Optional claims reference

  • Article

You can use optional claims to:

  • Select claims to include in tokens for your application.
  • Change the behavior of certain claims that the Microsoft identity platform returns in tokens.
  • Add and access custom claims for your application.

While optional claims are supported in both v1.0 and v2.0 format tokens and SAML tokens, they provide most of their value when moving from v1.0 to v2.0. In the Microsoft identity platform, smaller token sizes are used to ensure optimal performance by clients. As a result, several claims formerly included in the access and ID tokens are no longer present in v2.0 tokens and must be asked for specifically on a per-application basis.

Account Type v1.0 tokens v2.0 tokens
Microsoft Entra account Supported Supported

v1.0 and v2.0 optional claims set

The set of optional claims available by default for applications to use are listed in the following table. You can use custom data in extension attributes and directory extensions to add optional claims for your application. When you add claims to the access token, the claims apply to access tokens requested for the application (a web API), not claims requested by the application. No matter how the client accesses your API, the right data is present in the access token that's used to authenticate against your API.

Note

The majority of these claims can be included in JWTs for v1.0 and v2.0 tokens, but not SAML tokens, except where noted in the Token Type column. Consumer accounts support a subset of these claims, marked in the User Type column. Many of the claims listed don't apply to consumer users (they have no tenant, so tenant_ctry has no value).

The following table lists the v1.0 and v2.0 optional claim set.

Name Description Token Type User Type Notes
acct Users account status in tenant JWT, SAML If the user is a member of the tenant, the value is 0. If they're a guest, the value is 1.
acrs Auth Context IDs JWT Microsoft Entra ID Indicates the Auth Context IDs of the operations that the bearer is eligible to perform. Auth Context IDs can be used to trigger a demand for step-up authentication from within your application and services. Often used along with the xms_cc claim.
auth_time Time when the user last authenticated. JWT
ctry User's country/region JWT This claim is returned if it's present and the value of the field is a standard two-letter country/region code, such as FR, JP, SZ, and so on.
email The reported email address for this user JWT, SAML MSA, Microsoft Entra ID This value is included by default if the user is a guest in the tenant. For managed users (the users inside the tenant), it must be requested through this optional claim or, on v2.0 only, with the OpenID scope. This value isn't guaranteed to be correct, and is mutable over time - never use it for authorization or to save data for a user. For more information, see Validate the user has permission to access this data. If you're using the email claim for authorization, we recommend performing a migration to move to a more secure claim. If you require an addressable email address in your app, request this data from the user directly, using this claim as a suggestion or prefill in your UX.
fwd IP address JWT Adds the original address of the requesting client (when inside a VNET).
groups Optional formatting for group claims JWT, SAML The groups claim is used with the GroupMembershipClaims setting in the application manifest, which must be set as well.
idtyp Token type JWT access tokens Special: only in app-only access tokens The value is app when the token is an app-only token. This claim is the most accurate way for an API to determine if a token is an app token or an app+user token.
login_hint Login hint JWT MSA, Microsoft Entra ID An opaque, reliable login hint claim that's base 64 encoded. Don't modify this value. This claim is the best value to use for the login_hint OAuth parameter in all flows to get SSO. It can be passed between applications to help them silently SSO as well - application A can sign in a user, read the login_hint claim, and then send the claim and the current tenant context to application B in the query string or fragment when the user selects on a link that takes them to application B. To avoid race conditions and reliability issues, the login_hint claim doesn't include the current tenant for the user, and defaults to the user's home tenant when used. In a guest scenario where the user is from another tenant, a tenant identifier must be provided in the sign-in request. and pass the same to apps you partner with. This claim is intended for use with your SDK's existing login_hint functionality, however that it exposed.
sid Session ID, used for per-session user sign out JWT Microsoft Entra accounts.
tenant_ctry Resource tenant's country/region JWT Same as ctry except set at a tenant level by an admin. Must also be a standard two-letter value.
tenant_region_scope Region of the resource tenant JWT
upn UserPrincipalName JWT, SAML An identifier for the user that can be used with the username_hint parameter. Not a durable identifier for the user and shouldn't be used for authorization or to uniquely identity user information (for example, as a database key). Instead, use the user object ID (oid) as a database key. For more information, see Secure applications and APIs by validating claims. Users signing in with an alternate login ID shouldn't be shown their User Principal Name (UPN). Instead, use the following ID token claims for displaying sign-in state to the user: preferred_username or unique_name for v1 tokens and preferred_username for v2 tokens. Although this claim is automatically included, you can specify it as an optional claim to attach other properties to modify its behavior in the guest user case. You should use the login_hint claim for login_hint use - human-readable identifiers like UPN are unreliable.
verified_primary_email Sourced from the user's PrimaryAuthoritativeEmail JWT
verified_secondary_email Sourced from the user's SecondaryAuthoritativeEmail JWT
vnet VNET specifier information. JWT
xms_cc Client Capabilities JWT Microsoft Entra ID Indicates whether the client application that acquired the token is capable of handling claims challenges. It's often used along with claim acrs. This claim is commonly used in Conditional Access scenarios. The resource server or service application that the token is issued for controls the presence of this claim in a token. A value of cp1 in the access token is the authoritative way to identify that a client application is capable of handling a claims challenge. For more information, see Claims challenges, claims requests and client capabilities.
xms_edov Boolean value indicating whether the user's email domain owner has been verified. JWT An email is considered to be domain verified if it belongs to the tenant where the user account resides and the tenant admin has done verification of the domain. Also, the email must be from a Microsoft account (MSA). SAML/WS-Fed accounts do not have verified domains. For this claim to be returned in the token, the presence of the email claim is required.
xms_pdl Preferred data location JWT For Multi-Geo tenants, the preferred data location is the three-letter code showing the geographic region the user is in.
xms_pl User preferred language JWT The user's preferred language, if set. Sourced from their home tenant, in guest access scenarios. Formatted LL-CC ("en-us").
xms_tpl Tenant preferred language JWT The resource tenant's preferred language, if set. Formatted LL ("en").
ztdid Zero-touch Deployment ID JWT The device identity used for Windows AutoPilot.

Warning

Never use email or upn claim values to store or determine whether the user in an access token should have access to data. Mutable claim values like these can change over time, making them insecure and unreliable for authorization.

v2.0-specific optional claims set

These claims are always included in v1.0 tokens, but not included in v2.0 tokens unless requested. These claims are only applicable for JWTs (ID tokens and access tokens).

JWT Claim Name Description Notes
ipaddr IP Address The IP address the client logged in from.
onprem_sid On-premises Security Identifier
pwd_exp Password Expiration Time The number of seconds after the time in the iat claim at which the password expires. This claim is only included when the password is expiring soon (as defined by "notification days" in the password policy).
pwd_url Change Password URL A URL that the user can visit to change their password. This claim is only included when the password is expiring soon (as defined by "notification days" in the password policy).
in_corp Inside Corporate Network Signals if the client is logging in from the corporate network. If they're not, the claim isn't included. Based off of the trusted IPs settings in MFA.
family_name Last Name Provides the last name, surname, or family name of the user as defined in the user object. For example, "family_name":"Miller". Supported in MSA and Microsoft Entra ID. Requires the profile scope.
given_name First name Provides the first or "given" name of the user, as set on the user object. For example, "given_name": "Frank". Supported in MSA and Microsoft Entra ID. Requires the profile scope.
upn User Principal Name An identifier for the user that can be used with the username_hint parameter. Not a durable identifier for the user and shouldn't be used for authorization or to uniquely identity user information (for example, as a database key). For more information, see Secure applications and APIs by validating claims. Instead, use the user object ID (oid) as a database key. Users signing in with an alternate login ID shouldn't be shown their User Principal Name (UPN). Instead, use the following preferred_username claim for displaying sign-in state to the user. Requires the profile scope.

v1.0-specific optional claims set

Some of the improvements of the v2 token format are available to apps that use the v1 token format, as they help improve security and reliability. These improvements only apply to JWTs, not SAML tokens.

JWT Claim Name Description Notes
aud Audience Always present in JWTs, but in v1 access tokens it can be emitted in various ways - any appID URI, with or without a trailing slash, and the client ID of the resource. This randomization can be hard to code against when performing token validation. Use additionalProperties for this claim to ensure it's always set to the resource's client ID in v1 access tokens. v1 JWT access tokens only
preferred_username Preferred username Provides the preferred username claim within v1 tokens. This claim makes it easier for apps to provide username hints and show human readable display names, regardless of their token type. It's recommended that you use this optional claim instead of using, upn or unique_name. v1 ID tokens and access tokens

additionalProperties of optional claims

Some optional claims can be configured to change the way the claim is returned. These additionalProperties are mostly used to help migration of on-premises applications with different data expectations. For example, include_externally_authenticated_upn_without_hash helps with clients that can't handle hash marks (#) in the UPN.

Property name additionalProperty name Description
upn Can be used for both SAML and JWT responses, and for v1.0 and v2.0 tokens.
include_externally_authenticated_upn Includes the guest UPN as stored in the resource tenant. For example, foo_hometenant.com#EXT#@resourcetenant.com.
include_externally_authenticated_upn_without_hash Same as listed previously, except that the hash marks (#) are replaced with underscores (_), for example foo_hometenant.com_EXT_@resourcetenant.com.
aud In v1 access tokens, this claim is used to change the format of the aud claim. This claim has no effect in v2 tokens or either version's ID tokens, where the aud claim is always the client ID. Use this configuration to ensure that your API can more easily perform audience validation. Like all optional claims that affect the access token, the resource in the request must set this optional claim, since resources own the access token.
use_guid Emits the client ID of the resource (API) in GUID format as the aud claim always instead of it being runtime dependent. For example, if a resource sets this flag, and its client ID is 00001111-aaaa-2222-bbbb-3333cccc4444, any app that requests an access token for that resource receives an access token with aud : 00001111-aaaa-2222-bbbb-3333cccc4444. Without this claim set, an API could get tokens with an aud claim of api://MyApi.com, api://MyApi.com/, api://myapi.com/AdditionalRegisteredField or any other value set as an app ID URI for that API, and the client ID of the resource.
idtyp This claim is used to get the type of token (app, user, device). By default it's only emitted for app-only tokens. Like all optional claims that affect the access token, the resource in the request must set this optional claim, since resources own the access token.
include_user_token Emits the idtyp claim for users token. Without this optional additional property for the idtyp claim set, an API only gets the claim for app tokens.

additionalProperties example

"optionalClaims": {
    "idToken": [
        {
            "name": "upn",
            "essential": false,
            "additionalProperties": [
                "include_externally_authenticated_upn"
            ]
        }
    ]
}

This optionalClaims object causes the ID token returned to the client to include a upn claim with the other home tenant and resource tenant information. The upn claim is only changed in the token if the user is a guest in the tenant (that uses a different IDP for authentication).

See also

Next steps