I feel like I may have already mentioned this on the Twitter, but I feel like I need to put out a reminder PSA for folks that perhaps were asleep at the terminal or looking at their iPhone playing Pokemon Go… DirSync and AzureAD Sync Service will no longer connect as of 1 January 2018. Only AzureAD Connect will actually be able to connect to AzureAD to allow for imports of projected identities from your on-premises Active Directory or other LDAP based system.

You have been informed.

Why would I be using DirSync you might ask yourself? The primary reason being so that you’ve got all of your users’ identities and attribute information showing up properly within Office 365 (or within other applications that you’re hosting within Azure and need an identity source to pull from). Where do these user identities show up you might ask yourself? Within any contact card or anything that tracks a user.

Moving on… About a year ago, in April 2016, Microsoft deprecated DirSync and Azure AD Sync Services in favor of AzureAD Connect. They did this in a blog post. Some people may have missed it. Others put a sticky note in their cubical and then forgot it when another sticky note was placed on top of it reminding them to renew an SSL certificate.

If you’re not familiar with AzureAD Connect, you probably haven’t logged into your Azure portal (oh, by the way, it’s no longer manage.windowsazure.com, but rather it’s portal.azure.com) or you haven’t logged into the Admin terminal of your Office 365 portal to check on your Directory Synchronization status. Regardless, the time has come to go and figure out what you’re going to do so that your directory synchronization with AzureAD doesn’t go offline and break because of lack of upgrading to what is supported.

How do you go about upgrading to AzureAD Connect? RTM… or read the manual for those that aren’t familiar with acronyms.

Where do I find the manual though?

I’m glad you asked… as a typical search using your favorite search engine probably wouldn’t bring up the results until you clicked on the Search button. . .

Okay, so seriously, where’s the guidance for upgrading?

Check it out here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/connect/active-directory-aadconnect-dirsync-deprecated.

Alternatively, Microsoft has additional documentation as a part of the AzureAD Connect installation documentation on how to upgrade over here –

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/connect/active-directory-aadconnect-dirsync-upgrade-get-started

All in all, it’s pretty simple to upgrade to your basic environments. If you have additional complex rule sets for performing combinations of actions while performing a projection into AzureAD from your on-premises AD, you’ll want to go in and figure out what they are within the MIIS Client so that you can recreate them or validate them within AzureAD Connect.

Good luck and hope that you’re able to make the deadline of midnight on the 31st of December as we ring in the new year!