Before reading ahead in the article to learn more about how you can set up contact sychronization with Azure Active Directory and ContactMonkey, please see below for any IT effort required to achieve this, and specific user permissions required.
IT Effort Required:
- The IT effort required to set up contact synchronization with Azure Active Directory is medium/high. This should take approximately 30 minutes to complete.
Permissions Required:
- An Office 365 or Azure admin who can create a service account & register an enterprise application.
You can automatically sync the recipients of your internal communication into ContactMonkey by integrating your organization's Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), available with our List Management feature. Learn more about List Management.
What is Azure Active Directory (Azure AD)?
Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is a cloud-based identity and access management service provided by Microsoft that helps manage access to applications and resources for users and devices.
Getting Started
You'll need:
- Administrator or Owner level permissions within ContactMonkey. Learn about permissions here.
- An IT teammate with access to your organization’s Azure AD account with the permission to add and configure a new enterprise application
- The login credentials for the service account
How It Works
Step 1: Azure AD admin creates service account in Azure AD
Step 2: Azure AD admin configures enterprise application
Step 3: Connect service account in ContactMonkey
Steps 1 and 2 are completed by your IT team. Reach out to your ContactMonkey account manager to get the steps needed.
You will need to work in conjunction with your IT team on this integration. The effort for your IT team will be low - less than 20 minutes.
Submit Connection Request To Azure AD Administrator
Once a service account is created, you'll need to send a connection request from ContactMonkey to your Azure AD administrator.
To do so, follow these steps:
-
- Log in to your ContactMonkey account
- Click on your display name in the top right-hand corner
- Select Settings from the drop-down list
- Select Integrations from the options on the left
- Under Utility Account, select Sign In
- Enter the login credentials for the service account created in Step 1 by your Azure AD administrator
- Click “Request Approval” to submit the account for approval
At this point, you may see an error message in ContactMonkey that your account could not be connected. This is because it needs to be approved by your Azure AD administrator. Once that is done you’ll be able to connect the account.
Connect Azure Service Account
Before this part can be done, your Azure AD administrator will need to have accepted the connection request from the previous step. Once that's complete, you can connect the Azure service account following these steps:
-
- Log in to your ContactMonkey account
- Click on your display name in the top right-hand corner
- Select Settings from the drop-down list
- Select Integrations from the options on the left
- Under Utility Account, select Sign In
- Enter the login credentials for the service account email and complete the sign in
Once connected, data should start to flow instantly into ContactMonkey.
Map Imported Fields
Now that you've connected Azure AD and ContactMonkey, you can configure which fields you would like to map over.
To do so, follow these steps:
- Log in to your ContactMonkey account
- Click on Directory in the top navigation
- Select Sources in the tabs underneath Directory
- Click the Manage button next to Azure Ad Sync
We have automatically mapped imported fields with ContactMonkey fields. To include more fields, please click on “Include More Fields” link in the first column. You can also click the remove button to skip importing a field.
After clicking next, you will see a summary where you can “Exclude” contacts in certain conditions. This might be used for things like GDPR.
- Example: Exclude if country IS England
Once complete, you will see a summary and the directory will begin syncing. This sync occurs every night to ensure the accuracy of contact information.
List Management does support the use of multiple sources, such as Azure AD sync AND CSV upload. In this scenario, any contacts that exist on both Azure & CSV will only exist once in the directory. If the contact exists in Azure as well as the CSV, Azure takes precedence.
The below table lists out the default fields we map to in ContactMonkey, based on the field names we receive from Azure.
Please note that some fields that are mapped over from Azure will be considered "data sets" in ContactMonkey, which will change your list filtering options when selecting those fields. Please see the below table for more information on what fields are considered to be "data sets" or not.
If you map over a field that is not a data set, you would have access to the standard list filtering options:
Whereas if you map over a field that is considered to be a data set, your filtering options would change where you are now allowed to select from all of the values that were synced over:
| Field Label in ContactMonkey | Azure Sync Field Names | Is Considered a Data Set? | |
| Email Address | 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 |
Troubleshooting
If you're seeing 0 Contacts imported or any errors, try signing out of your Utility Account and attempt the import again.
- Log in to your ContactMonkey account
- Click on your display name in the top right-hand corner
- Select Settings from the drop-down list
- Select Integrations from the options on the left
- Under Utility Account, select Sign Out, and then Sign In with your credentials again
- Click on Directory in the top navigation bar
- Click Sources in the secondary navigation bar
- Click Manage next to the Azure Directory Sync
- Add your Azure Directory Sync
Frequently Asked Questions
This will depend on how your organization is set up. Azure AD relies on a source system that provides the employee contacts. Azure AD can synchronize the contact information stored in Exchange Online to Azure AD. Azure AD can also integrate with other third-party identity providers and applications, which may have their own mechanisms for storing employee contacts.
Once Azure AD is integrated with ContactMonkey, it syncs nightly at 1am EST.
There is no maximum, but we recommend being deliberate with the fields and using ones that will be useful for segmenting your reporting. We recommend thinking about things like department, country, job title, employment status, benefits eligibility, seniority/band.
There's only one mandatory field - "Email". You'll be able to download a template CSV within Integrations in ContactMonkey.
Yes, this is possible! Learn more in Personalizing Your Communications With Merge Fields.
What type of accounts can be retrieved with this sync?
Any account with an assigned license.
Can Manager Attributes be synced?
Not at this time.