Azure Service Principal

Azure Service Principal is role-based application-based authentication. This means that authentication is done per application, rather than per user. All tasks taken by the app are done without a default user context, but based on the assigned roles. The application access to the resources is controlled through the assigned roles' permissions.

To use Azure Service Principal authentication, you must:

• Set up the ability to assign a role to the authentication application. To do this, create a custom OAuth AD application, as described in Creating a Custom OAuth Application.
• Register an application with an Azure AD tenant, to create a new service principal that can be used with the role-based access control, to access resources in your subscription.

Do the following:

1. Create a custom Azure AD application, as described in Creating a Custom OAuth Application.
2. Assign a role to the application:
   1. Use the search bar to search for the Subscriptions service.
   2. Open the Subscriptions page.
   3. Select the subscription to which to assign the application.
   4. Open the Access control (IAM).
   5. Select Add > Add role assignment. OneDrive opens the Add role assignment page.
   6. Assign your custom Azure AD application the role of Owner.

Admin Consent

Admin consent occurs when the Admin for an Azure Active Directory tenant grants permissions to a custom application that explicitly requires an admin to consent to the use case.

When creating a new Azure AD application in the Azure Portal, you must specify which permissions the application requires. Some permissions may be marked as "Admin Consent Required". For example, all Groups permissions require Admin Consent. If your application requires admin consent, there are two ways you can do this.

The easiest way to grant admin consent is to have an admin log into portal.azure.com and navigate to the application you have created in App Registrations. Under API Permissions, click Grant Consent. This gives your application permissions on the tenant under which it was created.

If your organization has multiple tenants or you must grant application permissions for other tenants outside your organization, use the GetAdminConsentURL stored procedure to generate the Admin Authorization URL. Unlike the GetOAuthAuthorizationURL stored procedure, no important information is returned from this endpoint. Rather, after the OAuth application is successfully authorized, it returns a Boolean indicating that permissions have been granted.

After the administrator has approved the OAuth Application, you can continue to authenticate.