Use of Office365 authentication with Microsoft Dataverse

Important

Use of the WS-Trust (Office365) authentication security protocol when connecting to Microsoft Dataverse is no longer recommended and has been deprecated; see the announcement.

Additionally, the WS-Trust protocol does not support modern forms of multi-factor authentication and Microsoft Entra ID Conditional Access controls to customer data.

This document describes the impact to and required authentication code changes for custom client applications that use “Office365” authentication and the OrganizationServiceProxy, ServiceClient, or CrmServiceClient classes. If your applications use this type of authentication protocol and API, continue reading below to learn more about the recommended authentication changes to be made to your application’s code.

How do I know if my code or application is using WS-Trust?

First and most importantly, this change only impacts client applications that connect to the Microsoft Dataverse. It does not impact custom plug-ins, workflow activities, or on-premises/IFD service connections.

• If your code employs user account and password credentials for authentication with Dataverse or an application, you are likely using the WS-Trust security protocol. Some examples are shown below, though this list is not fully inclusive.

  • When using the CrmServiceClient or ServiceClient class with a connection string:

    connectionString="AuthType=Office365; Username=jsmith\@contoso.onmicrosoft.com;Password=passcode;Url=https://contoso.crm.dynamics.com"

  • When using the OrganizationServiceProxy class constructors:

using (OrganizationServiceProxy organizationServiceProxy =
    new OrganizationServiceProxy(serviceManagement, clientCredentials)
{ ... }

• If your code uses the OrganizationServiceProxy class at all, you are using WS-Trust.

• If your code is using CrmServiceClient.OrganizationServiceProxy, you are using WS-Trust.

What should I do to fix my application code if affected?

There are very straight forward ways to modify your application’s code to use the recommended connection interface for authentication with Dataverse.

Important

Keep your applications up to date with our latest client SDK API changes by downloading and using the latest available NuGet packages whenever possible.

• If your code uses an OrganizationServiceProxy instance:

  If you are passing the OrganizationServiceProxy instance around to various methods, or returning the instance from a method, replace all occurrences of the type OrganizationServiceProxy with the IOrganizationService interface. This interface exposes all the core methods used to communicate with Dataverse.

  When invoking the constructor, it is recommend to replace all use of OrganizationServiceProxy class constructors with CrmServiceClient or ServiceClient class constructors. You will need to alter your coding pattern here, however, for simplicity CrmServiceClient and ServiceClient support connection strings in addition to complex constructors and the ability to provide external authentication handlers. The service client classes implements IOrganizationService, therefore your new authentication code will be portable to the rest of your application code. You can find examples on the use of service client calsses in the PowerApps-Samples repository.

• If your code is using ServiceClient, or CrmServiceClient classes with the “Office365” authentication type:

  An example of this is a connections string that looks like this:

  connectionString = "AuthType=Office365;Username=jsmith@contoso.onmicrosoft.com;Password=passcode;Url=https://contoso.crm.dynamics.com"

  Similarly, you could also be using a CrmServiceClient or ServiceClient constructor and pass in AuthType.Office365.

  • Switch over to using an OAuth based connection string. Such connection string looks like this:

    connectionString = "AuthType=OAuth;Username=jsmith@contoso.onmicrosoft.com;
    Password=passcode;Url=https://contosotest.crm.dynamics.com;AppId=51f81489-12ee-4a9e-aaae-a2591f45987d;
    RedirectUri=app://58145B91-0C36-4500-8554-080854F2AC97;LoginPrompt=Auto"`
    

    This will be your fastest way to update the code. Note that LoginPrompt can be set to “never” to simulate the way that the Office365 behavior worked.

    The AppId and RedirectUri provided above are examples of working application registration values. These values work everywhere our online services are deployed. However, they are provided here as examples and you are encouraged to create your own application registration in Microsoft Entra ID for applications running in your tenant. Use your Username, Password, and Dataverse environment URL values in the connection string along with the RedirectUri and AppId you obtain from your Azure app registration.

• If you are accessing the CrmServiceClient.OrganizationServiceProxy property:

  Remove all use of that property in your code. CrmServiceClient and ServiceClient classes implement IOrganizationService and exposes everything that is settable for the organization service proxy.

Important

Regarding not being able to login using User ID/Password even if using OAuth: if your tenant and user is configured in Microsoft Entra ID for conditional access and/or Multi-Factor Authentication is required, you will not be able to use user ID/password flows in a non-interactive form at all. For those situations, you must use a Service Principal user to authenticate with Dataverse.

To do this, you must first register the application user (Service Principal) in Microsoft Entra ID. You can find out how to do this here. During application registration you will need to create that user in Dataverse and grant permissions. Those permissions can either be granted directly or indirectly by adding the application user to a team which has been granted permissions in Dataverse. You can find more information on how to set up an unlicensed "application user" to authenticate with Dataverse here.

Need help?

We will be monitoring the Power Apps ALM and ProDev community forums. Please take a look there to get help on how to solve various issues or post a question.

See Also

Use connection strings in XRM tooling to connect to Microsoft Dataverse