Release Notes

Hi, I'm looking for the release notes for Pandora 4.3 which I believe was posted over a week ago. The Release Notes link seems to be broken, and there is no update to the forum sticky yet.

I'm mainly looking for any announcement of OAuth2 support for Office365, though it's always nice to know what else has been recently changed as well.

Carnie wrote:Hi, I'm looking for the release notes for Pandora 4.3 which I believe was posted over a week ago. The Release Notes link seems to be broken, and there is no update to the forum sticky yet.

I'm mainly looking for any announcement of OAuth2 support for Office365, though it's always nice to know what else has been recently changed as well.

The current Pandora release is 4.2.4.1.

Release 4.3 has not been release although I am expecting a release very soon.

The Release Notes link is not broken and has the Release Notes for release 4.2.4.1.

NOTE: while typing this reply to your query, the  Pandora Mail webpage changed to show Release 4.3 as the current version and the Release Notes link is now broken with a 404 error. So Brana maybe releasing the new version.  So we need to have patience while he gets it done..

Butch

Right now URLs that include files hosted on DreamHost are case sensitive so:

https://pandoramail.com/pandora.txt
returns Not Found (The requested URL was not found on this server)

https://pandoramail.com/Pandora.txt
page opens up fine

That will be resolved soon.

Host service will need a little more time, but it will be resolved.

To answer your other question Carnie, unlike full GMail verification where there is a path at least, for Microsoft - not yet.

Internally Pandora fully supports Microsoft OAuth2 authentication but Pandora has to be verified by Microsoft first. In order for them to verify it - you have to
enroll in payed service (Azure Active Directory), and in addition you have to enroll in presumably free but inaccessible (and of course completely unrelated) Microsoft Partnership Program.
You have to provide Microsoft Partnership Program id at Azure portal, it's mandatory.

If you feel strongly about all that just ask them this:
Is there a clear and simple way for e-mail client to be OAuth2 verified, without subscription and/or hidden cost?
If the answer is yes - how exactly?

Note - we are talking about technical security exchange, not payed service, it's in their interest to verify legit mail clients in short order.

It seems like there's a free Azure account option for Microsoft Pandora verification? https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/?WT.mc_id=A261C142F Not sure if that helps, but I'm stuck with Office365 work email, and as a long time Eudora user (and Outlook despiser] am desperately seeking an OAuth2 solution in an Eudora-like client.

Would this be a work-around to get Pandora working with Office365 OAuth2 email?
https://github.com/simonrob/email-oauth2-proxy

It says:
"As part of the proxy setup process you need to provide an OAuth 2.0 client_id and client_secret to allow it to authenticate with email servers on your behalf. If you have an existing client ID and secret for a desktop app, you can use these directly in the proxy. If this is not possible, you can also reuse the client ID and secret from any email client that supports IMAP/POP/SMTP OAuth 2.0 authentication with the email server you would like to connect to (such as the various open source clients with OAuth 2.0 support), but please do this with care and restraint as access through reused tokens will be associated with the token owner rather than your own client."

But I don't understand all this stuff enough to know if is at all useful here.

geoallen wrote:It seems like there's a free Azure account option for Microsoft Pandora verification?  https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/?WT.mc_id=A261C142F   Not sure if that helps, but I'm stuck with Office365 work email, and as a long time Eudora user (and Outlook despiser] am desperately seeking an OAuth2 solution in an Eudora-like client.

There is, and I enrolled in that (just in order to add OAuth2 support for Office365). Added Pandora Mail, there are standard fields to fill in (much like at Yahoo and GMail), and this little addition at the bottom:


When you click on Add MPN ID to verify publisher, you get this:


There are prerequisites for prerequisites etc etc.

Now when you go to Signup, over at https://partner.microsoft.com, you get this:
> Contact your IT admin to sign up
> There's no existing account for this email address. Ask your IT administrator to create an account for you. And then come back to try this product and finish signing up.

What IT admin? Why there should be existing account related to email address (it's first time enrollment). I wasted way too much time on this, that's why I am saying - clean and simple way, no hidden costs, then we'll see.

Yikes. Well it's not like you haven't tried. I appreciate that.

geoallen wrote:Would this be a work-around to get Pandora working with Office365 OAuth2 email?
https://github.com/simonrob/email-oauth2-proxy
...

No that's some implementation, the easy part.
Pandora supports OAuth2 in production for nearly 2 years now. The "hard" part is client verification over at Microsoft (in this case).
What verification means? Some real person has to:
1. Visit the web site and make sure it's legit.
2. Download and scan installer for viruses.
3. Install and run Pandora, make sure it's actual desktop mail client.
It should take ~15 minutes of their time.

Hello Brana. I don't use Outlook (shudder) or have any need for OAuth2, so far, at least, so all this doesn't affect me. I really do empathize with you, it looks as if Microsoft's arcane requirements for OAusth2 verification have been taking their toll on you, and chewing up time that you could have spent more usefully on other aspects of Pandora.

I do have a YouTube channel that you're welcome to share for this procedure, see https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1gJIsMQ3lIM9axx0UlugrA ... I'd be happy to add your OAuth2 video to this channel. At least do so as a temporary measure, it's easy to set up a channel and you probably should have your own official Pandora channel.

Thank you Tony, yes over at Google they require a video, which is more practical at least. So I created a channel last night and here is the first one:


There will be a second one describing first log-in/consent screen and bunch of other additions to privacy policy page.

That's all required for their Tier 2 security assessment, which Pandora undergoes now.

The entire thing is tailored for web portals and web-based (mail) services (and for bunch of other scopes), they basically want you to tell them - I've got all your mail but I am using it in a responsible manner blah blah.
No - the whole purpose of Pandora is to allow user to take full control of his/her mailboxes and attachments (I as a developer have absolutely no access to it).

Make no mistake, that's where Internet is going. Paper, when invented was technological wonder for the ages, ended up as a material for bureaucratic castle, as Kafka described it.
Anyway we are making progress, if I would have to guess the whole verification thing will be over by the end of the next week.

That's good, Brana. Here is the link for the Pandora OAuth2 channel at YouTube, just to put it explicitly on record so that search engines  will spider it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_oMqfYnbr4

I received the phone call from Microsoft yesterday, and we identified the glitch. They'll let me know as soon as it's resolved. So Carnie, there is still hope.

Admin wrote:I received the phone call from Microsoft yesterday, and we identified the glitch. They'll let me know as soon as it's resolved. So Carnie, there is still hope.

Has the hope gone away? In the other thread on this, you said today:

Admin wrote:Unfortunately, it ain't gonna happen anytime soon. Should they decide to drop Cloud Partner Program as a requirement for multi-tenant client verification - Pandora supports Office365 OAuth2 the next day.

Pretty much. I chatted with their support over the phone twice this week and they were very professional and forthcoming, but ultimately to no avail (above their ranks).

If I have to guess, they have a small village of CEO's absolutely obsessed with Cloud/Internet data management/data safe keeping. That requirement was invented for web-portals/scripts, but is applicable to all of the "apps". Of course they don't differentiate Windows desktop mail clients from far less secure web-portals/scripts (which are using payments, access to documents and many other/different scopes), and these portals are their main and only concern.

Admin wrote:Pretty much. I chatted with their support over the phone twice this week and they were very professional and forthcoming, but ultimately to no avail (above their ranks).

Ok. Sigh. Thank you for trying. For work email I have no choice; Office365 must be used, and I despise Outlook. Eudora has been great for the last 20 years but is showing her age and OAuth2 is the death knell for it. I will look into this: https://github.com/simonrob/email-oauth2-proxy as a OAuth2 workaround for Eudora or Pandora end-users, but it sounds complicated...

No, it's just some other implementation, perhaps something that web sites would typically use.

Implementation is not the issue, it's that your app (that you compile, or in this case script that you run) has to be verified by server.
https://github.com/simonrob/email-oauth2-proxy/issues/107

Now that verification is part of OAuth2, for better or worse, and that's not the issue too. Microsoft requires, like many other one cloud-services (for app verification):
1. Premier domain ownership.
2. Add DNS record to your domain.
3. Copy some files to the app home page.
4. Misc other conditions (it's all in Azure AD).

These conditions are not the issue as well, it's on top of it all you have to join their Cloud Partnership Program (was called MPN), and it goes on and on from there:
https://www.microsoftpartnercommunity.com/t5/Partner-Membership-Discussions/Joining-MPN-stuck-on-Employment-verification/m-p/15133

If you have extra time on your hands you can click on "Load more replies" at the bottom, I did it around 10 times (and there is more LOL).

My father is in a nursing home hundreds of miles from me and Email is the only way we have been able to stay in touch. He has a university Email address because he's a retired faculty member, and the university frustratingly migrated everyone to Office 365 earlier this year. My father has dementia and is able to use Eudora because that's what he has always used and his mind is hardwired for it. There's no way he can understand how to use Office 365 though, so now we're cut off from communicating with each other since he is also nearly deaf and can't use the phone. I was hoping Pandora could be the solution if OAuth2 for Office365 could be added. Since that now seems unlikely, it looks like I'm going to have to switch him to a different email address next time I go see him, probably next month. It will be the first time he's had a new Email address in 40 years so we'll see how that goes.

Anyway, thank you for all the updates and for doing your best. I appreciate the effort you put into this.

Carnie wrote:the university frustratingly migrated everyone to Office 365 earlier this year. [snip] I was hoping Pandora could be the solution if OAuth2 for Office365 could be added.

You could forward his university email to an account that doesn't use OAuth2, and have Eudora or Pandora get incoming email from there. That's what I do. The Eudora-Win list has had a lot of discussion on this.
SUBSCRIBING: <mailto:join-eudora-win@hades.listmoms.net?Subject=Gazelle>

Carnie wrote:I was hoping Pandora could be the solution if OAuth2 for Office365 could be added. Since that now seems unlikely, it looks like I'm going to have to switch him to a different email address next time I go see him, probably next month.  It will be the first time he's had a new Email address in 40 years so we'll see how that goes.

Anyway, thank you for all the updates and for doing your best. I appreciate the effort you put into this.

Don't mention it Carnie, sorry it didn't work out.

You may want to check if Office365 is offering e-mail auto-forwarding option, that would probably be the easiest solution.

There is some good news on this issue. SimonRob's OAuth2 Proxy now has a windows executable version - no Python needed. That doesn't mean setup is trivial, but it's easier than it was. Jens Karlsson over at the Eudora-Win list posted detailed instructions on how to do it, and it works [using Thunderbird client info] for Office365 email! Email me off-list if you want the details. George