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Polycom VVX 600 and MFA
Has anyone had any luck with the Polycom VVX 600 and signing into S4B when you have MFA enabled on your account? Or for that matter any polycom device? I've tried app passwords and those don't seem...
Actually, it turns out I found the steps that Scott mentioned at the following article -- http://blog.schertz.name/2016/12/polycom-ucs-5-5-for-vvx-phones/.
It looks like the new 5.5.1 software has a 'Web Sign-In' option that Scott mentioned. On my phone I chose 'Sign-In' and was given the option for 'Web Sign-in'. It stepped me through a process with a url and access code that successfully tied the phone to my account.
Now my Polycom phone is working with my Office 365 tenant with MFA enabled.
It is 2 years later and there is still no workable solution for these phones. It is quite unbelievable when you think that this is (or once was) such a strategic collaboration for MS and Polycom, and that they have not managed to work something out. I am the only one in my office who puts up with checking my phone in the morning and signing in again if needed, so that I can make and receive calls during the day. Everybody else resorted to using their personal cell phones. But we are paying through the nose for the E5 licenses and calling plans.
Now, over the past couple of months, things seem to have taken a turn for the worse. The latest firmware that MS is pushing down (5.8.0.12848) broke our ability to authenticate with the phones ("failed to fetch user certificate"). I suspect that this has to do with MS adding support for Teams and that this introduced a glitch. I now have to pin my firmware to the last one where web sign-in worked, which means that even if there ever is a fix for allowing MFA with app passwords on the device, I will not get it because I cannot allow the phones to upgrade the firmware .....
Is there anybody out there who deployed SFB Online with Lync handsets and can claim that it was a success? Or are the people in this thread the last few who are trying to make it work?
Hi Christian,
After our pilot earlier in the year we rolled it out to all our non mobile users (x80). Setup did take a lot of work to get my head round, but once we had the ftp server running, the right network settings in place and the handset config files set the way we wanted, they've been working well for us.
We also use MFA and I do experience the very occasional, "failed to fetch user certificate" error, but then next time round it will log straight in just fine (always using Web Sign-in) - not sure why (might be after disabling / re-enabling MFA on my account which I've had to do a couple of times?).
We are currently on software version: 5.8.1.6389. We needed to disable the auto-update feature though - for some reason the MS version that gets pulled down is a fair few versions behind the latest version on Polycom website, which confused me for a bit. In summary I do have a few more grey hairs from this but on reflection I would call it a success for our org. Now if only the pricing was a bit more reasonable...
After our pilot earlier in the year we rolled it out to all our non mobile users (x80). Setup did take a lot of work to get my head round, but once we had the ftp server running, the right network settings in place and the handset config files set the way we wanted, they've been working well for us.
We also use MFA and I do experience the very occasional, "failed to fetch user certificate" error, but then next time round it will log straight in just fine (always using Web Sign-in) - not sure why (might be after disabling / re-enabling MFA on my account which I've had to do a couple of times?).
We are currently on software version: 5.8.1.6389. We needed to disable the auto-update feature though - for some reason the MS version that gets pulled down is a fair few versions behind the latest version on Polycom website, which confused me for a bit. In summary I do have a few more grey hairs from this but on reflection I would call it a success for our org. Now if only the pricing was a bit more reasonable...
James,
Very exciting to hear you got it working. Are you by chance using a SfB Online account or do you host Skype yourselves locally? We host our own SfB server and I get the "failed to fetch user certificate" error when attempting to sign-in using the web sign-in method.
Thanks!
-Brad
- Yes Brad, no on-prem server - for better or worse we've gone 'full cloud'. We moved offices recently and it seemed like a good point at which to retire our 16 yr old PBX (and remove another bit of kit from the comms room).
Brad, the Web Sign-In method is currently still only available for use with Skype for Business Online accounts, not SfB Server accounts. Microsoft is working on a solution for this though, so hang tight.
Jeff, Web Sign-in is also the _only_ option currently available for SFB Online with MFA enabled. This is classified information, apparently, because nowhere in process of enabling (and enforcing) MFA for our users did I run into a warning that would have alerted me of this. But just the other day I found this recently updated document that clarifies it (scroll down to the table of sign-in options for various deployment scenarios):
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/skypeforbusiness/what-is-phone-system-in-office-365/getting-phones-for-skype-for-business-online/deploying-skype-for-business-online-phones
