Manager attribute only syncs to Azure AD once according to Microsoft

Copper Contributor

We recently noticed that over 1600 of 3000+ users are missing the manager attribute in Azure AD. According to Microsoft Support this attribute will only sync once from local Active Directory to Azure AD, and if the attribute is changed it will disappear from Azure AD. Has anyone experienced this behavior? MS Support said we must update the field manually with shell.

3 Replies
That's interesting we just noticed it wasn't updating and started searching. So MS support is saying that the point of their AD to Azure syncing tool is to NOT sync and instead is saying you need to do this manually?

Does this mean they are heading away from AAD?
Although I’ve never noticed this change occurring or not, and will have to test, it may be related to the way that the Manager field is populated. In AD the attribute holds the DN of the manager, not simply their name. That’s why you can’t just script to change the Manager field directly, and instead have to do a second level lookup of the manager’s DN to then populate that attribute with.

I don’t think the DN is transmitted up to AAD, but again would have to test this.

Seems like the AAD sync tool could be updated to perform the DN and repopulate the field if it’s ever changed.

The problem turned out to be ours. We are syncing two domains up to Azure and if a user has a manager that is syncing to AAD from another domain it will not update. Once all users are syncing from the same domain the manager field will be correct. @BinaryWeapon