Overview of Exchange Online Connector
The Exchange Online (EXO) connector contains multiple Azure services, including microservices, web jobs, and Azure functions used for inventorying and managing Exchange Online in EmpowerID. This information can be managed in EmpowerID as well as synchronized with data in any connected back-end user directories.
Supported Features and Attribute Mappings
Azure Components Required by the Exchange Online Microservice
Key to the Exchange Online connector is the Exchange Online (EXO) microservice, which communicates with EmpowerID and your Exchange tenant to allow you to collect and manage your Exchange data in EmpowerID. To do so, the microservice needs to be deployed to each Exchange tenant, and each of those tenants needs to be configured with additional Azure components. The number of components needed differs depending on whether you are self-hosting or using EmpowerID SaaS.
Azure Components for Self-hosting EmpowerID
If you are not using EmpowerID SaaS and want EmpowerID to manage one or more of your Exchange tenants, you need to configure one of those tenants with all of the components shown on the “EmpowerID side” (left) of Figure 1. These components are necessary to inventory Exchange. In addition to these, you also need to configure each Exchange tenant to be managed by EmpowerID with all of the components shown on the “Self-hosted” side of Figure 1. The only exception to this is the Azure AD SCIM app service. This service only needs to be set up once within Azure.
All of the components shown on the EmpowerID side of the image are required whether you are self-hosting EmpowerID or using EmpowerID SaaS. The only difference is when using EmpowerID SaaS, you do not need to set up these components. EmpowerID takes care of that for you.
Figure 1 below image depicts the Azure components you need to configure when self-hosting EmpowerID. The purpose for each component is described in the table that follows the figure.
Table 1: Azure Components you need to configure when self-hosting EmpowerID
| Azure Component | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Key Vault | Stores secrets and certificate for the Azure functions and web jobs to access |
| Cosmo DB | Stores EXO information Tracks inventory objects per schedule Stores configuration needed by the EXO app service Used by the AzGeneralService app service to persist data each time a call is made to the service |
| Az General Service App Service with Managed Identity | Stores and retrieves configuration settings needed by EXO functions and web jobs |
| Storage Account | Used to store EXO information for each site collection in blobs Used to store the data necessary in the queues to trigger the web jobs |
| Service Bus | Queue stores differential data to be pushed to EmpowerID |
| Web Jobs App Service with Managed Identity | Call the EXO microservice to retrieve mailboxes and permissions and stores them in the blob |
| SPO Functions Function App with Managed Identity | Function to register SharePoint tenants in Cosmos DB Function to update SharePoint tenants in Cosmos DB Function to delete SharePoint tenants in Cosmos DB Function to claim inventory for SharePoint tenants in Cosmos DB Function to process data in the service bus queue and pushes it to EmpowerID All functions retrieve the configuration data from AzGeneralService App Service |
| Azure Components Required for each Exchange Online Tenant | |
| Azure Component | Purpose |
| Service Principal application 1 | Used to provide Azure AD authentication to the app service that hosts the Exchange Online microservice |
| Service Principal application 2 | Used to grant API permissions to Microsoft Graph and Exchange API endpoints |
| App Service | Used to host the Exchange Online app service |
| Key Vault | Stores certificate for certificate-based authentication between the microservice and the service principal registered in Azure for it Stores an access policy that grants key, secret and certificate permissions to the Exchange Online app service hosting the microservice |
| Cosmo DB | Stores configuration information needed by the Exchange Online app service |
| Azure AD SCIM Microservice | Used to inventory and manage Azure AD information in EmpowerID. This microservice must be deployed to Azure before setting up the EXO microservice. This microservice must be deployed to Azure before setting up the EXO microservice. |
Azure Components Required for EmpowerID SaaS
If you are taking advantage of EmpowerID SaaS, the components you need to configure in Azure are minimal as EmpowerID configures everything needed to inventory Exchange (represented by the grayed-out components on the left side of Figure 2 below). As a SaaS customer, you only need to configure the components shown on the right side of the figure. If you are using EmpowerID to manage more than one Exchange tenant, you need to configure these components for each of those tenants.
Table 2: Azure Components you need to configure when using EmpowerID SaaS
| Azure Component | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Service Principal application 1 | Used to provide Azure AD authentication to the app service that hosts the Exchange Online microservice |
| Service Principal application 2 | Used to grant API permissions to Microsoft Graph endpoints |
| App Service | Used to host the Exchange Online app service |
| Key Vault | Stores certificate for certificate-based authentication between the microservice and the service principal registered in Azure for it Stores an access policy that grants key, secret and certificate permissions to the Exchange Online app service hosting the microservice |
| Cosmo DB | Stores configuration information needed by the Exchange Online app service |
| Azure AD SCIM Microservice | Used to inventory and manage Azure AD information in EmpowerID. This microservice must be deployed to Azure before setting up the EXO microservice. |
EmpowerID Items to Deploy
The SharePoint Online connector includes several components that you need to deploy to Azure from EmpowerID. These components and their related files are listed in the below table.
| EmpowerID Component | File |
|---|---|
| AzGeneralService Microservice | AzGeneralServices_MicroserviceV3.zip |
| Service Principal application 2 | Used to grant API permissions to Microsoft Graph endpoints |
| App Service | Used to host the Exchange Online app service |
| Key Vault | Stores certificate for certificate-based authentication between the microservice and the service principal registered in Azure for it Stores an access policy that grants key, secret and certificate permissions to the Exchange Online app service hosting the microservice |
| Cosmo DB | Stores configuration information needed by the Exchange Online app service |
| Function App | Used to update SharePoint user profiles |
| Azure AD SCIM Microservice | Used to inventory and manage Azure AD information in EmpowerID. This microservice must be deployed to Azure before setting up the EXO microservice. For details, see Connecting to Azure AD. |