Hello GP Community!
Recently we have been seeing reports of certain workflow notification emails that are not being delivered as expected. This can lead to approvers not being aware that they have a pending task or an originator missing that their batch has been final approved and can be posted in a timely manner. As we've been digging into this we have become aware of the following announcement from the Exchange team:
If you remember all the way back to the year 2022 the Exchange Online endpoints initially had Basic Authentication retired, but at that time they announced that they would still allow it for SMTP connections in order to allow appliances like printers and copiers to still have email functionality. Now it appears that the time has come to deprecate this authentication method completely.
While it states that this isn't happening until September 2025 it does appear that they've already started to turn it off, whether that's for certain tenants or to just occasionally cause authentication failures in order to let people know the end is near, which is what they did when they were getting to ready to change the Exchange Online authentication a few years ago.
This change has the following possible impacts for Dynamics GP:
- If you do not have Modern Authentication enabled in Dynamics GP then all Workflow email functionality will not work
- If you have email actions enabled for Workflow then Dynamics GP will use SMTP to send any notifications triggered by an approver clicking the Approve/Reject/Delegate action link in the Workflow Assignment email
- The SQL Server Agent Jobs that drive the Reminder and Escalation functionality in Workflow also use SMTP to send any required notifications
So, how can we work around this? Here are some possibilities you can consider:
- If you have an on-premise SMTP server available that allows for Basic Authentication you can specify to use that in the Workflow Setup window
- When you look through the announcement article above they give a couple alternatives: High Volume Email (HVE) and Azure Communication Services Email. Between these we have tested HVE on the team here and it seems to be a valid option. It is limited to recipients internal to your tenant, but all Workflow email should be going to internal employees, so that shouldn't be a concern.
Setting up HVE is a pretty straight-forward process, as outlined in this article:
The only real setup involved is to connect to the Exchange Admin Center and specify a brand new email account to use under the High Volume Email (preview) section of that page. You will then take that account to the Workflow Setup window and enter it there like any other account in both the E-mail Address and Basic Authentication sections of the window. The main difference will be the SMTP server that you use, which should be:
Server Name: smtp-hve.office365.com
Port: 587
SSL box: Checked
Once you have that setup you can send a test email from this window and you should see that it works. After that any Workflow functionality that relies on SMTP should also be working for you.
Finally, I would also strongly suggest that you upgrade to the latest release of Dynamics GP in order to address several fixes and enhancements we've made to Workflow notifications.
Let us know if you have any questions on this.
Lucas
