Create an app registration to use with Azure Digital Twins

This article describes how to create an Microsoft Entra ID app registration that can access Azure Digital Twins. This article includes steps for the Azure portal and the Azure CLI.

When working with Azure Digital Twins, it's common to interact with your instance through client applications. Those applications need to authenticate with Azure Digital Twins, and some of the authentication mechanisms that apps can use involve an app registration.

The app registration isn't required for all authentication scenarios. However, if you're using an authentication strategy or code sample that does require an app registration, this article shows you how to set one up and grant it permissions to the Azure Digital Twins APIs. It also covers how to collect important values that you'll need to use the app registration when authenticating.

Tip

You may prefer to set up a new app registration every time you need one, or to do this only once, establishing a single app registration that will be shared among all scenarios that require it.

Create the registration

Start by selecting the tab below for your preferred interface.

Portal

Navigate to Microsoft Entra ID in the Azure portal (you can use this link or find it with the portal search bar). Select App registrations from the service menu, and then + New registration.

In the Register an application page that follows, fill in the requested values:

• Name: A Microsoft Entra application display name to associate with the registration.
• Supported account types: Select Accounts in this organizational directory only (Default Directory only - Single tenant).

When you're finished, select the Register button.

When the registration is finished setting up, the portal will redirect you to its details page.

CLI

Start by creating a manifest file, which contains service information that your app registration will need to access the Azure Digital Twins APIs. Afterwards, you'll pass this file into a CLI command to create the registration.

Create manifest

Create a new .json file on your computer called manifest.json. Copy this text into the file:

[
	{
		"resourceAppId": "0b07f429-9f4b-4714-9392-cc5e8e80c8b0",
		"resourceAccess": [
			{
				"id": "4589bd03-58cb-4e6c-b17f-b580e39652f8",
				"type": "Scope"
			}
		]
	}
]

The static value 0b07f429-9f4b-4714-9392-cc5e8e80c8b0 is the resource ID for the Azure Digital Twins service endpoint, which your app registration will need to access the Azure Digital Twins APIs.

Save the finished file.

Cloud Shell users: Upload manifest

If you're using Azure Cloud Shell for this tutorial, you'll need to upload the manifest file you created to the Cloud Shell, so that you can access it in Cloud Shell commands when configuring the app registration. If you're using a local installation of the Azure CLI, you can skip ahead to the next step, Run the creation command.

To upload the file, go to the Cloud Shell window in your browser. Select the "Upload/Download files" icon and choose "Upload".

Navigate to the manifest.json file on your machine and select Open. Doing so will upload the file to the root of your Cloud Shell storage.

Run the creation command

In this section, you'll run a CLI command to create an app registration with the following settings:

• Name of your choice
• Available only to accounts in the default directory (single tenant)
• A web reply URL of http://localhost
• Read/write permissions to the Azure Digital Twins APIs

Run the following command to create the registration. If you're using Cloud Shell, the path to the manifest.json file is @manifest.json.

az ad app create --display-name <app-registration-name> --sign-in-audience AzureADMyOrg --required-resource-accesses "manifest.json"

The output of the command is information about the app registration you've created.

Verify success

You can confirm that the Azure Digital Twins permissions were granted by looking for the following fields in the output of the creation command, under requiredResourceAccess. Confirm their values match what's listed below.

• resourceAccess > id is 4589bd03-58cb-4e6c-b17f-b580e39652f8
• resourceAppId is 0b07f429-9f4b-4714-9392-cc5e8e80c8b0

Collect important values

Next, collect some important values about the app registration that you'll need to use the app registration to authenticate a client application. These values include:

• resource name — When working with Azure Digital Twins, the resource name is http://digitaltwins.azure.net.
• client ID
• tenant ID
• client secret

The following sections describe how to find the remaining values.

Collect client ID and tenant ID

To use the app registration for authentication, you may need to provide its Application (client) ID and Directory (tenant) ID. Here, you'll collect these values so you can save them and use them whenever they're needed.

Portal

The client ID and tenant ID values can be collected from the app registration's details page in the Azure portal:

Take note of the Application (client) ID and Directory (tenant) ID shown on your page.

CLI

You can find the app ID in the output from the az ad app create command that you ran earlier (or bring up the information again using az ad app show).

Look for appId in the result:

You can display your tenant ID in the shell using the az account tenant list command.

Note

This command group is experimental and currently under development.

Collect client secret

Set up a client secret for your app registration, which other applications can use to authenticate through it.

Portal

Start on your app registration page in the Azure portal.

1. Select Certificates & secrets from the registration's menu, and then select + New client secret.

   

2. Enter whatever values you want for Description and Expires, and select Add.

   

3. Verify that the client secret is visible on the Certificates & secrets page with Expires and Value fields.

4. Take note of its Secret ID and Value to use later (you can also copy them to the clipboard with the Copy icons).

   

Important

Make sure to copy the values now and store them in a safe place, as they can't be retrieved again. If you can't find them later, you'll have to create a new secret.

CLI

To create a client secret for your app registration, you'll need your app registration's client ID value that you collected in the previous step. Use the value in the following CLI command to create a new secret:

az ad app credential reset --id <client-ID> --append

You can also add optional parameters to this command to specify a credential description, end date, and other details. For more information about the command and its parameters, see az ad app credential reset documentation.

The output of this command is information about the client secret that you've created.

Copy the value for password to use when you need the client secret for authentication.

Important

Make sure to copy the value now and store it in a safe place, as it cannot be retrieved again. If you can't find the value later, you'll have to create a new secret.

Provide Azure Digital Twins permissions

Next, configure the app registration you've created with permissions to access Azure Digital Twins. There are two types of permissions that are required:

• A role assignment for the app registration within the Azure Digital Twins instance
• API permissions for the app to read and write to the Azure Digital Twins APIs

Create role assignment

In this section, you'll create a role assignment for the app registration on the Azure Digital Twins instance. This role will determine what permissions the app registration holds on the instance, so you should select the role that matches the appropriate level of permission for your situation. One possible role is Azure Digital Twins Data Owner. For a full list of roles and their descriptions, see Azure built-in roles.

Portal

Use these steps to create the role assignment for your registration.

1. Open the page for your Azure Digital Twins instance in the Azure portal.

2. Select Access control (IAM).

3. Select Add > Add role assignment to open the Add role assignment page.

4. Assign the appropriate role. For detailed steps, see Assign Azure roles using the Azure portal.

   Setting	Value
   Role	Select as appropriate
   Members > Assign access to	User, group, or service principal
   Members > Members	+ Select members, then search for the name of the app registration

   

   

   Once the role has been selected, Review + assign it.

Verify role assignment

You can view the role assignment you've set up under Access control (IAM) > Role assignments.

The app registration should show up in the list along with the role you assigned to it.

CLI

Use the az dt role-assignment create command to assign the role (it must be run by a user with sufficient permissions in the Azure subscription). The command requires you to pass in the name of the role you want to assign, the name of your Azure Digital Twins instance, and either the name or the object ID of the app registration.

az dt role-assignment create --dt-name <your-Azure-Digital-Twins-instance> --assignee "<name-or-ID-of-app-registration>" --role "<appropriate-role-name>"

The result of this command is outputted information about the role assignment that's been created for the app registration.

To further verify the role assignment, you can look for it in the Azure portal (switch to the Portal instruction tab).

Provide API permissions

In this section, you'll grant your app baseline read/write permissions to the Azure Digital Twins APIs.

If you're using the Azure CLI and set up your app registration earlier with a manifest file, this step is already done. If you're using the Azure portal to create your app registration, continue through the rest of this section to set up API permissions.

Portal

From the portal page for your app registration, select API permissions from the menu. On the following permissions page, select the + Add a permission button.

In the Request API permissions page that follows, switch to the APIs my organization uses tab and search for Azure digital twins. Select Azure Digital Twins from the search results to continue with assigning permissions for the Azure Digital Twins APIs.

Note

If your subscription still has an existing Azure Digital Twins instance from the previous public preview of the service (before July 2020), you'll need to search for and select Azure Smart Spaces Service instead. This is an older name for the same set of APIs (notice that the Application (client) ID is the same as in the screenshot above), and your experience won't be changed beyond this step.

Next, you'll select which permissions to grant for these APIs. Expand the Read (1) permission and check the box that says Read.Write to grant this app registration reader and writer permissions.

Select Add permissions when finished.

Verify API permissions

On the API permissions page, verify that there's now an entry for Azure Digital Twins reflecting Read.Write permissions:

You can also verify the connection to Azure Digital Twins within the app registration's manifest.json, which was automatically updated with the Azure Digital Twins information when you added the API permissions.

To do so, select Manifest from the menu to view the app registration's manifest code. Scroll to the bottom of the code window and look for the following fields and values under requiredResourceAccess:

• "resourceAppId": "0b07f429-9f4b-4714-9392-cc5e8e80c8b0"
• "resourceAccess" > "id": "4589bd03-58cb-4e6c-b17f-b580e39652f8"

These values are shown in the screenshot below:

If these values are missing, retry the steps in the section for adding the API permission.

CLI

If you're using the CLI, the API permissions were set up earlier as part of the Create the registration step.

You can verify them now using the Azure portal (switch to the Portal instruction tab).

Other possible steps for your organization

It's possible that your organization requires more actions from subscription owners or administrators to finish setting up the app registration. The steps required may vary depending on your organization's specific settings. Choose a tab below to see this information tailored to your preferred interface.

Portal

Here are some common potential activities that an owner or administrator on the subscription may need to do. These and other operations can be performed from the Microsoft Entra App registrations page in the Azure portal.

• Grant admin consent for the app registration. Your organization may have Admin Consent Required globally turned on in Microsoft Entra ID for all app registrations within your subscription. If so, the owner/administrator will need to select this button for your company on the app registration's API permissions page for the app registration to be valid:

  

  • If consent was granted successfully, the entry for Azure Digital Twins should then show a Status value of Granted for (your company)

  

• Activate public client access

• Set specific reply URLs for web and desktop access

• Allow for implicit OAuth2 authentication flows

CLI

Here are some common potential activities that an owner or administrator on the subscription may need to do.

• Grant admin consent for the app registration. Your organization may have Admin Consent Required globally turned on in Microsoft Entra ID for all app registrations within your subscription. If so, the owner/administrator may need to grant additional delegated or application permissions.
• Activate public client access by appending --set publicClient=true to a create or update command for the registration.
• Set specific reply URLs for web and desktop access using the --reply-urls parameter. For more information on using this parameter with az ad commands, see the az ad app documentation.
• Allow for implicit OAuth2 authentication flows using the --oauth2-allow-implicit-flow parameter. For more information on using this parameter with az ad commands, see the az ad app documentation.

For more information about app registration and its different setup options, see Register an application with the Microsoft identity platform.

Next steps

In this article, you set up a Microsoft Entra app registration that can be used to authenticate client applications with the Azure Digital Twins APIs.

Next, read about authentication mechanisms, including one that uses app registrations and others that don't:

• Write app authentication code