The lost two months have been a bonanza for Azure AD Connect releases. Today, Microsoft released version 2.0.28.0 of Azure AD Connect as a maintenance update for it's free solution to synchronize objects from Active Directory and LDAPv3-compatible identity stores to Azure AD.

What's Fixed

Installation on servers with .NET Framework v4.6+

Microsoft addressed an issue where the Azure Active Directory Connect Wizard was incorrectly blocking the installation, when the .NET Framework version on the Windows Server installationwas greater than version 4.6, due to missing registry keys.

These registry keys are not required and should only block installation if they are intentionally set to false.

Phantom Object detection

Microsoft addressed an issue where an error would be thrown if phantom objects are found during during the initialization of a synchronization step. This would block the step or remove transient objects. The phantom objects are now ignored.

Note:
A phantom object is a placeholder for an object which is not there or has not been seen yet. If a source object has a reference for a target object which is not there, then Azure AD Connect creates the target object as a phantom object.

What's Changed

Group WriteBack script reference

On the Group Writeback page in the Azure Active Directory Connect Wizard, Microsoft removed the download button for the Windows PowerShell script.

The text on the page was changed to include a learn more link, which links to the online article where the Windows PowerShell script can be found.

Deselecting objects and attributes that are in use

A change was made that allows an admin to deselect objects and attributes from the inclusion list, even if they are in use. Instead of blocking this, Microsoft now provides a warning, when doing so.

Version information

This is version 2.0.28.0 of Azure AD Connect.
This release in the 2.x branch for Azure AD Connect was made available for download as a 153 MB weighing AzureADConnect.msi on September 30, 2021.

Note:
This is the sixth release of Azure AD Connect v2.x that does not allow automatic upgrades.