First published on CloudBlogs on Apr, 21 2013 by the Microsoft Azure Active Directory Team
Azure Active Directory went GA week before last, but something that happened a week earlier that was also pretty exciting. We updated the look and feel of the authentication experience of Azure AD.
Lots of people using Office 365 couldn't help but notice, but I'd expect that many of them didn't realize they were actually using Azure Active Directory. There was a nice press write up on the new user experience at this link: http://winsupersite.com/office-365/office-365-upgrade-new-sign-experience
In particular we changed three things:
- We tailored the experience to whatever device you use for accessing the login page. It now auto-resizes and formats for mobile, tablet or web browser.
- We store a tile that remembers your login. This makes it super easy to login again after your first login, especially if more than one person shares a machine.
- We introduced an icon that will represent your account in Azure Active Directory.
We are still playing around with the text but the thing that really sticks out is the icon. This is an image of it:
What we are trying to say is that this account is about work - be that work at a company, business, school, government, or other organization - and that this account is owned and managed by your company. Not Google, Facebook, Microsoft or anyone else! We (Microsoft) are simply the service provider for your infrastructure. We help you run it, but you own it, not us.
So when you go around the web, expect to see this icon popping up more and more. And if you are building an app you can check out our branding guidance for using the icon at this link . Now that Azure Active Directory has gone GA as a platform for 3rd party applications, expect to see it even more because it will be the way you log in to our business services, other applications that extend our business services, or applications that trust Azure Active Directory for sign in.
Dave Howell
Twitter: @David_A_Howell (originally posted at blog: www.fourandahalfyears.com )