Introducing the Entra Helpdesk Portal: A Zero-Trust, Dockerized ITSM Interface for Tier 1 Support
Hello everyone, If you manage identity in Microsoft Entra ID at an enterprise scale, you know the struggle: delegating day-to-day operational tasks (like password resets, session revocations, and MFA management) to Tier 1 and Tier 2 support staff is inherently risky. The native Azure/Entra portal is incredibly powerful, but it’s complex and lacks mandatory ITSM enforcement. Giving a helpdesk technician the "Helpdesk Administrator" role grants them access to a portal where a single misclick can cause a major headache. To solve this, I’ve developed the Entra Helpdesk Portal (Community Edition)—an open-source, containerized application designed to act as an isolated "airlock" between your support team and your Entra ID tenant. Why This Adds Value to Your Tenant Instead of having technicians log into the Azure portal, they log into this clean, Material Design web interface. It leverages a backend Service Principal (using MSAL and the Graph API) to execute commands on their behalf. Strict Zero Trust: Logging in via Microsoft SSO isn’t enough. The app intercepts the token and checks the user’s UPN against a hardcoded ALLOWED_ADMINS whitelist in your Docker environment file. Mandatory ITSM Ticketing: You cannot enforce ticketing in the native Azure Portal. In this app, every write action prompts a modal requiring a valid ticket number (e.g., INC-123456). Local Audit Logging: All actions, along with the actor, timestamp, and ticket number, are written to an immutable local SQLite database (audit.db) inside the container volume. Performance: Heavy Graph API reads are cached in-memory with a Time-To-Live (TTL) and smart invalidation. Searching for users or loading Enterprise Apps takes milliseconds. What Can It Do? Identity Lifecycle: Create users, auto-generate secure 16-character passwords, revoke sign-in sessions, reset passwords, and delete specific MFA methods to force re-registration. Diagnostics: View a user's last 5 sign-in logs, translating Microsoft error codes into plain English. Group Management: Add/remove members to Security and M365 groups. App/SPN Management: Lazy-load raw requiredResourceAccess Graph API payloads to audit app permissions, and instantly rotate client secrets. Universal Restore: Paste the Object ID of any soft-deleted item into the Recycle Bin tab to instantly resurrect it. How Easy Is It to Setup? I wanted this to be universally deployable, so I compiled it as a multi-architecture Docker image (linux/amd64 and linux/arm64). It will run on a massive Windows Server or a simple Raspberry Pi. Setup takes less than 5 minutes: Create an App Registration in Entra ID and grant it the necessary Graph API Application Permissions (e.g., User.ReadWrite.All, AuditLog.Read.All). Create a docker-compose.yml file. Define your feature toggles. You can literally turn off features (like User Deletion) by setting an environment variable to false. version: '3.8' services: helpdesk-portal: image: jahmed22/entra-helpdesk:latest container_name: entra_helpdesk restart: unless-stopped ports: - "8000:8000" environment: # CORE IDENTITY - TENANT_ID=your_tenant_id_here - CLIENT_ID=your_client_id_here - CLIENT_SECRET=your_client_secret_here - BASE_URL=https://entradesk.jahmed.cloud - ALLOWED_ADMINS=email address removed for privacy reasons # CUSTOMIZATION & FEATURE FLAGS - APP_NAME=Entra Help Desk - ENABLE_PASSWORD_RESET=true - ENABLE_MFA_MANAGEMENT=true - ENABLE_USER_DELETION=false - ENABLE_GROUP_MANAGEMENT=true - ENABLE_APP_MANAGEMENT=true volumes: - entra_helpdesk_data:/app/static/uploads - entra_helpdesk_db:/app volumes: entra_helpdesk_data: entra_helpdesk_db: 4.Run docker compose up -d and you are done! I built this to give back to the community and help secure our Tier 1 operations. If you are interested in testing it out in your dev tenants or want to see the full architecture breakdown, you can read the complete documentation on my website here I’d love to hear your thoughts, feedback, or any feature requests you might have!
Entra ID Object Drift – Are We Measuring Tenant Health Correctly?
In many enterprise environments: Secure Score is green. Compliance dashboards look healthy. Yet directory object inconsistency silently accumulates. Stale devices. Hybrid join remnants. Intune orphan records. Over time, this becomes governance debt. In large tenants this often leads to inaccurate compliance reporting and Conditional Access targeting issues. I recently wrote a breakdown of: • Entra ID drift patterns • Hybrid join inconsistencies • Intune orphan objects • Lifecycle-based cleanup architecture Curious how others approach object hygiene at scale. Full article: https://www.modernendpoint.tech/entra-id-cleanup-patterns/?utm_source=techcommunity&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=entra_cleanup_launch&utm_content=discussion One pattern I keep seeing is duplicate device identities after re-enrollment or Autopilot reset. Curious how others handle lifecycle cleanup in large Entra ID environments.
Entra Risky Users Custom Role
My customer implemented unified RBAC (Defender Portal) and removed the Entra Security Operator role. They lost the ability to manage Risky Users in Entra. Two options explored by the customer - Protected Identity Administrator role (licensing unclear) or create a custom role with microsoft.directory/identityProtection/riskyUsers/update, which they couldn't find under custom role. Do you know if there are other options to manage Risky Users without using the Security Operator role?
Dynamic group membership rules stopped working
We've been using the following the following dynamic membership rule to check if a user is a member of another group: user.memberOf -any (group.objectId -in ['2b930be6-f46a-4a70-b1b5-3e4e0c483fbf']) The group is an Active Directory group that is represented in Entra with the stated Entra group object Id. The validation fails for every user and looks like this: It seems that all out dynamic groups are affected and stopped working. Have you seen this before? Thanks.👉 Microsoft Entra in Action: From Conditional Access to Identity Protection
One of the areas I’m most passionate about is identity-driven security. Microsoft Entra makes it possible to apply Zero Trust principles directly at the identity layer. ⚡ Conditional Access – the backbone of modern access policies. 👤 Privileged Identity Management (PIM) – ensuring just-in-time, least privilege for admins. 🛡️ Identity Protection – risk-based policies to stop compromised sign-ins in real time. In my labs, I’ve seen how these features transform security posture without adding friction for users. Coming soon: - Step-by-step breakdown of a risky user detection scenario. - A visual guide to Conditional Access controls for critical apps. Would love to exchange insights with others experimenting in this space — what Entra features are you finding most impactful? #MicrosoftEntra | #ConditionalAccess | #IdentityProtection | #MicrosoftLearn | #PerparimLabsEntra App Gallery required for Excel AddIn
Hi, We have an Excel Addin published to Microsoft AppSource: https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-us/product/office/WA200009029?tab=Overview The Excel Addin uses Entra ID to obtain an OIDC token to securely / seamlessly access MS 365 SharePoint on behalf of the user. In order to achive this the Entra ID subscription needs the TR4E application registered as an Enterprise Application / App Registration. My question is whether I need to submit the TR4E application separately to the Entra App Gallery, so it can be installed by the Entra ID admin - or will the registration in Entra ID happen automatically when a new user first tries using TR4E? I note that MS has suspended new application submissions for Entra App Gallery, which means our customers would need to manually create the Entra ID Enterprise Application (which is not a great experience). Cheers, Andrew
Passwordless POC Blocked by CA BYOD Policy – Looking for Workarounds
We’re currently running a POC for passwordless authentication in our environment. One challenge we’ve hit is that our CA BYOD policy blocks personal devices, which prevents users from enabling passwordless sign-in via the Microsoft Authenticator app. Since Authenticator is not a cloud app, we can’t exclude it from the CA policy using the usual cloud app filters. This is causing issues when users try to register or use passwordless sign-in from their personal phones. Has anyone dealt with this scenario or found a workaround that allows passwordless sign-in while still enforcing BYOD restrictions? Any ideas, suggestions, or creative solutions would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance!
User Identities in EntraID - how to remove?
I have a user that shows up with multiple identities. No other users are like this and we believe its stopping him from logging in with his alias email address. When i run get-entrauser it returns the following under Identities: {@{signInType=federated; issuer=MicrosoftAccount; issuerAssignedId=}, @{signInType=federated; issuer=MicrosoftAccount; issuerAssignedId=}, @{signInType=userPrincipalName; issuer=OURPRIMARYDOMAIN.onmicrosoft.com; issuerAssignedId=UPN}} Every other account just has this @{signInType=userPrincipalName; issuer=OURPRIMARYDOMAIN.onmicrosoft.com; issuerAssignedId=UPN}} How would i go about removing those identies from that user? Struggling to find any info online.
