On September 30, campuses running Entra Connect Sync below version 2.5.79.0 stopped syncing. Before that, MSOnline and AzureAD PowerShell went dark in 2025. At the end of December, Exchange Online turns off SMTP AUTH Basic Authentication by default, and every script that emails a new student their account details through smtp.office365.com with a stored password is on that list.

None of this was a surprise. Microsoft published every one of these dates in advance. The problem is that deprecation notices go to people, and scripts don't read email. When the person who wrote your provisioning script has moved on, the notice reaches nobody.

You'll fix this one. There are more coming. On October 29 I want to talk about fixing this one with you, and ending the treadmill.

Raymond T. Blackwood, President of Quicklaunch will walk the Microsoft deadline calendar from what already broke to what breaks next, score a campus against the four risk lanes in our free Microsoft Deadline Check, and show you live what it looks like when a Banner enrollment provisions a student end to end with no script in the path.

What you will leave with:

▪ Your institution's next break date, from the free Microsoft Deadline Check

▪ A one-page deadline calendar: what already broke, what is live now, and what is next

▪ A simple rule for which scripts to migrate and which to keep

▪ A live look at event-driven lifecycle replacing script-based provisioning

A working session for CIOs, IT directors, identity and systems administrators, and CISOs at institutions running Microsoft 365 with Banner, Colleague, Workday, or Jenzabar as the source of identity.