How to Create Efficient Rules for Dynamic Membership Groups in Entra ID

Let’s discuss How to Create Efficient Rules for Dynamic Membership Groups in Entra ID. Microsoft allows users to create more efficient rules for dynamic membership groups in Microsoft Entra ID. Simpler and more efficient rules result in better dynamic group processing times.

The Microsoft Entra ID engineering team, part of Microsoft Entra, receives reports of incidents related to dynamic membership groups and the processing time for their membership rules. Based on continuous feedback from Entra users, Microsoft provides some guidance on creating efficient rules.

By creating efficient rules for dynamic membership groups in Microsoft Entra ID, users got many advantages. It includes Automated Management, Improved Performance, Scalability, Consistency, simplified administration,enhanced security etc.

This blog post I will help you to know more about How to Create Efficient Rules for Dynamic Membership Groups in Entra ID. Different steps involved on the efficient rule creation of Dynamic Membership Groups in Entra ID also discussed in this article.

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How to Create Efficient Rules for Dynamic Membership Groups in Entra ID

As mentioned above several step you must follows to create a efficient and simplest rules for your Dynamic Membership Groups in Entra ID. The following will shows the best practices for steps.

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Minimize use of MATCH

Minimize the usage of the match operator in rules as much as possible. Instead, explore if it’s possible to use the startswith or -eq operators. Considering using other properties that allow you to write rules to select the users you want to be in the group without using the -match operator.

• For Example, if you want a rule for the group for all users whose city is Lagos, then instead of using rules like.
• user.city -match “ago”
• user.city -match “.?ago.“
• It’s better to use rules like:
• user.city -startswith “Lag”
• Or, best of all:
• user.city -eq “Lagos”

Minimize use of CONTAINS

Minimize the usage of the contains operator in rules as much as possible. Instead, explore if it’s possible to use the startswith or -eq operators. Utilizing CONTAINS can increase processing times, especially for tenants with many dynamic membership groups.

Use Fewer OR Operators

identify when it uses various values for the same property linked together with -or operators. Instead, use the -in operator to group them into a single criterion to make the rule easier to evaluate. For example, instead of having a rule.

(user.department -eq “Accounts” -and user.city -eq “Lagos”) -or
(user.department -eq “Accounts” -and user.city -eq “Ibadan”) -or
(user.department -eq “Accounts” -and user.city -eq “Kaduna”) -or
(user.department -eq “Accounts” -and user.city -eq “Abuja”) -or
(user.department -eq “Accounts” -and user.city -eq “Port Harcourt”)

It’s better to have a rule like this:

• user.department -eq “Accounts” -and user.city -in [“Lagos”, “Ibadan”, “Kaduna”, “Abuja”, “Port Harcourt”].

Conversely, identify similar sub criteria with the same property not equal to various values, that are linked with -and operators. Then use the -notin operator to group them into a single criterion to make the rule easier to understand and evaluate. For example, instead of using a rule like this:

• (user.city -ne “Lagos”) -and (user.city -ne “Ibadan”) -and (user.city -ne “Kaduna”) -and (user.city -ne “Abuja”) -and (user.city -ne “Port Harcourt”)
• It’s better to use a rule like this:
• user.city -notin [“Lagos”, “Ibadan”, “Kaduna”, “Abuja”, “Port Harcourt”]

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Avoid Redundant Criteria

Ensure that you aren’t using redundant criteria in your rule. For example, instead of using a rule like this:

• user.city -eq “Lagos” or user.city -startswith “Lag”
• It’s better to use a rule like this:
• user.city -startswith “Lag”

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Author

Anoop C Nair has been Microsoft MVP from 2015 onwards for ten consecutive years! He is a Workplace Solution Architect with more than 22+ years of experience in Workplace technologies. He is also a Blogger, Speaker, and leader of the Local User Group Community. His primary focus is on Device Management technologies like SCCM and Intune. He writes about technologies like Intune, SCCM, Windows, Cloud PC, Windows, Entra, Microsoft Security, Career, etc.