Microsoft's deprecation of Basic Auth in January 2023 and how it affects Incoming Mail on Jira Cloud

[#1]

Hello Jira community,

As outlined by Microsoft previously, the support for Basic Authentication which was previously scheduled to end in September 2022, will now permanently end in the first week of January 2023. However, starting October 2022, Microsoft will be randomly turning off Basic Authentication for some customers with the ability to use the self-service diagnostic to re-enable Basic Authentication for any protocols they need, once per protocol until December 2022.

Given we added support for OAuth back in October 2020, it’s recommended that Jira admins reconfigure Incoming Mail using OAuth before the deprecation timeline to continue creating issues and comments via email.

How to:

1. Click the cog icon on the top right of the Jira instance and select System

2. Scroll down to Mail and select Incoming Mail

3. Click Add incoming mail server

   1. Enter a name (required) and description (optional) for your mail server

   2. Select Microsoft as an email service provider, your sign-in credentials, and allow Jira the requested permissions

4. Add an incoming mail handler with the Microsoft incoming mail server you configured in step 3

5. Optional: To ensure that it’s the new mail server and handler that’s processing your incoming mails to create issues and not the old one, please follow the steps below:

   1. Edit the existing mail handler configured with the Basic Authentication mail server

   2. Set the value for Delay (in minutes) field to a higher one (eg: 30 mins)

   3. Click Next and Save the new configuration

   4. Once confirming that the new mail server and handler are processing incoming mails since the Basic Authentication mail handler will take 30 mins compared to 1 minute by the new OAuth mail handler, proceed to step 6

6. Delete the incoming mail server that uses Basic Authentication

For Microsoft mail servers, Jira will auto-fill authorization and the token endpoint data. You’ll need to review and confirm permissions to let Jira access your information.

Note: We’re currently evaluating support for Microsoft Government Community Cloud (GCC) customers for Incoming Mail. More information on this will be shared soon.

As always, if you have any concerns or questions, please feel free to leave a comment on this post.

Thank you,
Arbaaz Gowher
Product Manager, Jira Cloud

[Christel Gray]

In step 1.2., you state, "your sign-in credentials." You don't mean my personal credentials right? You mean credentials for an email account we've set-up specifically for Jira, correct?

Thanks!

[kayode.faith]

I can answer that qustion Christel.  No not your personal credentials.  The credentials for the email address in question.

Kayode

[Christel Gray]

Thank you, Kayode. That's what I suspected, but didn't want to assume.

[Yatish Madhav]

Thank you for this @Arbaaz Gowher 

[Ben Larson]

If we are using the default cloud mail sever, do we need to take this action. It seems I cannot edit the default mail sever like you mention above. Seems this will only impact users who have added their own main server correct?