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Skype for Business, IP Phone Prompts for Exchange Password

If you are repeatedly seeing a message on your IP-Phone that Authentication failed and to re-enter your Exchange password, this might be triggered by the enforcement of Modern-Authentication (Fall 2022) along with Microsoft’s Office365 services--this includes your Exchange account.

What causes this:

With the modern-authentication process, certain applications will need additional approval/permissions to be able to access your Exchange and Office365 resources. Not all applications are developed the same way, most IP-Phones are Android devices with third-party Skype for Business applications developed by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM). Some OEMs have set the requirement for their application to need access to the entirety of the university’s resources, rather than just your account’s resources, for security reasons this is not permitted. Yealink, and others, currently have this problem, they have been notified about this issue and asked to review and update their application’s requirements, we are waiting to see if they will update their application.

Unfortunately, the IP-Phones will not be able to access your Exchange account until the OEM’s fix their application’s requirements, this includes your calendar information (free/busy) and voicemail notifications. You can still see and receive this information using Outlook and other Skype for Business applications (desktop version, mobile device versions of Skype for Business).

Workarounds:

• We don’t have a way of fixing the application for Yealink and other OEMs, you can change settings, so the Exchange authentication does not repeat.
• You can cancel the Exchange Authentication request on the phone, these will still popup from time to time.
• You can switch the phone from using password authentication to PIN authentication. With PIN authentication you enter your phone number along with the PIN you have created for your account. With PIN authentication, the phone does not retrieve Exchange information. (don’t know your PIN? You can reset it here: https://dialin.uillinois.edu/)

How to switch your phone to use PIN Authentication:

Ideally you will want your unit’s IT support team to assist with this, it might be possible to set this using the phone’s menu interface, if so, it will be under Accounts> Authentication Mode> “Pin Authentication”. This can also be managed via the phone’s web interface (IT Pro: if this is for a Role-Based account and you know the PIN, you can prepopulate the phone number and PIN via the web interface. If this is for a staff member, you can leave the settings blank and they can enter their phone number and PIN on the phone).

Note: You will be asked to set a Phone unlock PIN, this is separate from the PIN used to authenticate your account, and only used to unlock the phone.