Disable auto-acceleration sign-in

  • Article

Home Realm Discovery Policy (HRD) offers administrators multiple ways to control how and where their users authenticate. The domainHintPolicy section of the HRD policy is used to help migrate federated users to cloud managed credentials, by ensuring that they always visit the Microsoft Entra sign-in page and aren't auto-accelerated to a federated IDP because of domain hints. To learn more about HRD policy, see Home Realm Discovery.

This policy is needed in situations where and admins can't control or update domain hints during sign-in. For example, outlook.com/contoso.com sends the user to a sign-in page with the &domain_hint=contoso.com parameter appended, to auto-accelerate the user directly to the federated IDP for the contoso.com domain. Users with managed credentials sent to a federated IDP can't sign in using their managed credentials, reducing security, and frustrating users with randomized sign-in experiences. Admins rolling out managed credentials should also set up this policy to ensure that users can always use their managed credentials.

DomainHintPolicy details

The DomainHintPolicy section of the HRD policy is a JSON object that allows an admin to opt out certain domains and applications from domain hint usage. Functionally, this tells the Microsoft Entra sign-in page to behave as if a domain_hint parameter on the sign-in request wasn't present.

The Respect and Ignore policy sections

Section Meaning Values
IgnoreDomainHintForDomains If this domain hint is sent in the request, ignore it. Array of domain addresses (for example contoso.com). Also supports all_domains
RespectDomainHintForDomains If this domain hint is sent in the request, respect it even if IgnoreDomainHintForApps indicates that the app in the request shouldn't auto-accelerate. This is used to slow the rollout of deprecating domain hints within your network - you can indicate that some domains should still be accelerated. Array of domain addresses (for example contoso.com). Also supports all_domains
IgnoreDomainHintForApps If a request from this application comes with a domain hint, ignore it. Array of application IDs (GUIDs). Also supports all_apps
RespectDomainHintForApps If a request from this application comes with a domain hint, respect it even if IgnoreDomainHintForDomains includes that domain. Used to ensure some apps keep working if you discover they break without domain hints. Array of application IDs (GUIDs). Also supports all_apps

Policy evaluation

The DomainHintPolicy logic runs on each incoming request that contains a domain hint and accelerates based on two pieces of data in the request - the domain in the domain hint, and the client ID (the app). In short - "Respect" for a domain or app takes precedence over an instruction to "Ignore" a domain hint for a given domain or application.

  • In the absence of any domain hint policy, or if none of the four sections reference the app or domain hint mentioned, the rest of the HRD policy will be evaluated.
  • If either one (or both) of RespectDomainHintForApps or RespectDomainHintForDomains section includes the app or domain hint in the request, then the user is auto-accelerated to the federated IDP as requested.
  • If either one (or both) of IgnoreDomainHintsForApps or IgnoreDomainHintsForDomains references the app or the domain hint in the request, and they’re not referenced by the “Respect” sections, then the request won't be auto-accelerated, and the user remains at the Microsoft Entra sign-in page to provide a username.

Once a user has entered a username at the sign-in page, they can use their managed credentials. If they choose not to use a managed credential, or they have none registered, they are taken to their federated IDP for credential entry as usual.

Prerequisites

To disable auto-acceleration sign-in for an application in Microsoft Entra ID, you need:

  • An Azure account with an active subscription. If you don't already have one, you can create an account.

  • One of the following roles: Cloud Application Administrator, Application Administrator, or owner of the service principal.

  • Microsoft Graph PowerShell module.

Suggested use within a tenant

Admins of federated domains should set up this section of the HRD policy in a four-phase plan. The goal of this plan is to eventually get all users in a tenant to use their managed credentials regardless of domain or application, save those apps that have hard dependencies on domain_hint usage. This plan helps admins find those apps, exempt them from the new policy, and continue rolling out the change to the rest of the tenant.

  1. Pick a domain to initially roll this change out to. This is your test domain, so pick one that may be more receptive to changes in UX (For example, seeing a different sign-in page). This ignores all domain hints from all applications that use this domain name. Set this policy in your tenant-default HRD policy:
New-AzureADPolicy 
    -Definition @("{`"HomeRealmDiscoveryPolicy`":{`"DomainHintPolicy`": { `"IgnoreDomainHintForDomains`": [ `"testDomain.com`" ], `"RespectDomainHintForDomains`": [], `"IgnoreDomainHintForApps`": [], `"RespectDomainHintForApps`": [] } } }") 
    -DisplayName BasicBlockAccelerationPolicy 
    -Type HomeRealmDiscoveryPolicy
  1. Gather feedback from the test domain users. Collect details for applications that broke as a result of this change - they have a dependency on domain hint usage, and should be updated. For now, add them to the RespectDomainHintForApps section:
New-AzureADPolicy 
    -Definition @("{`"HomeRealmDiscoveryPolicy`":{`"DomainHintPolicy`": { `"IgnoreDomainHintForDomains`": [ `"testDomain.com`" ], `"RespectDomainHintForDomains`": [], `"IgnoreDomainHintForApps`": [], `"RespectDomainHintForApps`": ["app1-clientID-Guid", "app2-clientID-Guid"] } } }") 
    -DisplayName BasicBlockAccelerationPolicy 
    -Type HomeRealmDiscoveryPolicy
  1. Continue expanding rollout of the policy to new domains, collecting more feedback.
New-AzureADPolicy 
    -Definition @("{`"HomeRealmDiscoveryPolicy`":{`"DomainHintPolicy`": { `"IgnoreDomainHintForDomains`": [ `"testDomain.com`", "otherDomain.com", "anotherDomain.com"], `"RespectDomainHintForDomains`": [], `"IgnoreDomainHintForApps`": [], `"RespectDomainHintForApps`": ["app1-clientID-Guid", "app2-clientID-Guid"] } } }") 
    -DisplayName BasicBlockAccelerationPolicy 
    -Type HomeRealmDiscoveryPolicy
  1. Complete your rollout - target all domains, exempting those that should continue to be accelerated:
New-AzureADPolicy 
    -Definition @("{`"HomeRealmDiscoveryPolicy`":{`"DomainHintPolicy`": { `"IgnoreDomainHintForDomains`": [ `"*`" ], `"RespectDomainHintForDomains`": [guestHandlingDomain.com], `"IgnoreDomainHintForApps`": [], `"RespectDomainHintForApps`": ["app1-clientID-Guid", "app2-clientID-Guid"] } } }") 
    -DisplayName BasicBlockAccelerationPolicy 
    -Type HomeRealmDiscoveryPolicy

After step 4 is complete all users, except those in guestHandlingDomain.com, can sign-in at the Microsoft Entra sign-in page even when domain hints would otherwise cause an auto-acceleration to a federated IDP. The exception to this is if the app requesting sign-in is one of the exempted ones - for those apps, all domain hints are still accepted.