Outlook mobile Autodetect doesn't work reliably

Question

Hi all,

we're migrating our hybrid Exchange users to Outlook mobile on iOS and have issues configuring the profiles. Autodetect doesn't work in most cases. When we type in the email address of a user Outlook should switch to the modern authentication dialog but it doesn't most of the time. We have to try several times until it works. To troubleshoot the issue I used Remote Connectivity Analyzer and the Test-HMAEAS script from Github. I guess both send a request to https://prod-api.acompli.net/autodetect. To go a bit deeper I wrote a loop around the Test-HMAEAS script and noticed that it seems that behind prod.acompli.net there are two load balancing pools: https://prod3-api.acompli.net and https://prod5-api.acompli.net. The interesting thing is, the timeouts are only on prod3 and with prod5 we have no issues. To have a better understanding I attached a report (csv) that proves there are issues with prod3. With a Exchange Online email address there are almost no errors even with prod3.

Microsoft Support (case #23994663) said, they see the problem unfortunately they cannot help me even if they wanted because they don't have access to the autodetect infrastructure or outlook support and the in app support tells me we should fill out the configuration manually. This is nice, because as far as I know, it isn't possible to configure the Outlook mobile app manually with a mailbox that leverages hybrid modern authentication and even if, I don't know what to fill in. Is anyone out there understanding what's going on or may have a look?

Thanks, Daniel.

65405-test-hmaeas.txt

Answer 1

Hi guys,

Once more I digged a bit deeper. I've found a way to force the prod3 or prod5: Modifying the request in fiddler. And in fact using prod3 doesn't work at all whereas with prod5 we have no issues. I would appreciate if anyone can point someone responsible to this thread.

Thanks, Daniel

Answer 2

Hi Daniel, we run into same issue:

1. Outlook Mobile HMA on-premises mailbox enrollment does not work most of the time "Da hat etwas nicht geklappt" (btw: great error message)
2. If you repeat to select the user, it starts working at some point.
3. Remote Connectivity Analyzer and Test-HMAEAS.ps1 find everything to be fine
4. Looking into Wireshark shows, the process stucks after being handed over to autodetect.outlookmobile.com
5. If it works, prod5-api.acompli.net was at least involved in the process (I will look after prod3 in upcoming tests)
6. At Microsoft support nobody seems to be responsible for Outlook Mobile in enterprise environments...

For me all this is pointing to an issue with Acompli backend service connecting to the Exchange on-premises server.

@Microsoft: How many customers or mobile device counts are necessary to get the right attention on this issue?

Peter

Answer 3

Hi everyone

I want to come here to explain that we are seeing the same issue with HMA and on-premises accounts.

Basically I have put it down to Acompli being rubbish.

You are all right - prod5 has more success, if you are lucky, than prod3.

Outside of working hours absolutely we see almost no problems with Outlook app or HMA tester website!

And once connected, the app is working perfectly fine.

We have also done network traces internally while running HMA tester and we see nothing at all coming in from Microsoft addresses or Acompli.

We have tried everything to rule out our side of things but this thread basically confirms its not our problem at all! We run our services via Cloudflare and Citrix ADC load balancing to our on-premises Exchange array. Disabling either of these does not help and all other Exchange services are functioning perfectly.

Please Microsoft, I assume when you bought Acompli and rebranded it "Outlook", you would have access to the infrastructure to fix this!!

Answer 4

Exactly the same problem here. Works in 1 of 10-20 attempts, works a bit better after workhours. Microsoft fix this ASAP, this is a big problem for our 2000 users.

Answer 5

Exactly the same problem as well; it work less than 20%