Entra ID Architecture

This page is for the mental models behind Entra ID.

The goal is to make identity topics easier to reason about before getting lost in individual settings, policies, or troubleshooting steps.

Questions this section should answer

• What is the role of a tenant in the overall model?
• How should users, groups, apps, and permissions relate to each other?
• Which identity boundaries matter most in practice?
• Where do authentication, authorization, and governance overlap?

Notes I want to build here

• tenant-level mental models
• users, groups, roles, and administrative boundaries
• enterprise applications and app registrations
• conditional access in the larger access model
• identity governance and lifecycle thinking

Writing principle

If a topic feels complicated, I want to explain it first in plain operational language and only then go deeper into the platform details.