What is Azure Active Directory recommendations (preview)?
This feature is supported as part of a public preview. For more information about previews, see Supplemental Terms of Use for Microsoft Azure Previews.
Keeping track of all the settings and resources in your tenant can be overwhelming. The Azure AD recommendations (preview) feature helps monitor the status of your tenant so you don't have to. Azure AD recommendations helps ensure your tenant is in a secure and healthy state while also helping you maximize the value of the features available in Azure AD.
The Azure AD recommendations feature provides you personalized insights with actionable guidance to:
- Help you identify opportunities to implement best practices for Azure AD-related features.
- Improve the state of your Azure AD tenant.
- Optimize the configurations for your scenarios.
This article gives you an overview of how you can use Azure AD recommendations. As an administrator, you should review your tenant's recommendations, and their associated resources periodically.
What it is
Azure AD recommendations is the Azure AD specific implementation of Azure Advisor, which is a personalized cloud consultant that helps you follow best practices to optimize your Azure deployments. Azure Advisor analyzes your resource configuration and usage telemetry to recommend solutions that can help you improve the cost effectiveness, performance, reliability, and security of your Azure resources.
Azure AD recommendations uses similar data to support you with the roll-out and management of Microsoft's best practices for Azure AD tenants to keep your tenant in a secure and healthy state. Azure AD recommendations provide a holistic view into your tenant's security, health, and usage.
How it works
On a daily basis, Azure AD analyzes the configuration of your tenant. During this analysis, Azure AD compares the data of a recommendation with the actual configuration of your tenant. If a recommendation is flagged as applicable to your tenant, the recommendation appears in the Recommendations section of the Azure AD Overview area. Recommendations are listed in order of priority so you can quickly determine where to focus first.
Recommendations contain a description, a summary of the value of addressing the recommendation, and a step-by-step action plan. If applicable, impacted resources that are associated with the recommendation are listed, so you can resolve each affected area. If a recommendation doesn't have any associated resources, the impacted resource type is Tenant level. so your step-by-step action plan impacts the entire tenant and not just a specific resource.
Recommendation details
Each recommendation provides the same set of details that explain what the recommendation is, why it's important, and how to fix it.
The Status of a recommendation can be updated manually or automatically. If all resources are addressed according to the action plan, the status will automatically change to Completed the next time the recommendations service runs. The recommendation service runs every 24-48 hours, depending on the recommendation.
The Priority of a recommendation could be low, medium, or high. These values are determined by several factors, such as security implications, health concerns, or potential breaking changes.
- High: Must do. Not acting will result in severe security implications or potential downtime.
- Medium: Should do. No severe risk if action isn't taken.
- Low: Might do. No security risks or health concerns if action isn't taken.
The Impacted resources for a recommendation could be things like applications or users. This detail gives you an idea of what type of resources you'll need to address. The impacted resource could also be at the tenant level, so you may need to make a global change.
The Status description tells you the date the recommendation status changed and if it was changed by the system or a user.
The recommendation's Value is an explanation of why completing the recommendation will benefit you, and the value of the associated feature.
The Action plan provides step-by-step instructions to implement a recommendation. May include links to relevant documentation or direct you to other pages in the Azure AD portal.
What you should know
The following roles provide read-only access to recommendations:
- Reports Reader
- Security Reader
- Global Reader
The following roles provide update and read-only access to recommendations:
- Global Administrator
- Security Administrator
- Security Operator
- Cloud apps Administrator
- Apps Administrator
Any role can enable the Azure AD recommendations preview, but you'll need one of the roles listed above to view or update recommendations. Azure AD only displays the recommendations that apply to your tenant, so you may not see all supported recommendations listed.
Some recommendations have a list of impacted resources associated. This list of resources gives you more context on how the recommendation applies to you and/or which resources you need to address. The only action recorded in the audit log is completing recommendations. Actions taken on a recommendation are collected in the audit log. To view these logs, go to Azure AD > Audit logs and filter the service to "Azure AD recommendations."
The table below provides the impacted resources and links available documentation.
| Recommendation | Impacted resources |
|---|---|
| Convert per-user MFA to Conditional Access MFA | Users |
| Integrate 3rd party applications | Tenant level |
| Migrate applications from AD FS to Azure AD | Users |
| Migrate to Microsoft Authenticator | Users |
| Minimize MFA prompts from known devices | Users |
How to access Azure AD recommendations (preview)
To enable the Azure AD recommendations preview:
Sign in to the Azure portal.
Go to Azure AD > Preview features and enable Azure AD recommendations.
- Recommendations may take a few minutes to sync.
- While anyone can enable the preview feature, you'll need a specific role to view or update a recommendation.
After the preview is enabled, you can view the available recommendations from the Azure AD administration portal. The Azure AD recommendations feature appears on the Overview page of your tenant.
How to use Azure AD recommendations (preview)
Go to Azure AD > Recommendations.
Select a recommendation from the list to view the details, status, and action plan.
Follow the Action plan.
If applicable, right-click on a resource in a recommendation, select Mark as, then select a status.
If you need to manually change the status of a recommendation, select Mark as from the top of the page and select a status.
- Mark a recommendation as Completed if all impacted resources have been addressed.
- Active resources may still appear in the list of resources for manually completed recommendations. If the resource is completed, the service will update the status the next time the service runs.
- If the service identifies an active resource for a manually completed recommendation the next time the service runs, the recommendation will automatically change back to Active.
- Mark a recommendation as Dismissed if you think the recommendation is irrelevant or the data is wrong.
- Azure AD will ask for a reason why you dismissed the recommendation so we can improve the service.
- Mark a recommendation as Postponed if you want to address the recommendation at a later time.
- The recommendation will become Active when the selected date occurs.
- You can reactivate a completed or postponed recommendation to keep it top of mind and reassess the resources.
- Mark a recommendation as Completed if all impacted resources have been addressed.
Continue to monitor the recommendations in your tenant for changes.
Next steps
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