Office LTSC 2021 - Outlook authentication pop-up.

[Koldov]

Whilst using Outlook with Office 2016, I would sign in to each email account with the familiar grey authentication pop-up.

 

At some point in September when we came back this changed. It still came up for one account (LGfL), but something else happened with the other accounts (itsLearning) possibly the difference is due to one back-end being Exchange and the other O365 (?), a small box appeared (like a mini browser window) with the itsLearning web log-in dialogue box ...?

 

Not too much of an issue but annoying as the web dialogue box didn't specify which account you were logging in to!

 

I asked itsLearning what had changed:

 

"Our technical team has looked into this, and unfortunately there isn’t much we can do about this because this pop-up is generated by a third-party application.

 

In general, when a product in the Microsoft suite has to open a webpage like this it has a hard-coded 'backdoor' to use the MS owned web browser that existed when it was made. That means this is almost certainly using an old version of edge from before they switched it to be chromium based, which hasn't been updated for several years at this point.

 

The popup is meant for authenticating and everything within Outlook will work as expected."

 

OK, so I took this on the chin (I like to sign-in to each account manually and never store credentials anyway), but thought that it was possibly a sign I should upgrade Office.

 

Now, I have Edge (Chromium) and Office 2021 LTSC, but it is still popping up a small web browser sign-in box... is this right?

[chaplic]

That's a terrible response from the supplier - lazy and misinformation.

 

The popup web browser is called modern authentication and is the future. It means it can ask you for an MFA code, or biometric stuff like Windows Hello.

 

So yes its right and expected.

[Koldov]

Thanks!

 

So this is the just the end result of the Microsoft (or the supplier) enabling modern authentication on the accounts?

[chaplic]

Hard to say for sure but something has changed.

 

Any tenant created in the last few years will have modern auth turned on as default and I suspect MS will have turned it on for all some time ago for all (too lazy to check ). But I say this because Microsoft are turning off the old-school basic authentication very soon.

 

It could have been the supplier has moved from ADFS to PHS for auth; from their own servers to Microsoft. Badly configured client settings for ADFS would cause a modal dialog box which would never appear for forms-based PHS auth.

 

Given the BS you've been fed I would ask them about if you have any devices that will cease to work post basic auth disablement; they should be able to tell you affected users and clues to the device very quickly.