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!
Disabling PIN-based login on Entra-joined PCs
Hi guys. Yesterday I took two machines off the domain and Entra joined them. The goal was 1) remove their access to domain resources 2) have tenant users login to the machine and get enriched tokens every time. this works as desired. The problem is every user gets prompted to set a pin. these are both shared secondary/tertiary PC's - there is no point to having a 6 digit PIN on them. I thought the new Authentication Methods tools had controls for this, but apparently not. A script was run to change certain related Reg Keys (by my onsite tech) but this had no change on reboot. textreg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\PassportForWork" /v Enabled /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /freg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\PassportForWork" /v DisablePostLogonProvisioning /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\PassportForWork Enabled key was set to 0, and DisablePostLogonProvisioning was set to 1. These are from various help threads I found here and other resources. Unfortunately, they do not work. Not sure what to do here. I've read there are InTune controls for this - but I don't really have the time to work out WindowsPC ennrollment profiles for 2 machines. The site has InTune, but only for iOS mobile management. Thoughts?
Orphaned TPM-bound Entra Workplace Join device — no tenant access, backend deletion required
I have a personal Windows device that remains stuck in a TPM-protected Workplace Join to a former Microsoft Entra ID tenant. I no longer have tenant access and am not an admin. Local remediation completed: - dsregcmd /leave executed as SYSTEM - All MS-Organization / AAD certificates removed - Device still reports WorkplaceJoined : YES Azure Support ticket creation fails with: AADSTS160021 – interaction_required Application requested a user session which does not exist. Tenant inaccessible / user not present in tenant. This is an orphaned Entra ID device object. Requesting guidance or escalation for backend deletion. Tenant ID: 99f9b903-8447-4711-a2df-c5bd1ad1adf7 Device ID: f47987f4-a20b-4c34-a5f7-40ab0f593c6c
Join Merill Fernando and other guests for our Identity and Network Practitioner Webinar Series!
This October, we’re hosting a three-part webinar series led by expert Merill Fernando for Identity and Network Access practitioners. Join us as we journey from high-level strategy to hands-on implementation, unifying identity and network access every step of the way. Each session builds on the last, helping you move from understanding why a unified approach matters to what are the foundations to get started, and finally to how to configure in practice. The goal is to equip you with actionable skills, expert insights, and resources to secure your organization in a unified, Zero Trust way. Register below: Identity and Network Security Practitioner Webinar Series | Microsoft Community HubMicrosoft Entra Internet Access for iOS in Public Preview!
With the latest update to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on iOS, Organisations licensed for Microsoft Entra Suite or Microsoft Entra Internet Access will have access to Microsoft's Secure Web Gateway (SWG) and traffic forwarding for HTTP/HTTPS traffic, with support for Web-Content Filtering. This has been a huge win for iOS Mobile Security. Previously, Defender for Endpoint on iOS has supported Phishing Protection, M365 Traffic, and Entra Private Access Traffic. Combined with Global Secure Access Threat Intelligence, which consumes indicators from Microsoft Intelligent Security Graph (ISG), Organisations can implement granular internet access controls on iOS devices with integrated, context aware protection against malicious threats. Excited to hear what you think! Release notes are available here
Enable MFA method
Dear, Currently in our company, the authentication methods policy > Microsoft Authenticator defaults to “any”. Either “passwordless” or “Push”. It is possible to enable the following authentication method through a conditional access policy, currently it is enabled for some users. Desired authentication method: The current method is as follows: Can it be enabled for professional accounts or is it only focused on personal accounts? Thanks in advance.
Entra hybrid join issue caused maybe by 2 M365 accounts
Hello to everyone, one of my collegue has 2 Microsoft 365 accounts on its notebook when we tried to do the procedure to hybrid join his device; I suppose the other account give us problem in the procedure; now, there is only one account even if I can see in event log, in AAD log, that there is an error and 2 warnings bound to the old account. However, I tried to repeat the procedure but without any luck; what I see that it is different from the other devices, if I give the cmd dsregcmd /status is in these 2 lines: DisplayNameUpdated : YES OsVersionUpdated : YES while on other devices I see: DisplayNameUpdated : Managed by MDM OsVersionUpdated : Managed by MDM We have all a Microsoft 365 Business subscription and the configuration and steps for the other devices was: We have all devices with Entra registered user, we started with this when we have only the Microsoft 365 Basic subscription We enrolled all devices, with group policy, in MDE when we upgraded to the business Installed the Azure AD Connect Users sync Devices sync So, in the Entra portal we have first only the entry for registered, then when we synced the devices we have a second entry with hybrid registered and finally only one entry with Owner, MDM and Settings field filled with correct data; for example, when I make an hybrid join device, initially in the row I see MDE as MDM, then when the hybrid and registered compose one row I see Intune in that field. For the device that give us problems, I see a row like this in Entra portal while in Intune Any help is greatly appreciated.
Entra Private Access Licensing
I'm a bit stuck trying to figure out what licensing we need to get us working on BYOD devices such as iPads if we want to use the Private Access part of Global Secure Access. A few places on Microsoft's website mention that as long as we have an Entra ID P1 or P2 license and a Private Access license assigned to a user, we should be able to enrol mobile devices without any issues. However, when I try to sign into MS Defender on an iPad (tried 2 different ones), I get an error saying invalid license. One of the users I am currently testing has an Office 365 E3 license assigned as well. Where am I going wrong?Q: Restricting access to Business Web Application/Non-Enterprise Application
Hi all, We are in the middle of moving our on-prem infrastructure to Intune and more specifically, building out conditional access policies. All but one of our business applications have been straightforward with the process to limit access unless certain conditions are met from an authentication, device, or location compliance perspective. The one business application we are needing to find a solution for is a web-based application that we do not control outside of user administration and limited-customization. Typically this would be fine if SSO was leveraged, but this web application, unfortunately and not without several conversations with the developers due to the sensitive nature of the data being stored, does not have SSO on their roadmap. Users can access this application from any web browser using their username and password credentials and an application specific 2FA process using SMS code. There is no connection between our MS tenant and this web application. Due to the sensitive nature of the information stored within this application and the availability of this application from any device with a web browser has raised my antenna with security concerns. Especially in the case of a user downloading information from this site on their BYOD mobile device as they would may need to do in the course of their duties, but if they left the organization, we have no way of wiping that data through the removal of the work profile like we do with all other work data through Intune device compliance measures. We can limit what devices are allowed to connect to work resources (Complaint) and access work applications (all but one, and they need to be compliant to do so), but is there a way to not allow the personal profile of any BYOD device that is compliant, from accessing or logging into this specific URL in any browser from the personal profile web browser?
