The release builds on previous ones with a new capability since the September preview. You can now view which applications a user can access.
Azure AD Admin Console Advantages
However, those not in the preview will see far wider reaching changes. In all, the new console adds the following capabilities:
“Know Your Organization: The new experience begins with our brand-new landing page and dashboard. Here we focus purely on directory functionality and provide access to all Azure Active Directory features.” Understand access: A key part of our experience is the holistic view of access that we provide, pivoted on a user. From this view you can see the groups that user is a member of, what role they have, what licenses have been assigned, and their Azure resources. New in this GA release is the view of what applications a user has access to, either assigned or consented.” Story of your organization: We now provide audit and sign-in activity as streams of data with rich filtering and search capabilities. You can see the activity for the whole organization, or dive into a single user, group, or application, and then slice and dice the information in whatever way is most useful for you. From this dashboard, you can get an overview of the state of your organization, and easily dive into managing the directory, users, or application access.”
The team is working on adding other features to that list. You’ll soon be able to manage MFA providers, Azure AD Domain Services and more. You can try the new portal yourself at http://aad.portal.azure.com/.
