PresenceLight will not work for non-Microsoft Employees

[isaacrlevin]

Hey folks,

I was made aware that due to security changes at Microsoft, PresenceLight will no longer work for anyone that is not a Microsoft employee (including me).

Some History

I created this app during the pandemic when I was an FTE at Microsoft. Times were different and I was able to create an Entra ID (previously Azure Active Directory) app registration in the Microsoft Tenant and enable multi-tenant support, which would allow people outside that directory to use the tool. I have since left Microsoft and have had to occasionally interact with folks in order to keep the app registration enabled as Microsoft continues to crack down on potential security vulnerabilities.

Can you move it to a new tenant?

You are probably thinking "just move it to a new tenant" and yes I could do that, but then it will only work for me. The last time I checked, I am unable to create a multi-tenant app in Entra ID unless I am a Microsoft Cloud Partner, which I do not meet the requirements for.

So now what?

Microsoft is investigating trying to resolve this, but in the meantime, no one who is outside of the Microsoft tenant will be able to use PresenceLight, they will get some version of an error when they try to login, or open the app and it attempts to get your presence. I asked them if that is the case moving forward to delete the App Registration and PL will need to be a "do it yourself" tool meaning you would need to setup the Entra stuff yourself.

That's it, sorry for this not working for you folks, stay tuned!

Including @juraj-blazek who is looking into this from the Microsoft side

[Crunchyeyeballs]

Bummer, thanks for taking the time to figure it out!

[sparkitect]

Also, I don't mind creating a single-tenant app registration in my own tenant to get this to work (I know how to do this)...

[krisjohnson222]

Is creating a single-tenant app registration complicated? I'm not even sure what that means unfortunately.

[isaacrlevin]

If anyone wants to "self-host" a version of PL in their own tenant, here is a doc on that
https://github.com/isaacrlevin/presencelight/blob/main/docs/configure-entra-app.md

[sparkitect]

@isaacrlevin: Maybe you're still working on that doc or maybe I'm not thinking right: once I have the "Application ID and Tenant ID from your my newly created App", what do I do with them?

[Absoblogginlutely]

@isaacrlevin: Maybe you're still working on that doc or maybe I'm not thinking right: once I have the "Application ID and Tenant ID from your my newly created App", what do I do with them?

For what it's worth, the instructions have changed a little. After choosing Authentication I needed to add a web application and then I could set the redirect URI to https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/nativeclient
I then changed the client id in %appdata%\presenceLight\appsettings.json to the one from the overviewpage.
That did get a little further, however after logging in it returns AADSTS900971: No reply address provided.
edit: I also added http://localhost which got me a little further. This then asked me to approve permissions as an admin.
On restarting it now continues to cycle through asking me to login, redirects to the authorization complete page and then refreshes to the login page again. Repeat ad-nauseum

[isaacrlevin]

Maybe try to add these to the desktop area

[jtropauer]

Oh man I need to get this working, or I can't yell at my wife to look at the lights before you start talking to me!

Finally found this topic, and am suffering the same issues. I did create my own self-hosted PL instance in our company tenant, set the redirect URI as noted above, but still getting the same issue with the auth process. Best I can figure I can't edit the core appsettings.json file in the WindowsApp-located folder (using Procmon, can see that accessed).

With this said, reading @Absoblogginlutely's response, it implies an appdata/roaming folder (vs. appdata/local) for PL settings. My roaming folder did not have this, created it, dropped both settings.json and appsettings.json files there (edited for my tenant ID). Restarted PL, tried to auth, still complaining about the original 'f8119f58-4523-44c1-ab72-b2e0c815bd6a' tenant ID.

Unfortunately, I'm more of a generic IT guy than a coder, so hard for me to walk through the published code. Any advice on how to allow PL to find a "customized" settings file?

[isaacrlevin]

Anyone wanting to selfhost should download the source, change the client id in the app settings.json file and build from there. I tested in my own tenant and it works for me

[Anto79-ops]

hello all, I was wondering why this was not working recently (using the Desktop Win 10 version, the cog wheel spins indefitinely on teams status). Is there way to backup or export the settings? before I try the new method thanks.

EDIT: oh, nevermind, I have a bigger issue. it says I don thave access when I try to open Microsoft Entra ID :(