5 ms·

Can someone from Microsoft share why the login flow on all things Office/O365 is such a disaster? No other major company is so bad about this. You get bounced b

Can someone from Microsoft share why the login flow on all things Office/O365 is such a disaster? No other major company is so bad about this. You get bounced between a half-dozen domains (which I assume is somehow the root cause of the issue here), the "keep me signed in" check box literally does nothing, and so on. And you can't even blame it on trying to integrate incompatible legacy systems, this is all on Microsoft's first-party services.

jiggawatts 3y ago
The latest madness is that logging on to Azure Portal with Firefox requires about ten clicks on the user name. As in: I log in, jump through the MFA hoops, and then it goes back to the list of user names to make me re-select the account I just used to log in. Mind you, it always did this, which meant that I couldn’t just open a Portal link in a new tab — I’d have to select my account (again) for each tab. But now I have to click at least ten times! It’s broken. Authentication is broken and there’s no one at the wheels.
- nathanaldensr 3y ago
  There are probably no actual wheels to begin with, knowing Microsoft.
esafak 3y ago
I have spent weeks just trying to log onto Teams to communicate with an MS contracting shop. I still have not managed to log in. It is infuriating beyond belief.
magicalhippo 3y ago
> You get bounced between a half-dozen domains At work one of the cdn domains they use fails to resolve until it suddenly works. Haven't bothered to look into it yet, but generally takes about 10-15 minutes to sign into anything related to Azure AD / Office365. Can resolve it just fine on the command line, just in the browser where it doesn't work.
tremon 3y ago
Same with the Azure Portal, I can regularly DoS microsoft by opening the portal from a bookmark in Edge, or by switching Azure tenants (via the official button, which has also seen three different locations in the past year). It signs in, loads the intended page, then redirects to the home page, which performs the sign-in again, then redirects to the Azure portal welcome screen, which redirects to the home page, which performs the sign-in again -- at which points Microsoft usually "solves" the redirect loop by informing me that I've tried to login too many times and I should try again in five minutes. With the additional bonus that even after things miraculously stabilize, I'm not on the page I wanted to go but on the welcome screen. Pasting the intended link again in the browser bar seems to have a 10% chance of triggering the redirect loop again. It's so comically bad, I'm glad my employer is paying me for my time and not my productivity.
leokennis 3y ago
And the domains look ancient or shady as well. Live.com, aka.ms, msn.com…if you didn’t already know they were genuine Microsoft accounts you’d be smart to assume you were being scammed.
ano-ther 3y ago
They also introduced 2F verification pop ups that don’t show up in the task bar and are therefore not selectable when they are behind another window.
tredre3 3y ago
Also some of that bouncing around involves passing your email into the URL (?account=you@outlook.com) which is just bizarre in current day (tm).
easton 3y ago
My AAD account is permanently screwed up because I left and rejoined the company I’m at (intern conversion, so I got a new AAD account with the same email). I get signed out constantly, especially on mobile where my coworkers do not. Trying to sign into ADO sends me to a screen prompting me to configure a new org because it gets confused by two accounts existing with the same email in the same org even though one of them was deleted along with the underlying AAD account. It also just 500s sometimes when trying to login saying there’s something weird happening during authentication, I have to restart the browser to make it work. As far as I know there’s no way to fix any of it, so I’m stuck with half working SSO.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  Ah, their famous Stochastic Sign-On.
- CogitoCogito 3y ago
  Why don't they just give you a new email? I mean obviously it's stupid such a solution would be required, but wouldn't that solve your problems?
  - easton 3y ago
    I think the actual easiest thing would be to get on the horn with MS and have them internally nuke my old ADO account, I’ve just never bothered to figure out who out of IT org could do such a thing. I’ve just learned all the workarounds instead.

jiggawatts 3y ago

The latest madness is that logging on to Azure Portal with Firefox requires about ten clicks on the user name. As in: I log in, jump through the MFA hoops, and then it goes back to the list of user names to make me re-select the account I just used to log in. Mind you, it always did this, which meant that I couldn’t just open a Portal link in a new tab — I’d have to select my account (again) for each tab. But now I have to click at least ten times! It’s broken. Authentication is broken and there’s no one at the wheels.

nathanaldensr 3y ago
There are probably no actual wheels to begin with, knowing Microsoft.

esafak 3y ago

I have spent weeks just trying to log onto Teams to communicate with an MS contracting shop. I still have not managed to log in. It is infuriating beyond belief.

magicalhippo 3y ago

> You get bounced between a half-dozen domains At work one of the cdn domains they use fails to resolve until it suddenly works. Haven't bothered to look into it yet, but generally takes about 10-15 minutes to sign into anything related to Azure AD / Office365. Can resolve it just fine on the command line, just in the browser where it doesn't work.

tremon 3y ago

Same with the Azure Portal, I can regularly DoS microsoft by opening the portal from a bookmark in Edge, or by switching Azure tenants (via the official button, which has also seen three different locations in the past year). It signs in, loads the intended page, then redirects to the home page, which performs the sign-in again, then redirects to the Azure portal welcome screen, which redirects to the home page, which performs the sign-in again -- at which points Microsoft usually "solves" the redirect loop by informing me that I've tried to login too many times and I should try again in five minutes. With the additional bonus that even after things miraculously stabilize, I'm not on the page I wanted to go but on the welcome screen. Pasting the intended link again in the browser bar seems to have a 10% chance of triggering the redirect loop again. It's so comically bad, I'm glad my employer is paying me for my time and not my productivity.

leokennis 3y ago

And the domains look ancient or shady as well. Live.com, aka.ms, msn.com…if you didn’t already know they were genuine Microsoft accounts you’d be smart to assume you were being scammed.

ano-ther 3y ago

They also introduced 2F verification pop ups that don’t show up in the task bar and are therefore not selectable when they are behind another window.

tredre3 3y ago

Also some of that bouncing around involves passing your email into the URL (?account=you@outlook.com) which is just bizarre in current day (tm).

easton 3y ago

My AAD account is permanently screwed up because I left and rejoined the company I’m at (intern conversion, so I got a new AAD account with the same email). I get signed out constantly, especially on mobile where my coworkers do not. Trying to sign into ADO sends me to a screen prompting me to configure a new org because it gets confused by two accounts existing with the same email in the same org even though one of them was deleted along with the underlying AAD account. It also just 500s sometimes when trying to login saying there’s something weird happening during authentication, I have to restart the browser to make it work. As far as I know there’s no way to fix any of it, so I’m stuck with half working SSO.

kstrauser 3y ago
Ah, their famous Stochastic Sign-On.
CogitoCogito 3y ago
Why don't they just give you a new email? I mean obviously it's stupid such a solution would be required, but wouldn't that solve your problems?
- easton 3y ago
  I think the actual easiest thing would be to get on the horn with MS and have them internally nuke my old ADO account, I’ve just never bothered to figure out who out of IT org could do such a thing. I’ve just learned all the workarounds instead.