2021 End-of-Support Milestone in Microsoft 365

Every year, Microsoft introduces new features for Office 365 users and admins. In the circle of life, there can be no new features without some sacrifice. Yes! Microsoft is planning to say good-bye to some of its legacy services, products, and technologies.

Here, we have documented the list of Office 365 services, products, and technologies that are going to expire in 2021. The list includes both end-of-support and deprecation. This blog will help you to adopt new technology to avoid last-minute surprises.

To easily keep track of the Office 365 end-of-support timeline, we have generated a timeline-based cool infographic!

We have also created a printer friendly version that you can print and stick in your desk.

Download Infographic | Printer-friendly

Don’t miss out on the latest buzz in Microsoft 365! 🐝

Microsoft 365: Upcoming Changes and End-of-Support Milestones

Microsoft will no longer support TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 from Exchange Online mail flow endpoints beginning Jan 11, 2021.

Solution:

All mail servers, devices, and applications that are sending or receiving an email to the Exchange online endpoint need to be upgraded to TLS 1.2.

To identify traffic that still uses TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1, you can use the TLS usage Report for SMTP in Exchange Online.

Microsoft has planned to retire tenant-wide search usage reports from the SharePoint admin center from Jan 11, 2021.

After Jan 11, administrators will no longer be able to view the updated tenant-wide search usage reports in the SPO admin center.

Proactive step:

You can download historical data for all five reports (top queries, abandoned queries, no result queries, query volume, and query rule usage) until Jan 11, 2021.

Solution:

You can get tenant-level usage analytics reports in Microsoft Admin Center –> Settings –> Search and Intelligence–> Insights to access the five usage analytics reports.

Microsoft is retiring the Skype for Business online Connector on Feb 15, 2021. After this administrator will no longer be able to download the Skype for Business Online Connector.

Note: Administrators can continue to use Skype for Business Online Connector till July 31, 2021.

Solution:

Instead of using Skype for Business Online Connector, administrators can use the latest Teams PowerShell module.

After releasing Office 365 ProPlus, modern auth has been the default way of authentication in Office apps. However, customers can override this behavior by setting a regkey EnableADAL to 0. So, they continue to use the legacy authentication against Microsoft 365 resources. This legacy form of authentication was powered by the library IDCRL.

Since modern auth is a more secure way of signing-in, Microsoft has planned to remove the IDCRL library in newer builds of Microsoft 365 Apps.

Note:

The retirement affects only newer builds and doesn’t affect Office 2016 and 2019 perpetual products.

Microsoft is retiring the current Yammer Desktop experience in mid-2021 and advises its users to migrate to a new installable Desktop Application which, will be available from the end of March 2021.

Once the new installable Desktop Application is released, Microsoft will address only high priority items of existing experience until it is officially retired.

Microsoft has planned to end their extended support for Dynamics CRM version 2011 from July 13, 2021. Once the extended support ends, Microsoft won’t provide any security patches and bug fixes.

Solution:

If your organization uses Dynamics CRM 2011, then you can migrate to ‘Microsoft Dynamics 365’.

Microsoft will retire Skype for Business Online service on July 31, 2021. After that, organizations will no longer be able to use Skype for Business Online.

Solution:

Microsoft advises its customers to plan and migrate to Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft has postponed the Basic Auth retirement from 2020 to the second half of 2021. Once the exact date is announced, we will update you here. Stay tuned to our blog.

After the retirement, legacy protocols like Exchange Web Services (EWS), Exchange Active Sync (EAS), IMAP4, POP3, and Remote PowerShell (RPS) won’t be able to connect to Exchange Online using Basic Auth.

Solution:

• You can update client applications to support OAuth 2.0,
• Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell with modern authentication
• Use Outlook mobile clients instead of Exchange ActiveSync.

From Aug 17, 2021, Microsoft 365 services and applications will no longer support Internet Explorer 11 (IE 11). After that, you will face a connection error or degraded feature experience.

Solution:

To access Microsoft 365 apps and services, you can use the new Microsoft Edge or any other supported browser.

Beginning Sept 30, 2021, Visio Web Access (aka, Visio Services) and its Web Part for SharePoint Online will no longer be available.

Solution:

Instead of using Visio Web Access and its Web Part for SharePoint Online, you can use Visio Online and the Document Web Part.

Note: Visio Online viewing is available to most Office 365 subscriptions.

Microsoft has planned to end their extended support for Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, Dynamics AX 2012, and Dynamics AX 2012 R2.

Solution:

You can upgrade to the latest version of the Finance and Operations app, such as Dynamics 365 Finance, Supply Chain Management, Retail, and Human Resource.

We hope this blog will remind you about the service or application migration. We will keep updating this list. You can also share any Microsoft 365 deprecations or end-of-support in the comment section.