Tutorial: Govern and monitor applications

Article
10/23/2023

The IT administrator at Fabrikam has added and configured an application from the Microsoft Entra application gallery. They also made sure that access can be managed and that the application is secure by using the information in Tutorial: Manage application access and security. They now need to understand the resources that are available to govern and monitor the application.

Using the information in this tutorial, an administrator of the application learns how to:

Create an access review
Access the audit logs report
Access the sign-ins report
Send logs to Azure Monitor

Prerequisites

An Azure account with an active subscription. If you don't already have one, Create an account for free.
One of the following roles: Global Administrator, Identity Governance Administrator, Privileged Role Administrator, Cloud Application Administrator, or Application Administrator.
An enterprise application that has been configured in your Microsoft Entra tenant.

Create an access review

Tip

Steps in this article might vary slightly based on the portal you start from.

The administrator wants to make sure that users or guests have appropriate access. They decide to ask users of the application to participate in an access review and recertify or attest to their need for access. When the access review is finished, they can then make changes and remove access from users who no longer need it. For more information, see Manage user and guest user access with access reviews.

To create an access review:

Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center as at least a Cloud Application Administrator.
Browse to Identity > Identity Governance > Access reviews.
Select New access review to create a new access review.
In Select what to review, select Applications.
Select + Select application(s), select the application, and then choose Select.
Now you can select a scope for the review. Your options are:
- Guest users only - This option limits the access review to only the Microsoft Entra B2B guest users in your directory.
- All users - This option scopes the access review to all user objects associated with the resource. Select All users.
Select Next: Reviews.
In the Specify reviewers section, in the Select reviewers box, select Selected user(s) or group(s), select + Select reviewers, and then select the user account that is assigned to the application.
In the Specify recurrence of review section, specify the following selections:
- Duration (in days) - Accept the default value of 3.
- Review recurrence - select One time.
- Start date - Accept today's date as the start date.
Select Next: Settings.
In the Upon completion settings section, you can specify what happens after the review finishes. Select Auto apply results to resource.
Select Next: Review + Create.
Name the access review. Optionally, give the review a description. The name and description are shown to the reviewers.
Review the information and select Create.

Start the access review

The access review starts in a few minutes and it appears in your list with an indicator of its status.

By default, Microsoft Entra ID sends an email to reviewers shortly after the review starts. If you choose not to have Microsoft Entra ID send the email, be sure to inform the reviewers that an access review is waiting for them to complete. You can show them the instructions for how to review access to groups or applications. If your review is for guests to review their own access, show them the instructions for how to review access for themselves to groups or applications.

If you've assigned guests as reviewers and they haven't accepted their invitation to the tenant, they won't receive an email from access reviews. They must first accept the invitation before they can begin reviewing.

View the status of an access review

You can track the progress of access reviews as they are completed.

Go to Identity > Identity Governance > Access reviews.
In the list, select the access review you created.
On the Overview page, check the progress of the access review.

The Results page provides information on each user under review in the instance, including the ability to Stop, Reset, and Download results. To learn more, check out the Complete an access review of groups and applications in Microsoft Entra access reviews article.

Access the audit logs report

The audit logs report combines several reports around application activities into a single view for context-based reporting. For more information, see Audit logs in Microsoft Entra ID.

To access the audit logs report, go to Identity > Monitoring & health > Audit logs.

The audit logs report consolidates the following reports:

Password reset activity
Password reset registration activity
Self-service groups activity
Office365 Group Name Changes
Account provisioning activity
Password rollover status
Account provisioning errors

Access the sign-ins report

The Sign-ins view includes all user sign-ins, and the Application Usage report. You also can view application usage information in the Manage section of the Enterprise applications overview. For more information, see Sign-in logs in Microsoft Entra ID

To access the sign-in logs report, go to Identity > Monitoring & health > Sign-in logs.

Send logs to Azure Monitor

The Microsoft Entra activity logs only store information for a maximum of 30 days. Depending on your needs, you may require extra storage to back up the activity logs data. Using the Azure Monitor, you can archive the audit and sign logs to an Azure storage account to retain the data for a longer time. The Azure Monitor is also useful for rich visualization, monitoring and alerting of data. To learn more about the Azure Monitor and the cost considerations for extra storage, see Microsoft Entra activity logs in Azure Monitor.

To send logs to your logs analytics workspace:

Select Diagnostic settings, and then select Add diagnostic setting. You can also select Export Settings from the Audit Logs or Sign-ins page to get to the diagnostic settings configuration page.
In the Diagnostic settings menu, select Send to Log Analytics workspace, and then select Configure.
Select the Log Analytics workspace you want to send the logs to, or create a new workspace in the provided dialog box.
Select the logs that you would like to send to the workspace.
Select Save to save the setting.

After about 15 minutes, verify that events are streamed to your Log Analytics workspace.

Next steps

Advance to the next article to learn how to...

Manage consent to applications and evaluate consent requests