Create Office 365 Email tool to Oauth 2.0 Authentication

[bneves_tim]

This year, Microsoft updated improve their API (GraphAPI) to access Office365 enviroment.

Alteryx have launched on Microsoft District in Public Gallery the Dataverse , Onedrive & Sharepoint Connectors.

Alteryx must develop as soon as possible an connector/email with same authenticator options as connectors Above and improve the emails settings.

It´s important to release and documentation to show wich permissions on Azure it's necssary to send the emails. 

References:

Microsoft Announce:

https://docs.microsoft.com/pt-br/lifecycle/announcements/exchange-online-basic-auth-deprecated 

Azure Permissions:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/api/user-sendmail?view=graph-rest-1.0&tabs=csharp 

[VojtechT]

Hi @jcheming , to my knowledge the Email output tool does not utilise the Outlook 365 in any way since it is using SMTP authentication, which is far more general then just focusing on Outlook. Hence any deprecation of API by Microsoft should not impact the usage of the Email tool. Would you be willing to share your Email tool configuration with me to make sure? 

[jcheming]

Hey @VojtechT ,

Yeah I jumped in here mostly for the OAuth2 discussion, not really invested in Office 365. We currently have a lot of reporting workflows with configurations like this:

Our organization is disabling all accounts off of basic authentication in favor of OAuth2 authentication to align with security practices recommended here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/clients-and-mobile-in-exchange-online/deprecation-of-basic...

Maybe this is better served in it's own thread, but as it stands my team has no way of complying with this request from IT and a lot of internal and external facing workflows will break. Is there any roadmap to add more extensive authentication options to the generic email reporting tool?

[VojtechT]

Hi @jcheming , I read the whole thread once more time including the linked articles and I can confirm I was wrong. I did not expect the the basic auth deprecation would apply to smtp server as well. We'll find out how to resolve this asap.

Vojta

[jcheming]

@VojtechT Thanks for the help escalating, really appreciate it!!!

[dwillequer]

@VojtechT Circling around on this for an update since it has been around a month. We are in the same boat where many of our flows will cease to function October 1, 2022 without the ability to authenticate via OAuth2. Any update on efforts to include this in Alteryx?

[LukeDolman]

Hi Folks,

Has there been any progress on this? A month to go apparently... I'm trying to figure out what the impact is from this... Deprecation of Basic authentication in Exchange Online | Microsoft Docs  Am I right in thinking that because the email tool makes you specify and SMTP server then it's using SMTP authentication, which is NOT the same as Basic Authentication and therefore won't necessarily be turned off by MS on Oct 1? I notice that newer versions of the email tool make provision to enter a username and password - is that a response to this issue? Do we therefore just need to upgrade to get the later tool?

Many thanks

Luke

[salbol1]

@jcheming 

The thing I'd love to see is handling PW updates akin to how Alteryx used to handle data connection PW changes, which has evolved into the DCM functions we have in newer versions, although it doesn't address non data-based connections. Our IT teams have looked at smtp relays via whitelisting rules, but, like many companies - individual computers often connect to the network via dhcp leased IP addresses - so those machines have to deal with authenticated STARTTLS validated accounts. The work around for embedded email tools has been to create an environmental variable, and access that via an email tool macro, utilizing GetEnvironmentVariable() function. This only addresses Tool based, not Event based email actions. These are the ones that are most concerning - the update methodology for these modules that has event notifications within them:

How these changes are accommodated is the headache for me ----

[dwillequer]

@LukeDolman We did end up finding a solution that worked for us. Turns out there is an exchange policy specifically for allowing SMTP via basic authentication. We ended up configuring a new policy and applying it to the email address we were using within the Email tool in Alteryx. We expect this to act as a workaround until OAuth2 is supported by Alteryx natively, which based on our conversations with support is estimated to be released November 2022. We confirmed that with this custom policy applied, the email tool continues to work without an issue, but when basic authentication was blocked as a whole that it stopped functioning.

Hopefully the below information will help folks on this thread or searching for a solution come October 1, 2022 when their existing solutions break. 

Configured Policy:

AllowBasicAuthActiveSync           : False
AllowBasicAuthAutodiscover         : False
AllowBasicAuthImap                 : False
AllowBasicAuthMapi                 : False
AllowBasicAuthOfflineAddressBook   : False
AllowBasicAuthOutlookService       : False
AllowBasicAuthPop                  : False
AllowBasicAuthReportingWebServices : False
AllowBasicAuthRest                 : False
AllowBasicAuthRpc                  : False
AllowBasicAuthSmtp                 : True
AllowBasicAuthWebServices          : False
AllowBasicAuthPowershell           : False

[Hamder83]

Any updates on this?

[Jérémie]

Hello everyone!

@VojtechT : Any update about the possibility to send mail using the email tool with office365 credentials?

 This feature would be a real banger!

Have a great WE,

Jérémie