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List Management - Connecting Azure AD to Sync Employee Contacts

Automatically sync your employee directory from Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) into ContactMonkey with the List Management feature. This integration keeps your contact information up-to-date with nightly synchronization.

What is Azure AD?
Azure Active Directory is Microsoft's cloud-based identity and access management service that manages user access to applications and resources.

Before You Begin

Required Permissions:

  • In ContactMonkey: Owner or Administrator role
  • In Azure: Office 365 or Azure admin who can create service accounts and register enterprise applications

IT Effort: Medium/High (approximately 30 minutes)

What You'll Need:

  • Access to your organization's Azure AD account
  • IT administrator to complete steps 1-2
  • Service account login credentials
  • Technical documentation

How Azure AD Sync Works

Step 1: Azure AD admin creates a service account
Step 2: Azure AD admin configures the enterprise application
Step 3: ContactMonkey Owner/Administrator connects the service account in ContactMonkey

The technical documentation should be provided to IT to complete steps 1 and 2.

Connect Your Azure AD Account

1. Submit Connection Request

  1. Click your name at the top right of your ContactMonkey dashboard
  2. Click Settings
  3. Click Integrations
  4. Under Graph Utility Account, click Sign In
  5. Enter the service account credentials created by your Azure AD admin
  6. Click Request Approval

Note: You may see an error message that the account couldn't be connected. This is normal—your Azure AD administrator needs to approve the request first.

2. Complete the Connection

After your Azure AD administrator approves the request:

  1. Return to Settings → Integrations
  2. Under Graph Utility Account, click Sign In
  3. Enter the service account credentials and complete sign-in

Data will begin syncing immediately once connected.

Configure Field Mapping

Choose which employee data fields to import from Azure AD into ContactMonkey.

  1. Click Directory at the top of your ContactMonkey dashboard
  2. Click Sources
  3. Locate the Azure Active Directory tile and click Configure
  4. Review the automatically mapped fields
  5. Click Include more fields to import additional information
  6. Click the X next to any fields you don't want to import
  7. Click Import Contacts
Screen Recording 2026-01-05 at 09.47.20.58 AM

Exclude Contacts (Optional)

After clicking Import Contacts, you can exclude contacts based on specific conditions (useful for GDPR compliance).

Example: Exclude if country IS England

Sync Schedule and Behavior

  • Frequency: Syncs automatically every night at 1am EST
  • Multiple Sources: Azure AD sync can work alongside CSV uploads
  • Duplicate Handling: If a contact exists in both sources, Azure AD data takes precedence
  • Account Types: Only accounts with assigned licenses are synced

Understanding Data Sets

What are Data Sets?
Fields marked as Data Set: Yes provide a drop-down selection when filtering, making it easier to create accurate lists.

Non-Data Set Fields
Fields marked as Data Set: No allow text entry with operators like "equals", "contains", "does not contain", etc.

Why does this matter?
When you create filtered lists, data set fields show all possible values in a dropdown, preventing typos and speeding up list creation.

Field Mapping Reference

Field Label in ContactMonkey

Azure Sync Field Names

Data Set?
Email Address (mandatory field) mail No
✨ Phone Number (Azure) mobilePhone No
✨ Business Phones businessPhones No
✨ Fax Number faxNumber No
Display Name displayName No
Employee Id employeeId No
Extension Attribute 1 through 15 extensionAttribute (1 through 15) No
Given Name givenName No
On Premises Domain Name onPremisesDomainName No
On Premises Sam Account Name onPremisesSamAccountName No
On Premises Security Identifier onPremisesSecurityIdentifier No
On Premises User Principal Name onPremisesUserPrincipalName No
Postal Code postalCode No
Street Address streetAddress No
Surname surname No
User Principal Name userPrincipalName No
City city Yes
Company Name companyName Yes
Country country Yes
Creation Type creationType Yes
Department department Yes
Employee Type employeeType Yes
External User State externalUserState Yes
Job Title jobTitle Yes
Office Location officeLocation Yes
Preferred Data Location preferredDataLocation Yes
Preferred Language preferredLanguage Yes
State state Yes
Usage Location usageLocation Yes
User Type userType Yes
Time Zone <must use extension attribute> Yes

✨ Phone numbers must be in E.164 format - learn more here.

Troubleshooting

Problem: 0 contacts imported or sync errors

Solution:

  1. Click Settings → Integrations
  2. Under Graph Utility Account, click Sign Out
  3. Sign back in with your credentials
  4. Click Directory → Sources
  5. Click Manage in the Azure Active Directory tile
  6. Reimport contacts

Frequently Asked Questions

Where does Azure AD get employee contact information?
This depends on your organization's setup. Azure AD can sync from Exchange Online, integrate with third-party identity providers, or pull from other systems that store employee contacts.

Can I personalize emails with imported fields?
Yes! Click here to learn more.

How many fields can I import?
There's no maximum, but we recommend choosing fields useful for segmentation like department, country, job title, employment status, and seniority level.

Can Manager Attributes be synced?
Not at this time.

See Also

 

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