Microsoft 365 commercial users who get their emails from the web version of Outlook will soon see a long time feature go away. The company has announced that the activity-based authentication timeout option will no longer be available for Outlook web users, starting in January 2024.
The reveal was made in a message posted this week to the private Microsoft 365 admin center, as reported by Petri. Microsoft now says that IT admins who are still using the activity-based authentication timeout feature should make the move to use the idle session timeout option that was launched for all Microsoft 365 web apps back in June 2022.
The idle session timeout feature will allow Microsoft 365 admins to set specific times to sign out employees who use Outlook on the web after they don't access or use the web email client. Those same employees will then have to sign in again on their account. They will get a notification one minute before the feature kicks in to keep using Outlook so they don't have to sign in again.
In theory, this new method should offer better security options for commercial users rather than the activity-based authentication timeout option. Petri does note that users must set up the browser they use to access the Outlook web client to accept third-party cookies. Also, users to access Outlook via Microsoft's own Edge browser have to set the browser's tracking prevention settings to the default Balance level.
Microsoft recently revealed plans to update the new version of the Outlook app for Windows that was made generally available earlier this year. They include plans to add offline support, POP3 account support, Microsoft's Copilot generative AI support, auto-capitalization and much more. The app will also be getting some improvements in performance "ranging from focused optimizations to larger platform investments."
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