Implement advanced SMTP authentication options for alerts and subscriptions in Qlik Cloud
In October 2022, Microsoft will discourage using Basic SMTP authentication for Exchange Online in October 2022. While it will be possible to re-enable it back, even on a per-user basis, IT admins and security officers might want to follow the recommendation (quote: "you still should move away from using Basic and SMTP AUTH though if you can, as it does leave you exposed") and disable Basic SMTP auth completely. Other email providers will surely consider disabling Basic SMTP auth as well, making it impossible to use their email services with Qlik Cloud.
Recently, even Google announced that they will stop supporting "less secure applications", so Gmail users won't be able to use basic smtp.
Qlik Cloud at the moment only supports basic SMTP auth for alerts and subscriptions. While Qlik is discussing internally how to better address this, this idea will help push the necessary changes so that more secure authentication processes are implemented in the product.
Daniele - Principal Technical Support Engineer & SaaS Support Coordinator at Qlik If a post helps to resolve your issue, please accept it as a Solution.
You are correct, we have been doing research and discussing it. As you point out, both Google and Microsoft want customers to move away from using basic authentication for many of their services. In both Google and Microsoft's cases they are not disabling SMTP Auth if it has been used previously, and they are providing switches to turn it on where it's been turned off due to inactivity or non-use.
There is another reason why Google and Microsoft want you to move away from using GMail and Exchange online as an SMTP relay...it costs them a lot to support it and they are not intended to be used as bulk email solutions (what SMTP auth is intended to support). Both services have some restrictive rate limiting in play for their cloud services that make the quality of service for supporting OAuth2 credentials on GMail and Exchange for alerting and subscriptions not a suitable option for Qlik to implement. It would transfer the problem from being an authorization issue to a bulk mail timing issue.
So... what's Qlik going to do about it? Well, for now the current configuration works and will continue to work if you're using Google Workspace or Exchange Online. That said, I do highly recommend using a service like Sendgrid (they have a 100 emails per day free plan) which you can still use with userid and password by obtaining an API key. Another option is to use Qlik Application Automation because we have connectors for Sendgrid and Mailchimp available today.
We are investigating OAuth2 as an authorization scheme for SMTP from bulk mail solutions like I mentioned above. We have no plans to support individual email accounts tied to corporate email providers through OAuth2. These vendors are making it clear that bulk email is a misuse of their service.
Modern Auth is a must for LaHC ( Land and Housing ) Sydney too, we have been waiting for this functionality for almost a year now . As our Sec team, clearly said no for basic auth. Please prioritize with the Dev team, without this we cannot use Subscription & Alerts to Email.
Thanks for the feedback @deepakfacs ! Please, refer to @Jeffrey_Goldberg comment up above, and check with your Sec team if it's ok for them to go via a third-party bulk emailing system, as this is Qlik's current plan on this matter.
Using Send Grid, while it may work requires the stuff to be base 64 encoded which requires (if you are using Qlik Cloud) exporting a file to an external FTP server, encoding it, then re-importing it to send with Send Grid. Really NOT an acceptable solution. So the sooner the better. As it stands today automation email does not work for us.
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