Azure AD Connect - DataValidationFailed

Working with the new Azure AD Lifecycle Workflows I ran into a problem syncing the employee's start (employeeHireDate) and leave date (employeeLeaveDateTime) from on premises AD to Azure AD. First you must have Azure AD Connect version 2.1.20 or better to sync both attributes.

Hear the problem. after I added the attribute flows via a custom sync rule (out to AAD) picking the timestamps up from extensionAttribute1 and 2 I got DataValidationFailed errors (0x8023134a).

here the detail info:

"

Unable to update this object in Azure Active Directory, because the attribute [employeeHireDate], is not valid. Update the value in your local directory services.

Tracking Id: 673b26d2-b793-4b26-91f5-2bb753c97059

ExtraErrorDetails:

[{"Key":"ObjectId","Value":["b1d0b05b-d012-4be5-8259-b1ad1fa88211"]},{"Key":"InvalidAttributeName","Value":["employeeHireDate"]}]

"

the correct date and time format in on premises AD is 20230212100000.0Z. If the format is not correct, or is not a date-time format at all, you will see the error "InvalidAttributeName". The ExtraErrorDetails are confusing because the data is not valid, but the attribute name is correct.

see also How to synchronize attributes for Lifecycle workflows - Microsoft Entra | Microsoft Learn

just to add one more thought: It will be a secret to Microsoft why the attributes are named differently, one just ...Date and the other one ...DateTime, both attributes must have a timestamp in the same format including the time info.