How to Leverage Azure AD Connect Delta Sync For Faster Syncs

Originally published at https://adamtheautomator.com by June Castillote on August 16, 2022

When you make changes to a user account in Active Directory (AD), do you wonder how long before the changes reflect in Azure Active Directory (AAD)? Or perhaps can you force the synchronization to happen faster? Yes, you can, with Delta Sync.

Azure AD Connect ensures that object synchronization happens at least every 30 minutes by default. But what if you’re working on a task that requires immediate synchronization of changes from your on-premises AD?

Continue reading, and this tutorial will show you how to leverage the Azure AD Connect delta sync to force an out-of-cycle synchronization.

Prerequisites

This tutorial will be a hands-on demonstration. If you’d like to follow along, be sure you have the following:

• An Azure AD tenant. Register a free account if you don’t have one.
• An on-premises Active Directory environment already configured with the latest Azure AD Connect. This tutorial uses a Windows Server 2019 Datacenter with Azure AD Connect 2.1.15.0.

Related:How To Connect Azure AD to Office 365 with Azure AD Connect

• This tutorial assumes that you have installed the MSOnline PowerShell module on your Azure AD Connect server. The latest version as of this writing is 1.1.183.66.

Note: The MSOnline and ADSync modules are not compatible with PowerShell Core. For best results, use only Windows PowerShell 5.1.

Inspecting the Current Delta Sync Schedule

By default, Azure AD Connect sets up a regular synchronization schedule during installation. The sync interval is every 30 minutes.

To inspect the current delta sync schedule, follow these steps:

1. Open a PowerShell window on your computer.

Related:Discover How to Run PowerShell as Administrator

2. Import the ADSync module into your PowerShell session. This command doesn’t provide output, but you’ll verify the module in the following step.