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App Configuration Mobile devices for Microsoft office 365 apps

  • April 5, 2016
  • 27 replies
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27 replies

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Skimming around, I found this Jamf article, on exactly how to do it for outlook, they don't elude to the other apps supporting the functionality, either, but reinforces the Microsoft link I posted indicating the other apps don't have the similar support.

https://www.jamf.com/blog/o365-ios-and-jamf-best-login-ever/

I discovered it, when I was investigating to see if I can pre-populate safari with office365 sign in.


So after a lot of searching I found these:
https://blog.eucse.com/app-config-all-the-values-you-need/#1570028207837-b47e051c-379f
https://d2e3kgnhdeg083.cloudfront.net/
https://d2e3kgnhdeg083.cloudfront.net/com.microsoft.Office.Outlook/current/appconfig.xml

I've already written this once before the page timed out so I'm not in the mood to go into the nitty gritty.
Summary is, there were/are no configurable keys for any IOS app other than outlook.
JAMF variables (For JAMF education at least) should be %VARIABLE% instead of $VARIABLE.
If you were hoping that deploying creds to outlook would auth other apps, it doesn't work because as far as I can tell, the config only functions with the Exchange only variables set (see the third link), this can log into an O365 email just fine, but it doesn't interact with the MSidentity 3 cache in the same way as a SSO/office 365 login step would. My guess based on documentation and some perusing of event logs pulled with apple configurator is that it doesn't generate an authentication token that can be used by other apps if you do it this way. I will email the writer of the article 'best login ever' and ask how he gets an office 365 login with values that are exchange exclusive set and the wrong auth type, since either I'm missing something or it's just misleading. 

Since the outlook XML keys haven't been updated since 2019, I'm going to assume that no development resources are going in that direction and all the eggs are in some magical intune ADAL basket.

If you are finding this page because you want to deploy managed configurations to your IOS office apps and it's still 2022, consider giving up now. 

TLDR: You can deploy to outlook and outlook alone of the office apps with managed configs. It will do the account exchange style so no fancy interactions and probably other hidden problems I'm not going to test for right now. Onedrive if you use a file manager app as an intermediary I guess.


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  • New Contributor
  • January 6, 2023

Yeah, saw this one as well.

I have an open ticket with Microsoft, I'll let you know if anything comes out from it..


did you or MS end up coming up with anything else on this?