Suggestions for Naming Convention in App Registrations (External Entra ID)

Question

Hi everyone, curious to know how other Entra ID Admins have named their "App Registrations" and if they have some sort of naming convention they found useful which they could share or suggest?

I was thinking something along the lines of:

Example Format:

<organization/team> - <workload, application, or project> - <app scope> - <environment> - <instance>

Examples:

contoso-abc-user_read-prod-01

contoso-abc-user_read_all-prod-01

contoso-xyz-user_read_write-prod-01

contoso-abc-directory_read_write_all-qa-02

P.S. I am not referring to the Azure Resource Naming Convention :)

Answer 1

That's a great question and one that a lot of Entra ID admins grapple with, especially as the number of app registrations grows and the importance of lifecycle management, auditing, and automation increases.

Your proposed format is actually quite clean and aligns with the approach I've been using. I also tend to use the following naming elements for app registrations:

Element	Description	Example
org or team	Your organization or the owning team	contoso, hr, it, billing
app name / workload	The actual purpose, system, or integration name	crm, timesheet, invoicing
scope/type	What the app does or what API access it needs	user_read, directory_rw, graph_client
env	Environment indicator	dev, qa, prod, uat
instance (optional)	For multiple copies or versions	01, 02, int, alt

You might consider the following format (just a slight refinement comparing with the one you originally suggested):

<org/team>-<workload/app>-<access_scope>-<environment>[-<instance>]

Examples:

• contoso-crm-user_read-prod
• contoso-hr-graph_rw-qa-02
• finance-tax-reporting-client_creds-dev
• salesforce-api-access-token-exchange-prod
• intune-device-mgmt-graph_rw-prod-01

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hth

Marcin