In October 2022, Microsoft will begin disabling basic authentication on all Microsoft 365 tenants and for anyone using Exchange online. This change will impact many areas of the organization, including sending emails from Dynamics GP. More info on what modern authentication is is at the bottom of this blog post.
The GP team at Microsoft and Opal have anticipated this change, and the solution is simple: upgrade to the latest version of GP or migrate to Dynamics 365 Business Central.
If your business falls into one of the below scenarios, you should consider upgrading to the latest version of Dynamics GP.
- I send emails to customers (sales quotes, orders, invoices) and vendors (remittances) using Dynamics GP on a daily basis.
- I use workflows in Dynamics GP and send approval emails.
- I send both business forms and approval emails out of GP via email
In the first scenario, if you are on the October 2020 release or later you should be okay. Once Modern Authentication is enabled, you would simply follow the steps here or here to configure GP for modern authentication. That said, there have been various reports of issues with Dynamics GP 18.3 and modern authentication, so we recommend upgrading to 18.4. The most common issue is related to workflow emails containing attachments. If you are sending workflow emails with attachments, we strongly recommend upgrading to the latest version of GP as there is a bug that causes GP to crash when submitting for approval.
Another longer-term option would be to consider migrating to Dynamics 365 Business Central. With Business Central, upgrades happen behind the scenes and do not require as much planning on the customer’s part as a GP deployment does. Business Central also has a very tight integration with Office 365 that goes far beyond emailing and exporting to Excel or Word. If you are current on your Dynamics GP enhancement plan, you may be eligible for dual use rights for up to four years.
Many of our Dynamics GP clients utilize SMTP Relays and DB_Mail. SMTP Auth will still be available after October 1, 2022 however it may need to be manually re-enabled. Microsoft has not released details of how they will determine which customers are utilizing SMTP Auth.
If you are interested in discussing a GP upgrade or a migration to Business Central contact the experts at Opal Business Solutions, a Microsoft Gold Partner, for assistance.
What is Modern Authentication?
Modern authentication is an umbrella term for a combination of authentication and authorization methods between a client (for example, your laptop or your phone) and a server, as well as some security measures that rely on access policies that you may already be familiar with. It includes:
- Authentication methods: Multifactor authentication (MFA); smart card authentication; client certificate-based authentication
- Authorization methods: Microsoft’s implementation of Open Authorization (OAuth)
- Conditional access policies: Mobile Application Management (MAM) and Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Conditional Access
The purpose of Modern Authentication is to increase the security of messages being sent to authentication services. Follow this link for more information on this change: Deprecation of Basic Authentication in Exchange Online.
