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Tutorial: Customized reports in Azure Data Explorer (ADX) using data from Microsoft Entra ID

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In this tutorial, you learn how to create customized reports in Azure Data Explorer (ADX) using data from Microsoft Entra ID. This tutorial complements other reporting options such as Archive & report with Azure Monitor and entitlement management, which focuses on exporting audit log data for longer retention and analysis. By comparison, exporting Microsoft Entra ID data to Azure Data Explorer provides greater flexibility for creating custom reports by allowing data aggregation from multiple sources with massive scalability, and flexible schema and retention policies.

This report illustrates how to show configuration, users, and access rights exported from Microsoft Entra alongside data exported from other sources, such as applications with SQL databases. You can then use the Kusto Query Language (KQL) to build custom reports based on your organization's requirements. Generating these types of reports within Azure Data Explorer may be especially helpful if you need to retain access data for longer periods, perform ad-hoc investigations, or need to run custom queries on user access data.

You'll take the following steps to create these reports:

  1. Set up Azure Data Explorer in an Azure subscription.
  2. Extract data from Microsoft Entra and third-party databases or applications using PowerShell scripts and MS Graph.
  3. Import the data into Azure Data Explorer, a fast and scalable data analytics service.
  4. Build a custom query using Kusto Query Language.

By the end of this tutorial, you'll have built skills to develop customized views of the access rights and permissions of users across different applications using Microsoft supported tools.

Prerequisites

  • Ensure you have the required permissions. You'll need the right permissions to export the type of Entra data you would like to work with and permissions to save exported JSON files.

    • User data: Global Administrator, Privileged Role Administrator, User Administrator
    • Groups data: Global Administrator, Privileged Role Administrator, Group Administrator
    • Applications/App Role Assignments: Global Administrator, Privileged Role Administrator, Application Administrator, Cloud Application Administrator

  • PowerShell must be set to allow for User.Read.All, Group.Read.All, Application.Read.All, and Directory.Read.All. See Microsoft Graph permissions reference for additional information.

  • Ensure you have write access to the directory where you'll install the required MS Graph PowerShell modules and where the exported Entra data will be saved.

  • Determine what data you want to include in your reports. The scripts in this article provide samples with specific data from users, groups, and applications from Entra. These samples are meant to illustrate the types of reports you can generate with this approach, but your specific reporting needs may vary and require different or additional data.

Step 1: Setup Azure Data Explorer

If you haven’t previously used Azure Data Explorer, you'll need to set this up first. You can create a free cluster without an Azure subscription or credit card or a full cluster which requires an Azure subscription. See Quickstart: Create an Azure Data Explorer cluster and database to get started.

Step 2: Connect to MS Graph and Extract Entra data with PowerShell

Install MS Graph PowerShell modules and Connect to MS Graph.

  1. Install the required MS Graph modules. The following modules are required for this tutorial: Microsoft.Graph.Users, Microsoft.Graph.Groups, Microsoft.Graph.Applications, Microsoft.Graph.DirectoryObjects
   $modules = @('Microsoft.Graph.Users', 'Microsoft.Graph.Groups', 'Microsoft.Graph.Applications', 'Microsoft.Graph.DirectoryObjects') 
   foreach ($module in $modules) { 
   Install-Module -Name $module -Scope CurrentUser -AllowClobber -Force
   }
  1. Import the modules:
  $modules = @('Microsoft.Graph.Users', 'Microsoft.Graph.Groups', 'Microsoft.Graph.Applications', 'Microsoft.Graph.DirectoryObjects') 
  foreach ($module in $modules) { 
  Import-Module -Name $module 
  }
  1. Connect to Microsoft Graph
  Connect-MgGraph -Scopes "User.Read.All", "Group.Read.All", "Application.Read.All", "Directory.Read.All"

This command will prompt you to sign in with your MS Graph credentials. Select Required Permissions: After signing in, you may need to consent to the required permissions if it's your first time connecting or if new permissions are required.

PowerShell Queries to extract data needed to build custom reports in ADX

The following queries extract Entra data from MS Graph using PowerShell and export the data to JSON files which will be imported into Azure Data Explorer in Step 3. There may be multiple scenarios for generating reports with this type of data:

  • An auditor would like to see a report that lists the group members for 10 groups, organized by the members’ department.
  • An auditor would like to see a report of all users who had access to an application between two dates.
  • An admin would like to view all users added to an application from Microsoft Entra ID and SQL databases.

These types of reports aren't built in to Microsoft Entra ID, but you can create these reports yourself by extracting data from Entra and combining them using custom queries in Azure Data Explorer.

For this tutorial, we'll extract Entra data from several areas:

  • User information such as display name, UPN, and job details
  • Group information
  • Application and role assignments

This data set will enable us to perform a broad set of queries around who was given access to an application, role information, and the associated timeframe. Note that these are sample queries, and your data and specific requirements may vary from what is shown here.

Note

Larger tenants may experience throttling / 429 errors that will be handled by the MS Graph module.

In these PowerShell scripts, we'll export selected properties from the Entra objects to JSON files. The data from these exported properties will then be used to generate custom reports in Azure Data Explorer. The specific properties below, were included in these examples, because we're using this data to illustrate the types of reports you can create in Azure Data Explorer. Since your specific reporting needs will likely vary from what is shown below, you should include the specific properties in these scripts that you're interested in viewing in your reports, however you can follow the same pattern shown below to help build your scripts.

We have also included a hard-coded snapshot date below which identifies the data in the JSON file with a specific date and will allow us to keep track of similar data sets over time in Azure Data Explorer. The snapshot date is also useful for comparing changes in data between two snapshot dates.

Get Entra user data

This script will export selected properties from the Entra user object to a JSON file. We'll import this data into Azure Data Explorer in Step 3.

  function Export-EntraUsersToJson { 

  # Define a hash table for property mappings 
   $propertyMappings = @{ 
    "Id" = "ObjectID" 
    "DisplayName" = "DisplayName" 
    "UserPrincipalName" = "UserPrincipalName" 
    "EmployeeId" = "EmployeeId" 
    "UserType" = "UserType" 
    "CreatedDateTime" = "CreatedDateTime" 
    "JobTitle" = "JobTitle" 
    "Department" = "Department" 
    "AccountEnabled" = "AccountEnabled" 

   # Add custom properties as needed 
    "custom_extension" = "CustomExtension" 
   } 
  # Retrieve users with specified properties and create custom objects directly 
   $users = Get-MgUser -Select ($propertyMappings.Keys) -All | ForEach-Object { 
      $userObject = @{} 
      foreach ($key in $propertyMappings.Keys) { 
        if ($key -eq "CreatedDateTime") { 
          # Convert date string directly to DateTime and format it 
          $date = [datetime]::Parse($_.$key) 
          $userObject[$propertyMappings[$key]] = $date.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd") 
        } else { 
          $userObject[$propertyMappings[$key]] = $_.$key 
        } 
      } 
      # Additional properties or transformations 
      $userObject["SnapshotDate"] = "2024-01-11" 
      [pscustomobject]$userObject 
    } 
    # Convert the user data to JSON and save it to a file 
    $users | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 2 | Set-Content ".\EntraUsers.json" 
  } 
  # Execute the function 
  Export-EntraUsersToJson

Get Group data

Generate a JSON file with group names and IDs that will be used to create custom views in ADX. The sample will include all groups, but additional filtering can be included if needed. If you're filtering to only include certain groups, you may want to include logic in your script to check for nested groups.

    # Get all groups and select Id and DisplayName 
    $groups = Get-MgGroup -All | Select-Object Id,DisplayName 
    # Export the groups to a JSON file 
    $groups | ConvertTo-Json | Set-Content ".\EntraGroups.json"

Get Group Membership data

Generate a JSON file with group membership which will be used to create custom views in ADX.

    # Retrieve all groups from Microsoft Entra (Azure AD) 
    $groups = Get-MgGroup -All 
    # Initialize an array to store results 
    $results = @() 
    # Iterate over each group 
    foreach ($group in $groups) { 
      # Extract the group ID 
      $groupId = $group.Id 
      # Get members of the current group and select their IDs 
      $members = Get-MgGroupMember -GroupId $groupId | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Id 
      # Add a custom object with group ID and member IDs to the results array 
      $results += [PSCustomObject]@{ 
        GroupId = $groupId 
        Members = $members 
      } 
      # Pause for a short time to avoid rate limits 
      Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 200 
    } 
    # Convert the results array to JSON format and save it to a file 
    $results | ConvertTo-Json | Set-Content "EntraGroupMembership.json"

Get Application and Service Principal data

Generates JSON file with all applications and the corresponding service principals in the tenant. We'll import this data into ADX in Step 3 which will allow us to generate custom reports related to applications based on this data.

    # Fetch applications and their corresponding service principals, then export to JSON 
    Get-MgApplication -All | ForEach-Object { 
      $app = $_ 
      $sp = Get-MgServicePrincipal -Filter "appId eq '$($app.AppId)'" 
      [pscustomobject]@{ 
        Name        = $app.DisplayName 
        ApplicationId   = $app.AppId 
        ServicePrincipalId = $sp.Id 
      } 
    } | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 10 | Set-Content "Applications.json"

Get AppRole data

Generate a JSON file of all appRoles for enterprise apps in Entra. Once imported to ADX, we'll utilize this data to generate reports involving app role assignments for users.

    # Get a list of all applications, handle pagination manually if necessary 
    $apps = Get-MgApplication -All 
    # Loop through each application to gather the desired information 
    $results = foreach ($app in $apps) { 
      # Get the service principal for the application using its appId 
      $spFilter = "appId eq '$($app.AppId)'" 
      $sp = Get-MgServicePrincipal -Filter $spFilter | Select-Object -First 1 
      # Process AppRoles, if any, for the application 
      $appRoles = if ($app.AppRoles) { 
        $app.AppRoles | Where-Object { $_.AllowedMemberTypes -contains "User" } | 
        Select-Object Id, Value, DisplayName 
      } 
      # Construct a custom object with application and service principal details 
      [PSCustomObject]@{ 
        ApplicationId    = $app.AppId 
        DisplayName     = $app.DisplayName 
        ServicePrincipalId = $sp.Id 
        AppRoles      = $appRoles 
      } 
    } 
    # Export the results to a JSON file 
    $results | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 4 | Out-File 'AppRoles.json'

Get AppRole Assignment data

Generate a JSON file of all app role assignments in the tenant.

    $users = Get-MgUser -All 
    $result = @() 
    foreach ($user in $users) { 
      Get-MgUserAppRoleAssignment -UserId $user.Id | ForEach-Object { 
        # Use the same date formatting approach 
        $createdDateTime = $_.CreatedDateTime -replace "\\/Date\((\d+)\)\\/", '$1' 
        # Convert the milliseconds timestamp to a readable date format if needed 
        $result += [PSCustomObject]@{ 
          AppRoleId      = $_.AppRoleId 
          CreatedDateTime   = $createdDateTime 
          PrincipalDisplayName = $_.PrincipalDisplayName 
          PrincipalId     = $_.PrincipalId 
          ResourceDisplayName = $_.ResourceDisplayName 
          ResourceId      = $_.ResourceId 
          SnapshotDate     = "2024-03-13" # Hard-coded date 
        } 
      } 
    } 
    $result | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 10 | Out-File "AppRoleAssignments.json"

Step 3: Import JSON file data into Azure Data Explorer

In Step 3, we'll import the newly created JSON files for further analysis. If you haven’t yet setup Azure Data Explorer, please see Step 1 above.

Azure Data Explorer is a powerful data analysis tool that is highly scalable and flexible providing an ideal environment for generating customized user access reports. ADX uses the Kusto Query Language (KQL).

Once you have setup a database, follow these steps to get your exported data into ADX.

  1. Right-click on the database name and choose Get Data
  2. Choose New Table and enter the name of the JSON file you're importing, For example, if you're importing EntraUsers.json, name the table EntraUsers. After the first import, the table will already exist, and you can select it as the target table for the import.
  3. Select the JSON file.
  4. ADX will automatically detect the schema and provide a preview. Click Finish to create the table and import the data.
  5. Follow steps 1-4 for each of the JSON files that you generated in Step 1.

Step 4: Use ADX to build custom reports

With the data now available in ADX, you're ready to begin creating customized reports based on your business requirements. The following queries provide examples of common reports, but you can customize these reports to suit your needs and create additional reports.

Example 1: Generate app role assignments for direct and group assignments for a specific snapshot date

This report provides a view of who had what access and when to the target app and can be used for security audits, compliance verification, and understanding access patterns within the organization.

This query targets a specific application within Entra AD and analyzes the role assignments as of a certain date. The query retrieves both direct and group-based role assignments, merging this data with user details from the EntraUsers table and role information from the AppRoles table.

/// Define constants 
let targetServicePrincipalId = "<your service principal-id>"; // Target Service Principal ID 
let targetSnapshotDate = datetime("2024-01-13"); // Target Snapshot Date for the data 

// Extract role assignments for the target Service Principal and Snapshot Date 
let roleAssignments = AppRoleAssignments 
    | where ResourceId == targetServicePrincipalId and startofday(SnapshotDate) == targetSnapshotDate 
    | extend AppRoleIdStr = tostring(AppRoleId); // Convert AppRoleId to string for easier comparison 

// Prepare user data from EntraUsers table 
let users = EntraUsers 
    | project ObjectID, UserPrincipalName, DisplayName, ObjectIDStr = tostring(ObjectID); // Include ObjectID as string for joining 

// Prepare role data from AppRoles table 
let roles = AppRoles 
    | mvexpand AppRoles // Expand AppRoles to handle multiple roles 
    | extend RoleName = AppRoles.DisplayName, RoleId = tostring(AppRoles.Id) // Extract Role Name and ID 
    | project RoleId, RoleName; 
// Process direct assignments 
let directAssignments = roleAssignments 
    | join kind=inner users on $left.PrincipalId == $right.ObjectID // Join with EntraUsers on PrincipalId 
    | join kind=inner roles on $left.AppRoleIdStr == $right.RoleId // Join with roles to get Role Names 
    | project UserPrincipalName, DisplayName, CreatedDateTime, RoleName, AssignmentType = "Direct", SnapshotDate; 

// Process group-based assignments 

let groupAssignments = roleAssignments 
    | join kind=inner EntraGroupMembership on $left.PrincipalId == $right.GroupId // Join with Group Membership 
    | mvexpand Members // Expand group members 
    | extend MembersStr = tostring(Members) // Convert member ID to string 
    | distinct MembersStr, CreatedDateTime, AppRoleIdStr, SnapshotDate // Get distinct values 
    | join kind=inner users on $left.MembersStr == $right.ObjectIDStr // Join with EntraUsers for user details 
    | join kind=inner roles on $left.AppRoleIdStr == $right.RoleId // Join with roles for role names 
    | project UserPrincipalName, DisplayName, CreatedDateTime, RoleName, AssignmentType = "Group", SnapshotDate; 

// Combine results from direct and group-based assignments 
directAssignments 
| union groupAssignments

Example 2: Build Basic Auditor Report with Entra data showing who had access to an app between these two dates

This report provides a view of who had what access to the target app between two dates and can be used for security audits, compliance verification, and understanding access patterns within the organization.

This query targets a specific application within Microsoft Entra ID and analyzes the role assignments between two dates. The query retrieves direct role assignments from the AppRoleAssignments table and merges this data with user details from the EntraUsers table and role information from the AppRoles table.

// Set the date range and service principal ID for the query 
let startDate = datetime('2024-01-01'); 
let endDate = datetime('2024-03-14'); 
let servicePrincipalId = "<your service principal-id>"; 

// Query AppRoleAssignments for the specified service principal within the date range 
AppRoleAssignments 
| where ResourceId == servicePrincipalId and 
    todatetime(CreatedDateTime) between (startDate .. endDate) 

// Extend AppRoleId to a string for joining 
| extend AppRoleIdStr = tostring(AppRoleId) 

// Project the necessary fields for the join with EntraUsers and AppRoles 
| project PrincipalId, AppRoleIdStr, CreatedDateTime 

// Join with EntraUsers to get user details 
| join kind=inner (EntraUsers | project UserPrincipalName, DisplayName, ObjectID) on $left.PrincipalId == $right.ObjectID 

// Join with AppRoles to get the role display names 
| join kind=inner ( 
  AppRoles | mvexpand AppRoles | project RoleIdStr = tostring(AppRoles.Id), RoleDisplayName = tostring(AppRoles.DisplayName) 
) on $left.AppRoleIdStr == $right.RoleIdStr 

// Final projection of the report with the current date and time 
| project UserPrincipalName, DisplayName, RoleDisplayName, CreatedDateTime, ReportDate = now()

Example 3: Get added users to an app between two data snapshot dates

These reports provide a view of which users were given an app role assignment to the target application between two dates. These reports can be used to track changes in app access over time.

This query targets a specific application within Microsoft Entra ID and changes to the role assignments between a start and end date.

// Define the date range and service principal ID for the query 

let startDate = datetime("2024-03-01"); 
let endDate = datetime("2024-03-14"); 
let servicePrincipalId = "<your service principal-id>"; 
let earlierDate = startDate; // Update this to your specific earlier date 

AppRoleAssignments 
| where SnapshotDate < endDate and ResourceId == servicePrincipalId
| project PrincipalId, AppRoleId2 = tostring(AppRoleId), CreatedDateTime 
| join kind=anti ( 
    AppRoleAssignments 
    | where SnapshotDate < earlierDate and ResourceId == servicePrincipalId 
    | project PrincipalId, AppRoleId1 = tostring(AppRoleId) 
) on PrincipalId 
| join kind=inner (EntraUsers) on $left.PrincipalId == $right.ObjectID 
| join kind=inner (AppRoles 
                   | mvexpand AppRoles 
                   | project AppRoleId=tostring(AppRoles.Id), RoleDisplayName=tostring(AppRoles.DisplayName) 
                  ) on $left.AppRoleId2 == $right.AppRoleId 
| project UserPrincipalName, DisplayName, RoleDisplayName, CreatedDateTime, PrincipalId, Change = "Added"

Example 4: Combine App Assignments from an Entra and a second source (for example, SQL export) to create a report of all users (Entra assignments and local assignments) who had access to Salesforce between two dates

This report illustrates how you can combine data from two separate systems to create custom reports in ADX. It aggregates data about users, their roles, and other attributes from two systems into a unified format for analysis or reporting.

// Define the date range and service principal ID for the query 

let startDate = datetime("2023-06-01"); 
let endDate = datetime("2024-03-13"); 
let servicePrincipalId = "<your service principal-id>"; 

// Pre-process AppRoleAssignments with specific filters and projections 
let processedAppRoleAssignments = AppRoleAssignments 
    | where ResourceId == servicePrincipalId and todatetime(CreatedDateTime) between (startDate .. endDate) 
    | extend AppRoleId = tostring(AppRoleId) 
    | project PrincipalId, AppRoleId, CreatedDateTime, ResourceDisplayName; // Exclude DeletedDateTime and keep ResourceDisplayName 

// Pre-process AppRoles to get RoleDisplayName for each role 
let processedAppRoles = AppRoles 
    | mvexpand AppRoles 
    | project AppRoleId = tostring(AppRoles.Id), RoleDisplayName = tostring(AppRoles.DisplayName); 

// Main query: Process EntraUsers by joining with processed role assignments and roles 
EntraUsers 
    | join kind=inner processedAppRoleAssignments on $left.ObjectID == $right.PrincipalId // Join with role assignments 
    | join kind=inner processedAppRoles on $left.AppRoleId == $right.AppRoleId // Join with roles to get display names 

    // Summarize to get the latest record for each unique combination of user and role attributes 
    | summarize arg_max(AccountEnabled, *) by UserPrincipalName, DisplayName, tostring(EmployeeId), Department, JobTitle, ResourceDisplayName, RoleDisplayName, CreatedDateTime 

    // Final projection of relevant fields including source indicator and report date 
    | project UserPrincipalName, DisplayName, EmployeeId=tostring(EmployeeId), Department, JobTitle, AccountEnabled=tostring(AccountEnabled), ResourceDisplayName, RoleDisplayName, CreatedDateTime, Source="EntraUsers", ReportDate = now() 

// Union with processed salesforceAssignments to create a combined report 
| union ( 
    salesforceAssignments 

    // Project fields from salesforceAssignments to align with the EntraUsers data structure 
    | project UserPrincipalName = UserName, DisplayName = Name, EmployeeId = tostring(EmployeeId), Department, JobTitle, AccountEnabled = "N/A", ResourceDisplayName = AppName, RoleDisplayName = Role, CreatedDateTime, Source = "salesforceAssignments", ReportDate = now() 
)

Next steps