Tutorial: Configure Apple Business Manager for automatic user provisioning

• Article
• 03/16/2023

In this article

This tutorial describes the steps you need to perform in both Apple Business Manager and Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) to configure automatic user provisioning. When configured, Azure AD automatically provisions and de-provisions users to Apple Business Manager using the Azure AD Provisioning service. For important details on what this service does, how it works, and frequently asked questions, see Automate user provisioning and deprovisioning to SaaS applications with Azure Active Directory.

Capabilities Supported

• Create users in Apple Business Manager
• Remove users in Apple Business Manager when they do not require access anymore
• Keep user attributes synchronized between Azure AD and Apple Business Manager
• Single sign-on to Apple Business Manager (recommended).

Prerequisites

The scenario outlined in this tutorial assumes that you already have the following prerequisites:

• An Azure AD tenant.
• A user account in Azure AD with permission to configure provisioning (for example, Application Administrator, Cloud Application administrator, Application Owner, or Global Administrator).
• An Apple Business Manager account with the role of Administrator or People Manager.

Note

Token transfer to Azure AD and establishing a successful connection has to be completed in 4 calendar days or the process has to be started again.

Step 1. Plan your provisioning deployment

Step 2. Configure Apple Business Manager to support provisioning with Azure AD

1. In Apple Business Manager, sign in with an account that has the role of Administrator or People Manager.

2. Click Settings at the bottom of the sidebar click Data Source below Organization Settings, then click Connect to Data Source.

3. Click Connect next to SCIM, carefully read the warning, click Copy, then click Close.
   [The Connect to SCIM window, which provides a token and a Copy button under it.]
   Leave this window open to copy the Tenant URL from Apple Business Manager to Azure AD, which is: https://federation.apple.com/feeds/business/scim

   

   Note

   The secret token shouldn’t be shared with anyone other than the Azure AD administrator.

Step 3. Add Apple Business Manager from the Azure AD application gallery

• Add Apple Business Manager from the Azure AD application gallery to start managing provisioning to Apple Business Manager. If you have previously setup Apple Business Manager for SSO, you can use the same application. However it is recommended that you create a separate app when testing out the integration initially.

• To add the Apple Business Manager Azure AD app with Microsoft tenants, the administrator of the tenants must go through the federated authentication setup process, including testing authentication. When authentication has succeeded, the Apple Business Manager Azure AD app is populated in the tenant and the administrator can federate domains and configure Apple Business Manager to use SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management) for directory sync.

  Use federated authentication with MS Azure AD in Apple Business Manager

Step 4. Define who will be in scope for provisioning

The Azure AD provisioning service allows you to scope who will be provisioned based on assignment to the application and or based on attributes of the user / group. If you choose to scope who will be provisioned to your app based on assignment, you can use the following steps to assign users and groups to the application. If you choose to scope who will be provisioned based solely on attributes of the user or group, you can use a scoping filter as described here.

• Start small. Test with a small set of users and groups before rolling out to everyone. When scope for provisioning is set to assigned users and groups, you can control this by assigning one or two users or groups to the app. When scope is set to all users and groups, you can specify an attribute based scoping filter.

• If you need additional roles, you can update the application manifest to add new roles.

Step 5. Configure automatic user provisioning to Apple Business Manager

1. Sign in to the Azure portal. Select Enterprise Applications, then select All applications.

   

2. In the applications list, select Apple Business Manager.

   

3. Select the Provisioning tab.

   

4. Set the Provisioning Mode to Automatic.

   

5. Under the Admin Credentials section, input the SCIM 2.0 base URL and Access Token values retrieved from Apple Business Manager in Tenant URL and Secret Token respectively. Click Test Connection to ensure Azure AD can connect to Apple Business Manager. If the connection fails, ensure your Apple Business Manager account has Admin permissions and try again.

   

Note

If the connection is successful, Apple Business Manager shows the SCIM connection as active. This process can take up to 60 seconds for Apple Business Manager to reflect the latest connection status.

6. In the Notification Email field, enter the email address of a person or group who should receive the provisioning error notifications and check the checkbox – Send an email notification when a failure occurs.

   

7. Click Save.

8. Under the Mappings section, select Synchronize Azure Active Directory Users to Apple Business Manager.

9. Review the user attributes that are synchronized from Azure AD to Apple Business Manager in the Attribute Mapping section. The attributes selected as Matching properties are used to match the user accounts in Apple Business Manager for update operations. Select the Save button to commit any changes.

   Attribute
   Type

   active
   Boolean

   userName
   String

   name.givenName
   String

   name.familyName
   String

   name.givenName
   String

   externalId
   String

   locale
   String

   timezone
   String

   urn:ietf:params:scim:schemas:extension:enterprise:2.0:User:employeeNumber
   String

   urn:ietf:params:scim:schemas:extension:enterprise:2.0:User:costCenter
   String

   urn:ietf:params:scim:schemas:extension:enterprise:2.0:User:division
   String

   urn:ietf:params:scim:schemas:extension:enterprise:2.0:User:department
   String

10. To configure scoping filters, refer to the following instructions provided in the Scoping filter tutorial.

11. To enable the Azure AD provisioning service for Apple Business Manager, change the Provisioning Status to On in the Settings section.

    

12. Define the users and/or groups that you would like to provision to Apple Business Manager by choosing the desired values in Scope in the Settings section.

    

13. When you are ready to provision, click Save.

    

This operation starts the initial synchronization of all users and/or groups defined in Scope in the Settings section. The initial sync takes longer to perform than subsequent syncs, which occur approximately every 40 minutes as long as the Azure AD provisioning service is running.

Step 6. Monitor your deployment

Once you’ve configured provisioning, use the following resources to monitor your deployment:

1. Use the provisioning logs to determine which users have been provisioned successfully or unsuccessfully
2. Check the progress bar to see the status of the provisioning cycle and how close it is to completion
3. If the provisioning configuration seems to be in an unhealthy state, the application will go into quarantine. Learn more about quarantine states here.

Additional resources

Next steps