Oracle E-Business Suite Workflow is an essential component of E-Business Suite, providing a workflow management system that supports business process-based integration. It includes the Workflow Notification Mailer, which is used to send and receive email notifications for the EBS Workflow Notification System. You can set up Workflow Notification Mailer with an SMTP mail server for outbound messages and an IMAP mail server for inbound messages.
This blog post is for you if you have configured the SMTP or IMAP mailer for Workflow Notification Mailer with third-party mail servers such as Microsoft’s Office 365 Exchange Online or Google’s G Suite Gmail server.
How is IMAP configured for EBS Workflow Notification Mailer?
As of today, Workflow Notification Mailer in EBS Release 12.2 and Release 12.1.3 supports basic authentication for IMAP server connections. Workflow Notification Mailer connects to the configured IMAP mail server using the email inbox user name and password credentials set as part of the Inbound E-Mail Account configuration.
What changes are coming with third-party mail servers?
In 2019, Microsoft and Google separately announced their plans to discontinue basic authentication for their IMAP servers. See the following for more information:
- Google’s G Suite Gmail Server: Turning off less secure app access to G Suite accounts
- Microsoft’s Office 365 Exchange Online: Improving Security – Together
In later announcements, Microsoft and Google postponed their plans to turn off basic authentication with their IMAP mail servers. See the following updated announcements for more information:
- Google’s G Suite Gmail Server: Less secure app turn-off suspended until further notice
- Microsoft’s Office 365 Exchange Online: Basic Authentication and Exchange Online – April 2020 Update
What is the impact to EBS due to the upcoming changes to third-party mail servers?
As per guidelines from Microsoft and Google, applications should use a newer security mechanism, OAuth 2.0, to authenticate connections to their IMAP mail server. This means that the Workflow Notification Mailer in EBS must be enhanced to support OAuth 2.0 for connections to these third-party mail servers.
Support for OAuth2.0 with EBS Workflow Notification Mailer
We are aware of the required change for EBS Workflow Notification Mailer and have been receiving numerous queries from our customer about the upcoming impact. Rest assured that we are in process of reviewing and enhancing Workflow Notification Mailer to support OAuth 2.0 based authentication for IMAP server connections.
We will post any further updates for this enhancement to this blog – stay tuned!