Samsung Galaxy S3 and Microsoft Office 365 connection problem

Michael How To Guides, Mobile, Office 365, Samsung, TechTalk


Recently we have been seeing issues with the Samsung Galaxy S3 connecting to Office 365 and in certain cases, On premise Exchange 2010.

Problem:
Samsung Galaxy S3 cannot connect to Mail using WiFi but can connect using 3G:

The first time you set-up the email, it seems to work  fine but minutes later all communications cease. In some cases all HTTPS (secure) traffic goes down too. To cut a long boring story short we have found that the Policies in place on the Exchange are causing this issue. The fix is relatively simple and you should have your devices up and running in no time… (Don’t you love theory, in practice it may be longer)

Solution:

Step one: 

  • Open your Office 365 tenant portal.
  • Open the Exchange Settings.
  • Click on Phone & Voice.
  • Select the Active Sync Device Policy.
  • Edit the Device Policy that the affected users belong too.
  • Under the General tab there will be an option “Allow devices that don’t fully support these policies to synchronise” Make sure you tick (enable) this feature.
  • Save and close.

Step Two:

Here you have a few options.

  1. Disconnect the Wifi and use mobile data to connect. Then wait for the updated security settings to be pushed to your phone.
  2. Remove the account from the phone, reboot and then re-add the account.
  3. In some cases you will need to remove the Active Sync account, Then go into Settings, Security, Device Administrator and remove any admins. Then reboot and try adding again.

Samsung Galaxy S3 GT-I9300MBDBTU (SIII)

UPDATE

Samsung have released a few updates since this issue was brought up. If you are having troubles please do an update on your device, reset and try again. (I would recommend, reseting, do not add the Office 365 account, do the update, Reset again and then add the account)
You should be on the following version
Android 4.0.4
Kernel Version – 3.0.15-928452

 

 

Michael is a Technology & Digital Consultant to the Real Estate, Property, Travel and Tourism industies with over 13 Years of leading Technical teams & Programme Management. He has worked with agencies in multiple countries and cities from the UK, New York, Russia, France, Dubai to Australia and South Africa. In his spare time he is a commercial drone pilot that dabbles with Photography & Videography.

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