Thursday, October 27, 2011

Office 365 magic auto logon to webmail

The standard way to logon to Office 365 Outlook (webmail) is via https://login.microsoftonline.com. Than you type the username (MS Online ID) and if you are configured with a federated identity the password field will grayed out and you will see another "button" to proceed to login via your ADFS server logon, where you might have to type the same username again. Technically nothing wrong with that, I just think it is to complicated for users to do this all the time.
So first I was thinking to write a webpage what is using integrated or basic authentication for user authentication and performs then a look up in Active Directory to get the UPN and etc. Create the login URL including the MS Online ID . STOP. Way to complex thinking. At the end I analyzed a bookmark to O365 webmail and voila after I few modifications and shortening
I came up with

https://www.outlook.com/owa/?exsvurl=1%24&delegatedOrg=ServiceDomain&ll-cc=en-US&realm=FedDomain


ServiceDomain is e.g. cryptolive.onmicrosoft.com
FedDomain is e.g. crypto-live.org

Now you can create a desktop shortcut or a start menu entry or add it as a link on a portal or add this via GPO to all your users favorite bookmarks or ....

[Update: Even much easier to just access https://outlook.com/crypto-live.org]

No comments: