Public folder backup after October 1st 2022 still possible?

[mdiver]

Basic authentication will be deprecated as of October 1st this year:
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/ ... -p/2772210

As we currently need to have VBO authenticate against M365 using Modern+Legacy to be able to backup public folders and some other things...

https://www.veeam.com/kb3146

...what will be the solution after this date?

Thanks
Mike

[Mike Resseler]

Mike,

Not sure yet what exactly the solution will be, but we continue to explain to MSFT that it is necessary to protect public folders and that we need API's for it. The modern + legacy might become the only possibility but it could require certificate authentication for the legacy part. But all of this is still not set in stone

[mdiver]

So V6 will not already be the solution?
We still see many customers using PFs.
Does Graph API currently not allow access to PFs at all?

I understand from your answer that with legacy + cert we could go beyond 2022?

[Mildur]

My team is thinking of moving away from Public Folder entirely. I can only see benefits from migrating the public folders to shared mailboxes. For an example, public Folder cannot be accessed in the Outlook mobile app, but shared mailboxes can.

[Mike Resseler]

@mdiver That's the current hypothesis. But not sure if that will fly, as said, we are working with MSFT on it.
Just this week we got confirmation (again) that PF are not reachable through GRAPH. Don't forget that MSFT is already for 15 years or so on a mission to get rid of PF

[mdiver]

Mike, thanks for your honest assessment.
We always try to drive our customers from PF to e.g. SharePoint. But things develop very slowly in some cases.
It would be very helpful to get information - e.g. via this forum - about any news here. I know a lot of other users here asked for PF already and it is still a topic.
Maybe even a KB would be helpful once clear what will happen in October.

[Mike Resseler]

Yeah, I hope to be able to give you a KB as soon as I can. But now it would just contain a lot of "IF"

[FAlter]

Hi,

as you may have heard, for example because Microsoft is spamming you with administrator announcements about it, Microsoft will deactivate Basic Authentication from October and probably finish deactivating it for all Microsoft 365 Tenants before 2023.

This means the Veeam Options Basic Authentication and Modern Authentication with Legacy Protocoly will stop functioning. It has also been in discussed the veeam community here
https://community.veeam.com/blogs-and-p ... #post21785

But they are still neccessary for some features, the probably biggest one in data you will want to backup is the contents of public folder structores grown over many years.

So there is the question, is there anything going on behind the scenes to allow us to back up public folders when we will only have modern authentication in the future?
Are The Veeam Developers in contact with Microsoft about any missing features?

Unfortunately it's less than half a year until the deadline.

[Mildur]

Hello Falter

Moved your post to this topic.
Please see the answers from Mike above.
We are working with Microsoft on the issue.

[chrisitp]

To my knowledge there is currently no way to back up Public Folders without some form of legacy authentication
We have it disabled on all our managed M365 tenants via conditional access, with the veeam account being the only excluded user.

I had a situation on Monday and Tuesday where all the configured PF backup jobs we have running failed, on Wednesday they started working again.
My suspicion is this was Microsoft disabling the legacy auth as a warning (they have said that they would do this at random for 18-48 hours on tenants, to focus the mind on the upcoming change)

So, what will happen to Public Folder backups after October the 1st, when legacy auth is finally deprecated and no longer available?

[Mildur]

Hi Chris

I moved your question to this topic.
Let me check if we have any news.

Update:
As already commented, we are in contact with Microsoft. So far there isn‘t anything new to share.

If you only have a few public folder, probably a migration to shared mailboxes would make sense. But I understand, if that‘s not possible for everyone.

Thanks
Fabian

[FAlter]

We had a smiliar situation like Chris some time ago. Microsoft disabled the basic authentication and the backup job failed to back up the public folders. It seems everything else was backed up using modern authentication so only the public folders failed.
We reenabled it immedeately after noticing which took around two hours or so until veeam finally stopped failing the public folders backup (I started it manually several times).

We decided to give shared mailboxes a try but we had several issues that gives us a bad feeling about "abusing" shared mailboxes for our usecase, which is supported very well by public folders.

At this point I wanted to ask again if there are any news but as I see from the most recent answer there is still nothing to learn about when and how veeam will handle the disablement of basic authentication.

We are now already considering if switching over to another backup software would solve the problem. From what I heard by veeam or our own IT consultant, any other backup software should have the same problem - but a quick google search finds another backup software similiar to veeam which seems to have no problem with backing up public folders over modern authentication. Being interested, we asked the support if this company and they confirmed that indeed, the software uses modern authentication in newer versions and backs up public folders.

[Polina]

Hi FAlter,

There's no news as of now, and, honestly and personally, I doubt that there're any changes to come. From what I see/feel, public folders are considered by Microsoft a legacy feature and there're low chances that they will be supported in Graph APIs. But nevertheless, we keep pushing Microsoft for this support.

As for other vendors, this is not the first time that I get such information. And every time I'm checking if there're any updates that we may have missed... Being involved in conversations with Microsoft directly, I have my doubts that this support comes without utilizing any of the legacy APIs.

[FAlter]

Hello Polina,

It seems they other vendors use the Graph and EWS APIs (and no powershell it seems).

[St.th]

Hi Veeam Team,

Is there any further information on how you will ensure public folder backup after Oct 1? Why is it not possible for Veeam to do the PublicFolder backup via OAuth with EWS. This possibility exists and there is currently no end date for using the EWS interface from Microsoft. Is it not possible to rewrite the Veeam inferface "Modern Authentication with Legacy Protocols Allowed" from BasicAuth with EWS to OAuth with EWS for the next Veeam update? Relying on a graph implementation for public folders is not an option in terms of time.

Steve

[ian0x0r]

Not a direct solution to the backup of public folders, but this Veeam KB https://www.veeam.com/kb4365 links to a Microsoft article with guidance on migrating public folders to M365 Groups. Looks like it may be an alternative to moving to shared mailboxes.

[paolorosso]

@mdiver That's the current hypothesis. But not sure if that will fly, as said, we are working with MSFT on it.
Just this week we got confirmation (again) that PF are not reachable through GRAPH. Don't forget that MSFT is already for 15 years or so on a mission to get rid of PF

I have been hearing this false news for more than 15 years, for 20 years, perhaps since the public folders were born!
Microsoft on its site still says this about public folders:
"Are public folders going away?
No. Public folders are great for Outlook integration, simple sharing scenarios, and for allowing large audiences to access the same data."

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/excha ... honline-ww

it is disconcerting how in the cloud world the fault of these inefficiencies is always of others. The customer is always the loser.

I bought Veeam Backup for M365 because it was the only one that still promised the backup of the Exchange Online public folders in June 2022 .... today I am without backup of the public folders.
Shame on Veeam.

M365 groups are not public folders and those who use public folders have always accepted that they were not available on OWA or mobile!
Migrating to M365 groups is not a solution... it is telling the customer: arrange yourself.
A nice thing would be that Veeam cares about its customers and the promises it makes to its customers and find a way, by partnering with Microsoft, to go back to backing up public folders.

[Mike Resseler]

A nice thing would be that Veeam cares about its customers and the promises it makes to its customers and find a way, by partnering with Microsoft, to go back to backing up public folders.

And that is exactly what we are doing, for quite some time now. And we will continue to do so.

[paolorosso]

Thank you. Don't give up!

[kmax]

Hi,
It is still possible to activate basic authentication for exchange online protocols: https://office365itpros.com/2021/09/24/ ... -exchange/
(See Part Early 2022 Test Disablements)
We have successfully managed to activate it and so we can backup Public-Folders with Veeam.
But it is a ticking time bomb because Microsoft may completely deactivate it whenever they want.
There might be another solution with this proxy: https://github.com/mmalcek/basicToOauth (HTTP proxy service that transforms a basic authorisation header to an OAuth 2.0 Bearer token)
This may work but you cannot change the URL in Veeam. In this case you have to change it to localhost so you can use the proxy.

Maybe Veeam can add this feature directly (implement proxy) or give us the possibility to modify the URL so we can use this proxy.

Thank you.

[FAlter]

Hi kmax,

by my understanding it's only possible to re-activate it until december 31st.

But sill have hope that Veeam "re-learns" public folders within the next year.

[paolorosso]

Is there any news or forecasts from Veeam to go back to backing up public folders in complete safety?
I just wrote to my reseller to see if they have any official information that would get me back up public folders again in no time.
If the answer is no, I have already found an alternative at a similar price and therefore I will change the cloud backup solution, reluctantly, but it is necessary.

[jgar]

Hi,
I was just going to ask the same question as Paolo.
Especially since I just got a pre-release notification email from Veeam for upcoming v7, and there doesn't seem to be a single word about PF's in it...
Thanks.

[Mike Resseler]

Hi All,

Unfortunately still no change at this point in time. We are investigating (together with MSFT) a possibility to re-add it with modern authentication only but I cannot make any promises I'm afraid.

[ahi]

Hi,
we are also very unhappy that the public folders are still not supported by Veeam when other competitors have been able to do so for longer. When our license expires in a few weeks, we will be forced to not renew and switch to a competitor product that seems to have taken better advantage of Microsoft's multiple deadline extensions.

[Mike Resseler]

@ahi

Sorry to hear that, I do would like to know how the competitors do this. Since we are still informed that we can't use application registration alone to do this. But as I said, we are continuously talking to them (MSFT)

[steffennw]

Hi,
we have 5 customers using public folders and one of them can still be backuped and restored. But for new customers there is no option for public folders anymore. But it looks like the software can still do it.
In the meanwhile.. does anybody has a work around for me? I don't want to pay another competitor. Nor can I tell my customers not to use public folders.. thats not my service of a full backup.
Is there a powershell script or something like that?
Greets from germany

[Polina]

Hi Steffen,

The only workaround I know for now is to migrate public folders to shared mailboxes...
Or as it's suggested in our KB article, use Microsoft 365 Groups as an alternative to Public Folders.

[kmax]

Hi Veeam,

A Migration to shared mailboxes or Microsoft 365 groups is not a workaround. This is a big project If you have hundreds of public folders.
What about my suggested workaround i posted 07.12.2022:

There might be another solution with this proxy: https://github.com/mmalcek/basicToOauth (HTTP proxy service that transforms a basic authorisation header to an OAuth 2.0 Bearer token)
This may work but you cannot change the URL in Veeam. In this case you have to change it to localhost so you can use the proxy.

Maybe Veeam can add this feature directly (implement proxy) or give us the possibility to modify the URL so we can use this proxy.

Please can you check this over? This should not be a big deal to make this possible.

thx
Markus

[kmax]

And public folders are not EOL. Have a look at this Microsft article about public folders and migration (01/27/2023):
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/excha ... erver-2019

...

Are public folders going away?
No. Public folders are great for Outlook integration, simple sharing scenarios, and for allowing large audiences to access the same data.

...