How are you handling the September 2026 SSPR change for new joiner onboarding? (otherMails deprecation)
Hey everyone,
Microsoft announced that starting September 7, 2026, SSPR will no longer accept admin-populated attributes (otherMails, mobilePhone, businessPhone) as valid reset methods. Only user-registered methods (Authenticator, registered phone/email, FIDO2, TAP, etc.) will be accepted.
This breaks our current onboarding flow for new joiners, and I wanted to see how others are planning to handle this.
Our current flow:
- New employee's Entra ID account is created with a random password
- We populate
otherMailswith their personal email (from HR system) - They initiate SSPR on first login
- Entra sends a verification code to their personal email
- They set their password and register Authenticator
This has been working well — it's fully automated, no manual intervention required, and new joiners can onboard autonomously.
** After September, step 4 fails → "No registered method, contact your admin."
Microsoft's recommended replacement: Temporary Access Pass (TAP)
The new flow would be:
- Account created, TAP is generated via Graph API
- TAP is sent to the user somehow (personal email, SMS, via manager...)
- User logs in with UPN + TAP
- User sets password and registers Authenticator
Our concerns:
- Identity verification: How do you ensure the TAP is being sent to the legitimate person? With otherMails, the personal email came from HR and was trusted. With TAP, we're essentially sending a one-time login credential — feels like we need more verification.
- Manual vs automated: We don't want to regress to a manual process where helpdesk has to generate and send TAPs. We need this automated at scale.
- Security team hesitation: Our security team is concerned about TAP usage in general (it's a powerful credential).
- Lifetime configuration: We already use TAP for external contractors with a 1-day lifetime. For regular employees, what's a sensible lifetime? Too short = friction if they don't use it immediately. Too long = security risk.
Questions for the community:
- How are you automating TAP generation and delivery for new joiners?
- What identity verification measures are you putting in place before/during TAP delivery?
- Are you using a Logic App, Power Automate, or custom automation?
- What TAP lifetime are you using for onboarding scenarios?
- Anyone managed to get security sign-off on this? What arguments worked?
Would love to hear how other orgs are approaching this. Thanks!