Enable Multi-Factor Authentication for Microsoft Azure Users

Troubleshooting: Email Application Connection Issue with Exchange Online

Question

You have an Azure subscription.

You enable multi-factor authentication for all users.

Some users report that the email applications on their mobile device cannot connect to their Microsoft Exchange Online mailbox. The users can access Exchange

Online by using a web browser and from Microsoft Outlook 2016 on their computer.

You need to ensure that the users can use the email applications on their mobile device.

What should you instruct the users to do?

Answers

Explanations

Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer

A. B. C. D.

C

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/authentication/concept-sspr-howitworks

The issue being reported by the users is related to the fact that multi-factor authentication has been enabled for all users in the Azure subscription. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a security feature that requires users to provide more than one authentication factor, such as a password and a verification code, to access resources in the Azure environment.

When MFA is enabled, certain types of applications that use basic authentication, such as some email applications on mobile devices, may not work correctly. This is because basic authentication does not support the use of multiple authentication factors.

To solve this issue, you should instruct the affected users to create an app password. An app password is a unique password that is generated by Azure for each application that needs to access resources in the Azure environment, such as Exchange Online. The app password is used in place of the user's regular password when the application does not support MFA.

To create an app password, the users should follow these steps:

  1. Sign in to the Azure portal.
  2. Navigate to the user's profile and select "Security info".
  3. Select "Add method" and choose "App password" from the drop-down menu.
  4. Follow the instructions to generate a new app password.
  5. Use the app password in place of the user's regular password when configuring the email application on the mobile device.

Resetting the Azure Active Directory password (option B) or enabling self-service password reset (option C) will not solve the issue because the problem is not related to the users' passwords. Reinstalling the Microsoft Authenticator app (option D) is also unlikely to help because the app is used for generating verification codes for MFA, and not for creating app passwords.