In this episode, I sit down with Chetan Desai, a Principal Product Manager on the Microsoft Identity Governance team. We dive deep into a side of Entra that many admins never see: the critical "first mile problem" of getting identities into your system in the first place.

We talk about the evolution from on-prem scripts and MIM to specific connectors for Workday and SuccessFactors and then to the new powerful, generic API-driven approach that can handle any HR system and the architectural decisions behind it. Chetan also gives us a masterclass on how the provisioning engine differs from the Graph API and provides advice for anyone looking to migrate from a legacy Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) solution.

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About Chetan Desai

Chetan Desai is a Principal Product Manager at Microsoft on the Entra team. For the past seven years, he has been a core part of the Entra Identity Governance and Provisioning team. Before his time at Microsoft, Chetan spent 17 years in consulting within the identity and access management domain , bringing a wealth of real-world deployment and integration experience to his product management role.

🔗 Related Links

* Application and HR provisioning documentation

* Provisioning with SCIM

* API-driven inbound provisioning concepts

📗 Chapters

00:34 The "First Mile Problem" in Identity

04:51 From AD Sync to HR-Driven Provisioning

09:52 The Entra Provisioning Service Architecture

16:17 Hybrid vs. Cloud-Only Identity Flows

19:17 Beyond Workday: The Need for a Generic Connector

27:43 The Great Debate: CSV vs. SQL vs. API

35:34 Provisioning API vs. Graph API: What's the Difference?

43:24 The Latest Evolution: Custom Security Attributes

49:26 Advice for Migrating to Modern IGA

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