Change Default Sync time of Azure AD Sync

In Part 4 of this article series, we learned about how we can manually synchronize on prem identities and password hash with office 365. In this article we will learn how we can change the default synchronization time of Azure AD Sync tool to meet our requirements.

Let’s get started with Part 5 of this series.

Default Synchronization

By default Azure AD Sync tool synchronize with office 365 after every 3 hours just like Dir Sync tool. Dir Sync determines the time to synchronize with office 365 using Microsoft.Online.DirSync.Scheduler.exe.config file located in “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Online Directory Sync” but this has been changed with the new Azure AD Sync tool and now we have Windows Tasks Scheduler to determine / modify the time to sync with Office 365.

By Default, Azure AD Sync schedule runs after every 3 hours executed by a schedule tasks. This scheduled task actually runs DirectorySyncClientCmd.exe in the backend and perform delta sync.

To modify the default synchronization time, we need to perform following steps.

• Log on to Sync server using on prem Sync service account. In our case, we’re using AAD@mstechtalk.com as service account.
• Go to start menu and search for Windows Tasks Scheduler

• In windows tasks scheduler Library, you can notice that a task with the name of Azure AD Sync Scheduler is defined to triggered after every 3 Hours.

• We can’t modify the task if it’s enabled. To modify the scheduler Right Click on Task –> Click Disable to disable the task as shown below

• After disabling the schedule, double click on task and go to Triggers as shown below

• Select the Trigger and click on Edit to edit the schedule trigger. Currently you can see the trigger is defined to run after every 3 hours and it’s set to run for Indefinitely.

• From the drop down menu of “Repeat task every” Select the time after which you want to trigger Azure AD sync with office 365. In our case I’ve modified the time to 10 minutes.

• Click Ok to close the Trigger editor. Click on Ok to Azure AD Sync Scheduler Properties as well to complete the process.

• When you click on Azure AD Sync Scheduler Properties, It will prompt you to enter the Password of Microsoft account created during the installation and configuration but we can replace that account with our Azure AD Sync on prem service account. Enter your on prem Azure AD Sync service account credentials and hit Ok.

• After modifying the trigger settings, you can see that you have successfully modified the default sync time of Azure AD Sync tool to 10 minutes.

• Last action that we need to perform after changing the default sync time is to enable the scheduler by Right Clicking on the scheduler and Click Enable.

This brings us to the end of this article in which we learned how to modify the default sync time of Azure AD Sync tool. If you want to read other articles of this series please go through the following URLs.

• Azure AD Sync Installation Prerequisites – Part 1
• Azure AD Sync Installation Step by Step – Part 2
• Azure AD Sync Filtering Options – Part 3
• Manual Sync Azure AD using PowerShell – Part 4