[Users] Support for 'Exchange ActiveSync' Protocol

[Dustin Miller]

On Thu, 1 Apr 2021 08:37:49 +0200
Michael Rasmussen <mir at miras.org> wrote:

> On Wed, 31 Mar 2021 19:40:10 -0400
> Dustin Miller <dustbiz at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > The reason I'm asking is because my employer has informed me that
> > they will be doing the following in relation to the management of
> > our company's email addresses (hosted on Microsoft's servers):
> > 
> > * 1. Disabling POP access in the very near future.
> > * 2. Disabling IMAP access eventually.
> > * 3. Using only the EAS protocol.
> >   
> As I recall your employer is a university
> 
DM: I'm guessing you are thinking of another user (Rolf Turner) who
seems to be facing the same or a similar issue.
> 
> and therefore you should take the above information with a grain of
> salt.
>
DM: I think I would lean toward agreeing with you on this for my case
as well. When I was looking into this, I had trouble reconciling what my
employer was saying and the information I could find that Microsoft had
put out. It was interesting to me that Microsoft seemed to be providing
or planning to provide support for both POP and IMAP to be used with
oauth2 (what it calls 'modern authentication'), while phasing out their
non-oauth2 use (what it calls 'basic authentication'). I'm reasonably
certain my employer will be disabling any kind of POP use, but I
wouldn't be surprised if they eventually decide that oauth2 IMAP is an
acceptable option, although that will likely be influenced by
Microsoft's future plans.
> 
> The proprietary protocol EAS is not supported and will never be
> supported in any form or shape by Apple which means your university
> will loose 50-75% of its students. The board of directors will hardly
> accept this. The story was the same on the university where I am
> employed but since most of the scientific staff and 70% of the
> students uses computers, phones, and tablets from Apple this idea
> only survived until the first board of directors meeting was held
> after the decision was announced ;-)
> 
DM: Interesting. :)
> 
> Therefore you can rest assure that, at least, IMAP will never be
> disabled, though using OAUTH2 which is about to be included in claws.
> 
DM: Good to hear. That's what I'm using now for these particular
accounts, and hopefully won't be forced to make any more changes in
protocol in the near future. It was a bit time-consuming to make the
switch, but at least I got to learn more about a variety of things,
including how to install Claws from GIT, and am continuing to learn how
to best use IMAP (never had a good reason to use it before). I
appreciate your help in the setup process. Cheers, ---Dustin
> 
> Michael Rasmussen