[David Morinello]

Does anyone have any idea what effect, if any, that these Exchange End-of-Support Announcements will have on Dynamics GP?

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What’s discontinued in Exchange Server

Discontinued features from Exchange 2013 to Exchange 2019

This section lists the Exchange 2013 features that are no longer available in Exchange 2019.

Architecture

Feature		Comments and mitigation
Unified Messaging (UM)		Unified Messaging has been removed from Exchange 2019. We recommend that Exchange 2019 organizations transition to Skype for Business Cloud Voice Mail.
Client Access server role		The Client Access server role has been replaced by Client Access services that run on the Mailbox server role. The Mailbox server role now performs all functionality that was previously included with the Client Access server role. For more information about the new Mailbox server role, see Exchange Server architecture.
MAPI/CDO library		The MAPI/CDO library has been replaced by Exchange Web Services (EWS), Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), and Representational State Transfer (REST)* APIs. If an application uses the MAPI/CDO library, it needs to move to EWS, EAS, or the REST APIs to communicate with Exchange 2019.

 

End of support for Basic Authentication access to Exchange Online API’s for Office 365 customers

Today, we are announcing that on October 13th, 2020 we will stop supporting and retire Basic Authentication for Exchange Active Sync (EAS), Post Office Protocol (POP), Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP), and Remote PowerShell (RPS) in Exchange Online. This means that new or existing applications using one or more of these API’s/protocols will not be able to use Basic Authentication when connecting to Office 365 mailboxes or endpoints and will need to update how they authenticate.

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David Morinello
Senior Dynamics GP Systems Architect
Ascend Learning, LLC
Leawood KS
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[David Laster]

Hi David:

I am getting this question from customers too, so I opened a case with Microsoft to get some help and guidance.  They said confirmed that currently TLS 1.0 and Basic Authentication (no MFA) are required for Exchange and Workflow emailing within Microsoft Dynamics GP.  They are also aware of the changes that are coming to the supportability of TLS 1.0 and Basic Authentication within the other Microsoft applications. They are reviewing the changes for a future release of Microsoft Dynamics GP and will publish any news/updates as they can.  As of now there is no confirmed plan in place but they advised us to keep an eye on their blogs for the most up to date information.  I’ll post more for you if I get new info on this issue.

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David Laster
Director | Software Solutions
GraVoc
Peabody MA
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[David Morinello]

I am still looking into this and I am wondering if two pieces I am seeing mean what they appear to mean.

• End of Support for Basic Authentication on October 13th, 2020

• Dynamics GP requires a ‘basic’ authentication to also be enabled for the O365 accounts. If it is not, the email functionality in GP normally will not work until ‘basic’ authentication is enabled.

Does this mean Dynamics GP Support for the whole Exchange Support path is gone by this October?

Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office 2013 32bit & x64 Microsoft Office 2016 32bit & x64 Microsoft Office 2019  32bit & x64 (18.2.1013 GP version or later)      NOTES:                1. If using Office x64, the server type in System Preferences (Microsoft Dynamics GP | Tools | System | Setup | System  Preferences) must be set to Exchange. 2. The Exchange server type only supports XPS and DOCX. (David Morinello-Side note: We are seeing PDF functionality when testing this path. Did something change?) 3. If using Office 32bit, the server type in System Preferences can either be MAPI or Exchange

  I am reading too much into this? Could you or someone from Microsoft clear this up for us?

?

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David Morinello
Senior Dynamics GP Systems Architect
Ascend Learning, LLC
Leawood KS
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[Dan Peltier]

I am not working with GP any longer, I moved to the Dynamics 365 Finance team so I’m not in the GP news pipeline as closely as I once was. 

Reading what I see here, and having not talked to anyone on GP yet regarding this, It does seem to me like we have to change how EWS is authenticated. 
The bit about MAPI support going away seems misleading, I think that may just be a special MAPI API. Hard to believe they’d stop using MAPI completely. 

GP already leverages Exchange Web Services for emailing as a web call out of the application. We use Basic auth here I believe, and this seems like it needs to be updated to support OAuth. This should allow two-factor to be enabled, which GP currently doesn’t support. 

MAPI is a non-web local call to the locally installed Outlook, no authentication is ever required. This experience shouldn’t change with basic auth being deprecated.

I think ultimately what this means is that if MSFT chooses to continue supporting the EWS implementation inside GP, it will need to be updated to not use Basic Auth. If the deprecation happens without us making changes, then MAPI and 32-but Outlook would likely be the only way to email out of GP, short of a custom solution. 

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Dan Peltier
Sr. Support Engineer
Microsoft
Fargo ND
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[Lucas Miller]

David,

I can confirm what David Laster stated below after his conversation with support.  The Dynamics GP product group is aware of the upcoming changes to Exchange Server.  They are working on updating the Exchange components in Dynamic GP and it will be included in a future release of Dynamics GP.  We’re not prepared to say much more than that, but we are working on it.

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Lucas Miller
Support Escalation Engineer
Microsoft
Fargo, ND
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[David Morinello]

Thanks !
I have been tasked to map the near future support as best I can to plan ahead, and these pieces of information help a lot.

Can I assume we will get a patch at the GP 2018 R2 (18.00.0704) level or will be need to be on 18.2 (19, Cough, cough!) ?

Final question,
Is anything affected in the MAPI support path? We are seeing MFA issues with Outlook 2016 (32-bit) &, Mail Profiles, on some new Citrix Servers.
?

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David Morinello
Senior Dynamics GP Systems Architect
Ascend Learning, LLC
Leawood KS
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[Lucas Miller]

David,

There won’t be any future patches for Dynamics GP 2018.  It will only be a continuation of the Dynamic GP Modern branch of the product.  I can’t say officially of course since release is a ways out, but based on the nature of the issue and the product lifecycle I’d guess that it would be ported back to GP 2016 as well.

The only thing we’ve seen that might affect the use of MAPI is the fact that newer versions of Office/Microsoft 365 are not compatible with the VBA redistributable that is included in GP.  You’ll notice this if you’re in a GP client with VBA files and the GP client crashes when you try to e-mail via MAPI.  We’ve written about this, as well as the future of VBA with Dynamics GP in the Support and Services Blog:

https://community.dynamics.com/gp/b/dynamicsgp/posts/dynamics-gp-crashes-closes-when-emailing-after-office-update
https://community.dynamics.com/gp/b/dynamicsgp/archive/2019/03/05/dynamics-gp-and-vba-future-considerations

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Lucas Miller
Support Escalation Engineer
Microsoft
Fargo, ND
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[Corey Clay]

I would like to add that we have successfully been able to make a connection to O365 where MFA is enabled by setting up app passwords for users in the O365 portal. Granted, this workaround requires the end user to authenticate with a separate password than normal for email functionality, but it does work. It is my understanding that by using the App Password with MFA still enabled on O365 we are not utilizing “Basic Authentication” to O365.

As for setting up GP Workflow, I haven’t done anything there.

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Corey Clay
Senior Technical Consultant
NexTec Group
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