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.

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.

Figure 1: Azure components needed to configure Exchange Online when self-hosting EmpowerID

Table 1: Azure Components you need to configure when self-hosting EmpowerID

Azure Component	Purpose

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.

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.

Figure 2: Azure Components needed to configure Exchange Online when using EmpowerID SaaS (right-side)

Table 2: Azure Components you need to configure when using EmpowerID SaaS

Azure Component	Purpose

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

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.