta Mathur 30,431 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2025-03-03T05:27:12.9+00:00

Hi DE ,

Thanks for reaching out.

As Navya mentioned this feature is not supported according to our supporting features documentation.

I understand that you are looking for clearer instructions on this. We are currently checking internally with our authors to include this information in our documentation.

We will proceed with updating the documentation once we receive the necessary internal approvals.

Thank you for your patience throughout the process.

Thanks,

Shweta
Gudivada Adi Navya Sri 21,080 Reputation points Moderator

2025-03-04T13:21:12.56+00:00

Hi DE

As @Shweta Mathur mentioned, this feature is not supported as per our documentation. We are working internally to update the documentation for clarity once we receive the necessary approvals.

If this information helped address your question, please accept the answer. Let me know if there’s anything else I can assist you with.
DE 0 Reputation points

2025-05-21T01:29:02.8733333+00:00

Respectfully Navya and Shewta - the page you reference does not give features. All it does is give comparisons of some of the things "that are different" between versions. Meaning that this should actually be called out on that page. Nowhere on that page is it called out there as a different 3 months later.

The Graph Change Notifications page itself now mentions this lack of capability, so if this post resulted in that being mentioned on that page, then at least some good has come.

A baffling lack of capability that was not called out anywhere previously and very disappointing as it wasted a month of development architecture and effort.

It is still poor documentation as it does not call out anywhere why this wouldn't be a capability given it is so core to the offering's value.
SrideviM 5,845 Reputation points Moderator

2025-05-21T06:49:15.0966667+00:00

Hello DE,

Thank you for your feedback.

You're right that the earlier documentation did not clearly state this limitation, and we understand how frustrating it must be to encounter this after investing significant time building around a core feature. The ability to track user changes is important, and this should have been clearly documented from the start.

We sincerely regret that this wasn’t made clear earlier. Based on the GitHub commit history:

The Microsoft Graph documentation was updated after your original post to include the following clarification:

Thank you again for highlighting this. Your input helped improve the clarity of the documentation and will benefit others as well.
DE 0 Reputation points

2025-05-21T07:00:13.0033333+00:00

@SrideviM Thanks. How best to follow up with product folks and/or product feature requests? This is a critical item for Entra External ID being widely useful. Without it, there is a significant hole, as taking action based on user creation or updates is a basic need and trying to do it as a hack really isn't good when it is supposed to be a standard feature.

MS is supposed to be focusing and featuring Entra External ID as a way for consumer-focused app development but this kind of issue is sabotaging progress. Thanks
Anonymous

2025-05-21T11:39:08.89+00:00

Hello @DE,

I completely understand the concern and its valid. The inability to track user creation or updates in Entra External ID is a significant limitation for many real-world use cases, especially for apps that rely on event-driven workflows.

Hence, I recommend to share your feedback on Ideas · Community with proper business justification for the feature request.

Please share the link here after raising the feedback request, so that I can check with the product team internally and process it.

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How to use Graph Change Notifications with an Entra External Id tenant?

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