OAuth2 Office 365 Exchange Account Keeps Signing Out

REPRODUCIBILITY: 75% (often)
OSVERSION: 4.4.0.72
HARDWARE: Sony Xperia 10 III - xqbt52 - xqbt52 - 1.0.0.176 - aarch64
UI LANGUAGE: English (UK) (user: en_GB, os: en_GB.utf8)
REGRESSION: no

DESCRIPTION:

On Office365 Basic Authentication no longer works. I had four different Office365 email accounts using the original Microsoft Exchange account type. With the release of .72 I deleted these and replaced them with the new Office365 account type. All went well and email was sent and received normally for a few days. Then I got the dreaded ā€˜Sync Errorā€™ on the email app. Goint into Settings/Accounts, each Office365 account had, in red text, ā€˜Not Signed Inā€™ below it. Tapping on the account I expected to be taken to the browser Office365 login page so that I could re-sign into the accounts. However, all you get is a blank screen - no browser window is ever opened. The only solution is to delete all the accounts and reset them up from scratch, and resync them all. Since this happens every few days (exactly like the Dropbox account) it is basically unusable at present.

PRECONDITIONS:

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:

  1. Set up Office365 account.
  2. Wait.
  3. Get ā€˜Account not signed inā€™ a few days later

EXPECTED RESULTS:

The account stays signed in indefinitely. IMAP accounts are unaffected and work fine.

ACTUAL RESULTS:

You have to keep resetting up all your Office365 email accounts every few days

MODIFICATIONS:

  • Patchmanager: no
  • OpenRepos: yes
  • Chum: yes
  • Other: no:

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Device Owner User: defaultuser
Home Encryption: enabled


the initial version of this bug report was created using Bugger 0.9.8+git1
1 Like

I get exactly the same problem, fortunately each time it asks me to log in, it will go to the browser and not ask me for 2FA again, it is constantly logged in the browser, but logs out on the SFOS side.
Also, it usually logs me out after I rebooted my phone.

I can also confirm this error. The account logs out every time I reboot, but you can just sign in normally after that. But after a few days, I also get this blank-screen-error

1 Like

Thanks for raising this @Steve_Everett, and for the other confirmations. Iā€™ve created an internal ticket for this and tagged it here as ā€œtrackedā€. Iā€™ll do my best to share any updates here too.

2 Likes

A quick update on this. There were indeed two issues here. First that the account was being signed out when it shouldnā€™t have been, second that the accounts page for re-authenticating was empty.

One of my colleagues has been able to track down the underlying issues for both, and as I understand it has created fixes which should make it into the next major release.

In the case of signing out, our investigation suggested a very specific and slightly unusual set of circumstances were required to trigger it (communication lost to only certain servers). As such itā€™s possible there were other reasons for this happening that we didnā€™t catch. It would therefore be really helpful therefore to know whether this is fixed for you all after the next update.

Thanks again for raising this issue, for the clear bug report and for the helpful follow-up messages from everyone.

2 Likes

The thing about losing connectivity to the server makes sense as Iā€™m often out and about in low and no network connectivity zones. I know this is not quite the right place, but could this possibly be the same reason for the Drobox account signing itself out randomly every few days as well?

1 Like

Thanks for explaining, itā€™s good to have it reaffirmed. Concerning Dropbox, itā€™s possible the issues are related and good you suggested it. Definitely worth looking into.

Thanks for the update.

Any timescales on when the next release will be available?

Also, for those of us losing out an accessing our work emails in the meantime, what is the advice? Should users just use a microsoft email app in the meantime?

I canā€™t give you any timescales Iā€™m afraid. In terms of alternatives, others here would be better placed to suggest something Iā€™m sure, but the website seems to work well in the browser as a stop-gap (Iā€™ve not used it in earnest though).

2 Likes

kl

appreciate the super fast reply!

I use Microsoft Outlook for Android as a fallback for now. Its not as nice to use as the stock SFOS email app, and notifications from outlook are flakey, but at least it works reliably.

I personally keep using the SailfishOS Mail app. Needing to sign in again every morning when I start my phone doesnā€™t really bother me and when it stops working again, I just delete the account and then re-add it. Iā€™ve done this a few times now since this bug happend and for me itā€™s an appropriate ā€œworkaroundā€ until the bug is fixed

1 Like