Identity providers

Article
10/16/2024

APPLIES TO: SDK v4

An identity provider authenticates user or client identities and issues consumable security tokens. It provides user authentication as a service.

Client applications, such as web applications, delegate authentication to a trusted identity provider. Such client applications are said to be federated, that is, they use federated identity. For more information, see Federated Identity pattern.

Using a trusted identity provider:

Enables single sign-on (SSO) features, allowing an application to access multiple secured resources.
Facilitates connections between cloud computing resources and users, decreasing the need for users to reauthenticate.

Single sign-on

Single sign-on refers to an authentication process that lets a user log on to a system once with a single set of credentials to access multiple applications or services.

A user logs in with a single ID and password to gain access to any of several related software systems. For more information, see Single sign on.

Many identity providers support a sign-out operation that revokes the user token and terminates access to the associated applications and services.

Important

SSO enhances usability by reducing the number of times a user must enter credentials. It also provides better security by decreasing the potential attack surface.

Microsoft Entra ID identity provider

Microsoft Entra ID is the identity service in Microsoft Azure that provides identity management and access control capabilities. It allows you to securely sign in users using industry standard protocols like OAuth2.0.

You can choose from two Active Directory identity provider implementations, which have different settings as shown below.

Note

Use these settings when configuring OAuth Connection Settings in the Azure bot registration application. For more information, see Add authentication to a bot.

Microsoft Entra ID
Azure AD v1

The Microsoft identity platform (v2.0)—also known as the Microsoft Entra ID endpoint—allows a bot to get tokens to call Microsoft APIs, such as Microsoft Graph or other APIs. The identity platformis an evolution of the Azure AD platform (v1.0). For more information, see the Microsoft identity platform (v2.0) overview.

Use the AD v2 settings below to enable a bot to access Office 365 data via the Microsoft Graph API.

Property	Description or value
Name	A name for this identity provider connection.
Service Provider	The identity provider to use. Select Microsoft Entra ID.
Client id	The application (client) ID for your Azure identity provider app.
Client secret	The secret for your Azure identity provider app.
Tenant ID	Your directory (tenant) ID or `common`. For more information, see the note about tenant IDs.
Scopes	A space-separated list of the API permissions you granted the Microsoft Entra ID identity provider app, such as `openid`, `profile`, `Mail.Read`, `Mail.Send`, `User.Read`, and `User.ReadBasic.All`.
Token Exchange URL	For an SSO-enabled skill bot use the token exchange URL associated with the OAuth connection; otherwise, leave this empty. For information about the SSO token exchange URL, see Create an OAuth connection settings.

Azure AD v1

Use the settings shown below to configure the Microsoft Entra ID developer platform (v1.0), also known as Azure AD v1 endpoint. This allows you to build apps that securely sign in users with a Microsoft work or school account. For more information, see Microsoft Entra ID for developers (v1.0) overview.

Property	Description or value
Name	A name for this identity provider connection.
Service Provider	The identity provider to use. Select Microsoft Entra ID.
Client id	The application (client) ID for your Azure identity provider app.
Client secret	The secret for your Azure identity provider app.
Grant Type	`authorization_code`
Login URL	`https://login.partner.microsoftonline.cn`
Tenant ID	Your directory (tenant) ID or `common`. For more information, see the note below about tenant IDs.
Resource URL	`https://graph.chinacloudapi.cn/`
Scopes	Leave this empty.
Token Exchange URL	Leave this empty.

Note

If you selected one of the following, enter the tenant ID you recorded for the Microsoft Entra ID identity provider app:

Accounts in this organizational directory only (Microsoft only - Single tenant)
Accounts in any organizational directory(Microsoft AAD directory - Multi tenant)

If you selected Accounts in any organizational directory (Any Microsoft Entra ID directory - Multi tenant and personal Microsoft accounts e.g., Skype, Xbox, Outlook.com), enter common.

Otherwise, the Microsoft Entra ID identity provider app will use the tenant to verify the selected ID and exclude personal Microsoft accounts.

For more information, see:

Microsoft identity platform (Microsoft Entra ID for developers).

Other identity providers

Azure supports several identity providers. You can get a complete list, along with the related details, by running the following Azure console commands:

az cloud set -n AzureChinaCloud
az login
# az cloud set -n AzureCloud   //means return to Public Azure.
az bot authsetting list-providers

You can also see the list of these providers in the Azure portal when you define the OAuth connection settings for a bot registration app.

Azure identity providers

OAuth generic providers

Azure supports generic OAuth2, which allows you to use your own identity provider.

You can choose from two generic identity provider implementations, which have different settings as shown below.

Note

Use the settings described here when configuring the OAuth Connection Settings in the Azure bot registration application.

Generic OAuth 2
OAuth 2 Generic Provider

Use this provider to configure any generic OAuth2 identity provider that has similar expectations as Microsoft Entra ID provider, particularly AD v2. For this connection type, the query strings and request body payloads are fixed.

Property	Description or value
Name	A name for this identity provider connection.
Service Provider	The identity provider to use. Select Generic Oauth 2.
Client id	Your client ID obtained from the identity provider.
Client secret	Your client secret obtained from the identity provider registration.
Authorization URL	`https://login.partner.microsoftonline.cn/common/oauth2/v2.0/authorize`
Token URL	`https://login.partner.microsoftonline.cn/common/oauth2/v2.0/token`
Refresh URL	`https://login.partner.microsoftonline.cn/common/oauth2/v2.0/token`
Token Exchange URL	Leave this empty.
Scopes	A comma-separated list of the API permissions you granted to the identity provider app.

This provider requires more configuration parameters, so use this version to configure any generic OAuth 2 service provider when you need more flexibility. With this configuration, you specify the URL templates, the query string templates, and the body templates for authorization, refresh, and token conversion.

Property	Description or value
Name	A name for this identity provider connection.
Service Provider	The identity provider to use. Select Oauth 2 Generic Provider.
Client id	Your client ID obtained from the identity provider.
Client secret	Your client secret obtained from the identity provider registration.
Scope List Delimiter	The separator character for the scope list. Empty spaces ( ) are not supported in this field, but can be used in the Scopes field if required by the identity provider. In that case, use a comma (,) for this field, and spaces ( ) in the Scopes field.
Authorization URL Template	A URL template for authorization, defined by your identity provider. For example, `https://login.partner.microsoftonline.cn/common/oauth2/v2.0/authorize`.
Authorization URL Query String Template	A query template for authorization, provided by your identity provider. Keys in the query string template will vary depending on the identity provider. For example, `?client_id={ClientId}&response_type=code&redirect_uri={RedirectUrl}&scope={Scopes}&state={State}`.
Token URL Template	`https://login.partner.microsoftonline.cn/common/oauth2/v2.0/token`
Token URL Query String Template	The query string separator for the token URL. Usually a question mark (?).
Token Body Template	A template for the token body. For example, `code={Code}&grant_type=authorization_code&redirect_uri={RedirectUrl}&client_id={ClientId}&client_secret={ClientSecret}`.
Refresh URL Template	`https://login.partner.microsoftonline.cn/common/oauth2/v2.0/token`
Refresh URL Query String Template	A refresh URL query string separator for the token URL. Usually a question mark (?).
Refresh Body Template	A template for the refresh body. For example, `refresh_token={RefreshToken}&redirect_uri={RedirectUrl}&grant_type=refresh_token&client_id={ClientId}&client_secret={ClientSecret}`.
Token Exchange URL	Leave this empty.
Scopes	List of scopes you want authenticated users to have once signed in. Make sure you're only setting the necessary scopes, and follow the Least privilege access control principle. For example, `User.Read`. If you're using a custom scope, use the full URI including the exposed application ID URI.

Next steps

Identity providers proxy

Identity providers

Single sign-on

Microsoft Entra ID identity provider

Other identity providers

OAuth generic providers

Next steps

Additional resources