Microsoft announced on 20 September 2019 that it plans to stop support for Basic Authentication (that is, transmission of the username and password combination) on all Microsoft APIs, in order to improve security across their product APIs.
Microsoft is enabling OAuth 2.0 (the industry-standard protocol for authorization) on all of their APIs and that change is already in place.
Microsoft is not saying that it will disable older APIs, for example, IMAP.
When will Microsoft stop support for Basic Authentication?
The initial announcement said that Basic Authentication on all Microsoft APIs will be disabled on October 13, 2020. However, since then Microsoft has changed the date to the second half of the 2021, due to the COVID-19 crisis.
How is Zendesk Sell affected?
There are three experiences in Sell that currently use Basic Authentication and will be impacted by this change. These are the following integrations:
- Office 365 Email integration
- Office 365 Calendar integration
- Office 365 Contacts integration
Zendesk Sell will support OAuth authorization for all three integrations by the original date, 13 Oct 2020.
What do Zendesk Sell customers need to do?
If you have a Zendesk Sell account with any of the Office 365 integrations enabled, each account user will need to reauthorize using their own Microsoft account.
If your email is still connected to Sell by Microsoft basic OAuth, you must change the model of authorization from basic OAuth to multi-factor OAuth by 31 August, 2022 (see Connecting your Microsoft email to Sell).
From the beginning of October 2020, Zendesk will send an email with instructions and 1-step link to each affected user so that they can reauthorize their account. The process is similar to authorizing a Microsoft account in other services.
Other resources
See the following links for more information about the Microsoft announcement and other related resources.
2 Comments
As it appears that the integration between Gsuite and Sell is handled over APIs is there such an integration in the plans for Exchange online (365)?
Speaking candidly does Sell have any plans to update the email channel integration (away from legacy protocols, and perhaps with a more limited scope)? This is debatably the most valuable component of the sell platform. For an org like mine my largest concern is scoping the email that the sell platform has access to. The nature of our business means that our sell resources may receive regulated data. understandably we cant have unrestricted access to our employee and potentially client data in a third party platform; and this is what is preventing us from fully utilizing this feature.
Hi there,
I reached out to our team of developers about your questions and they let me know the following: We have recently updated the way Exchange online connects from legacy authentication to Oauth authentication over IMAP. While deprecating basic auth, Microsoft has announced that it will be supporting Oauth over IMAP (article here: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/office/blogs/end-of-support-for-basic-authentication-access-to-exchange-online-apis-for-office-365-customers/). We do have switching to Microsoft API on our longer term roadmap, but nothing on the immediate one.
Thanks,
Nate
Nate Brown
Customer Advocate | Zendesk Sell CRM
Visit our Support Center - Email us at support@zendesk.com - Call us at +1 888 670 4887 Mon-Fri 8am-5pm PT
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