MicrosoftIrina_Nechaeva thanks for bringing up your reasons and assistance.
I understand the strong hesitation and disagreement of this change.
Please consider to rephrase the statement "no action is needed from you."
This isn't quite the reality, except for customers that don't host any technical documentation.
In fact this warm hearted claim, is plain wrong if you don't limit it to technical actions from customers. It could even be interpreted as ignorant or offensive by the audience.
It causes unbillable work to change from partners view.
Updating Azure AD Connect to reflect the product name change, also in Settings App, App description, if self-updating fails.
You were clear, relevant customers were asking for it. What was the feedback of Microsoft partners and Consultants in this area?
It's hard to tag all statements but great to see many brought up similar items including the time a split brain exist.
Some new key takeaways from thoughtful comments here:
- AI, along with bing search, Google, ChatGPT) needs to learn to search for Entra ID plus legacy Azure AD at the same time in context.
How will this be addressed technically?
- pleased, one of noticed, as myself, the mess created with CS, Lync, Skype and everlasting legacy and confusion.
We talked about PowerShell aliases as a solution So new command will be natively verb-Entra while older command shall all receive aliases.
- changes take much longer to become congruent
another one rightfully noticed the fact that changes take much longer than we would like. Windows Admin Center is a perfect example, also hard to maintain because of only annual releases, no hotfixes or CUs even with critical issues, plus it's not on github so community and users cannot contribute on the PowerShell code.
I am working closely with the WAC PMs, but still my list counts 110+ items that are not polished.
This is not to praise myself, just to agree with the statement how slow things are adopted at Microsoft technically, while marketing and visible items are changed in a glimpse.
It's now 3 years "work in progress".
WAC Team is also quite small as gaining no own revenue for Microsoft, but the need to get off MMC for security reasons, and because MMC are no longer maintainable in code, being 20+ years old. Knowledge and Devs might not even work at Microsoft or retired or worse.
- the feedback repeated the points on consistency is key.
For my role as Windows Insider and Senior Consultant I am not a big fan of staged Rollouts for UX as Microsoft Partner you are working with different customers at the same time and Windows and Portal experience differ while you are on it. While I understand the idea, it's frankly complicated to have different UX for the same goal until everyone is deployed to the latest. Stopped counting the hickups when being on it and need to retrain muscle memory during workshops.
- some named that there are code and sign in references. As for DNS links, again as with PowerShell, DNS aliases (CNAME) and redirection will fix it
- it has been noticed that Work and school Accounts will not be renamed to Entra ID. I would like to plea the opposite! But have only a lenghty example to field why it is important.
VLSC Portal still causes many headaches for customers that 1 year after the change (2 years after projected change) still haven't understood their action points to migrate from Home to a Work Account and Work Account actually inherits an (shadow) Azure AD tenant.
I have had customers that had 3 Microsoft Accounts plus 4 shadow tenants in VLSC because they did not knew what they were doing. Cleaning this up took 2 SR with VLSC support and 2 weeks of time.
How is this related. VLSC change to work Accounts (Entra ID Accounts) was poorly communicated to partners And customers alike I am one of 700 employees at our company and few Microsoft Consultants knew what todo. Most customers still unaware what to do.
This is because no email reached anyone about the plan, it has been paused (COVID19) , and when it continued. No clear guidance on the VLSC Portal itself or admin.microsoft.com for a crucial Service of licensing management and download and keys.
Today it's still a mess most font even know there is a move to Admin portal and where to find these as there are "products" and licenses, but basically both are licenses.
The transition from VLSC to Admin Portal is a perfect example of what Microsoft needs to learn to design and plan disruptive changes better.
This is the relation of VLSC to Entra ID, as you need one.
Secondly I plea that that work and school Account will be renamed to Entra ID in fact to make clear what they are under the hood.
