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I have a question. Does anybody know what the exact off-boarding process would look like for an Azure AD user that is synchronized from an on-premise AD (Windows server AD, see picture below)?

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I know what it's like for a normal Azure AD user (I got the information from here: https://www.agileit.com/news/offboarding-office-365/), but I would need to know if there are any differences (for example: differences to completely delete a user, differences in saving OneDrive content, ..).

Here is the process of offboarding a normal Azure AD user (summarized in my own words):

  • Sign the user out of OneDrive (initiate sign-out in Microsoft 365 admin center)

  • Logging the user out of all current sessions:

    -   Resetting user password in the Microsoft 365 admin center: Create or generate a new password

  • Save mailbox content:

    -   Either:
       - Migrate the mailbox to another user
       - Place the mailbox on Litigation Hold (In-Place Hold, via the Exchange Admin Center)
       - Converting to a shared mailbox

  • (if the offboarding employee has a company owned mobile device) blocking and wiping the employee’s mobile device:

    -   Wipe data & block under Mobile devices (via Exchange Admin center)
  • Block access to Office 365 data (after logging the user out of his current sessions) via Microsoft 365 admin center
  • Remove the Office 365 license from the user (via Microsoft 365 admin center)
  • Remove the license so the payment for it stops (via Microsoft 365 admin center)
  • Deleting the user account (via Microsoft 365 admin center)

If any of you guys know any differences, please help me out. Thank you!

Felix Bing
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1 Answers1

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most of your points about azure ad user apply to a sync'ed ad user as well. some of the differences would be after logging user out of all current sessions, they wouldn't be logged off of on prem sessions that are logged in via on-prem ad.

I believe the main difference comes in when / how you delete the user. if you disable the user on prem, and it no longer syncs that user to aad, that user will be deleted from aad. along with all the ramifications of deleting the user on aad, mailbox deleted, etc. Basically treat on-prem ad unsync as a delete operation on azure ad. that's the biggest difference.

one of the caveats with both aad and ad deletion is, if you turn the mailbox into a shared mailbox, it still has to be anchored to a user. so if you deleted the user that its anchored to, the mailbox will be in an orphaned state. so be careful with that.

as for one drive, when the user is deleted from aad, their "manager" will automatically get access to their onedrive content for some period of time, usually 30 days, because the content is deleted.

Again, so if you stop syncing a user to azure ad from on-prem, azure ad treats it as a delete operation.

All this to say, all the other steps in that article are azure/o365 related, so follow all those steps, and for the last step of delete, don't delete it from azure ad. Just unsync it or delete from on prem.

alphaz18
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