Office 365 – Azure Active Directory Sync Tool (password changes)

If you are using office 365 you may be using the Azure Active Directory Sync Tool to sync up your active directory to office 365.

You are probably aware that by default DirSync runs by default every three hours. I have seen various websites showing how to change the default setting in the Config. file (Microsoft.Online.DirSync.Scheduler) to make the sync happen faster. The main reason is to sync up the changes faster. I have found that this is not necessary to sync password changes up faster as the DirSync tool will sync up the passwords within about 3 minutes in the background. It won’t sync the AD changes such as a change in name but will sync the password in the background.

The details of the sync can be found in the event viewing searching for event ID 656 which is the password sync request ID. You will see the time stamp a couple of minutes after the password is reset.

There are various IDs that you can search for regarding the sync. The list below is taken from the Microsoft site (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2855271)