Azure SQL authentication with Office 365 Account

Question

I have an MS Access front end app (accdb) with an Azure SQL back end. I'm currently using SQL Server Authentication, but I'd like to use some sort of Active Directory. I don't have an on-premise AD, so I initially considered setting up Azure AD. However, our small team is already using Office 365, and to the best of my knowledge O365 is powered by Azure AD.

So my question is whether it's possible to use an O365 account (what Microsoft typically calls a "Work Account") to authenticate against an Azure SQL back end? If so, what type of Connection String do I use?

Ideally, when my users open up the Access app, I'd like them to get a pop-up dialog to "Single Sign-On" to their Office 365 account and use those credentials to authenticate against the Azure SQL DB in the back end.

Answer 1

Unfortunately MS Access is not supported at this stage. As far as I know it requires an ODBC driver that supports Azure AD authentication. This driver will be delivered in May 2016. But then MA Assess team has to integrate Access with Azure AD auth. Currently I have no ETA for this task. Thanks, Mirek

Answer 2

Microsoft accounts ( like outlook.com, hotmail.com, live.com) are not supported in the current version of Azure AD authentication for Azure SQL DB. Only native or integrated Azure AD users are supported. For more details see https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/sql-database-aad-authentication/ Thanks, Mirek