Microsoft Authentication

[Discourse]

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Summary

Microsoft Authentication enables users to log in to your Discourse forum using their Microsoft accounts (also known as Office 365 or Microsoft 365 accounts). This simplifies the login process for organizations that use Microsoft services.

Features

• Allows users to log in with their Microsoft credentials
• Supports both multi-tenant and single-tenant configurations
• Integrates with Microsoft Azure Active Directory
• Simplifies user registration and login

Configuration

To set up Microsoft Authentication for your Discourse forum:

1. Visit Azure Portal’s App Registration page

2. Register a new application:

   • Choose a name (typically your site name)
   • Under “Supported account types,” select the most permissive option for your needs
   

3. Add your site as a Redirect URI for Web in this format:

   • https://your.discourse.forum/auth/microsoft_office365/callback
   

4. Save your changes

5. Visit Certificates & secrets in the left sidebar menu and click New client secret

   • Add a simple description
   • Choose 24 months under “Expires” (note: you’ll need to renew it)
   • Copy the Value (this is the Application Secret) and save it for your plugin settings

6. Visit Overview (in the left sidebar) and copy the Application (client ID)

7. In your Discourse admin area, go to Settings and search for “microsoft auth”

8. Enter the Application ID and Secret from the previous steps

Single-tenant authentication issues

If you’ve configured your Microsoft application as single_tenant, some users may experience issues when logging in. This happens because the emails used for login are considered untrusted, and the system cannot automatically link them to existing Discourse accounts.

To resolve this issue, users can:

1. Look for the “Already have an account?” section at the bottom of the signup form
2. Click the provided link to go through the account link-up process
3. Complete the authentication steps to connect their Microsoft account to their existing Discourse account

Another option is to enable the microsoft auth email verified site setting, if admins are confident that all your users have verified emails.This ensures that returning users with existing accounts don’t create duplicate accounts when authenticating through Microsoft.

Additional configuration options

You can update all Microsoft Authentication settings by visiting the Admin > Settings area and searching for “microsoft auth”.

For single-tenant setups, you’ll need your tenant ID, which you can find in the Azure Portal tenant properties.

Additional resources

• Potential account take over due to unverified emails from Microsoft Identity Platform · Advisory · discourse/discourse-microsoft-auth · GitHub

Last edited by @jessii 2025-05-20T20:46:47Z

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