Microsoft recently announced some upcoming changes to Exchange Web Services (EWS) and its API that helps developers access information in Office 365. Specifically, the company is putting a stop to all new updates and decommissioning Basic Authentication. Here’s some more information about these announcements and what they mean for users going forward.
Why no future EWS updates?
As of now, EWS is no longer receiving new feature updates. But the service will continue to receive security updates and a few select upgrades that are not related to security. These changes also apply to EWS SDKs for Java and .NET. However, the basic product design and features aren’t slated to change at this point.
Even with this change, EWS will continue to be available and supported for use in production environments. So if you want to continue using it or take your time migrating to a new solution, you still have that option. Microsoft is recommending that users migrate over to Microsoft Graph in order to access their data from Exchange Online, which will also give them access to more technologically advanced features and functionality. EWS and Graph have very similar functionality, so you can probably find overlapping features to make your processes work. However, Microsoft is still collecting input from Exchange Web Services users via UserVoice. So be sure to share your thoughts if there’s anything missing with the new experience.
Basic Authentication will be decommissioned
Originally, Exchange Web Services launched with support for Basic Authentication. But now, there’s OAuth 2.0 that’s used for authentication and authorization. It’s been a more secure and reliable way to access data than Basic Authentication, though the latter is still currently available.
But that’s going to change. As of October 13, 2020, Microsoft is decommissioning and stopping support for Basic Authentication for EWS as a method for accessing Exchange Online. So any new or existing apps on the platform will not be able to use Basic Authentication when connecting to Exchange on EWS.
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