EWS Progressive Deprecation Calendar

Promodag Reports has been using EWS (Exchange Web Services) to access mailbox content instead of MAPI since version 10 in 2018. These Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) enable it to retrieve Outlook item properties on the fly, both in on-premises Exchange environments and in Office 365 tenants. This makes it possible, for example, to generate detailed reports on attachments or produce statistics on meeting usage.

However, Microsoft announced in 2023 that it would soon be phasing out this obsolete technology in Exchange Online and recommends using Microsoft Graph APIs as an alternative, noting that this is a different method that does not fully cover the scope of EWS.

What Is the EWS Retirement Timeline in Exchange Online?

In an article dated February 5, 2026, the Exchange team blog details the stages of the progressive EWS retirement:

• Starting in early 2026,
  • Microsoft will make available a new feature allowing administrators to create an allow list of applications published in Microsoft Entra ID that are authorized to use EWS in their Exchange Online messaging environment: AppID Allow List.
  • Administrators will also need to use the Set EWSEnabled command to authorize EWS in their tenant (default value: Null). 
  • EWS will be progressively disabled tenant by tenant until October 2026, unless the value set by the Set EWSEnabled command has been configured to True.
• Starting in October 2026, EWS will be completely disabled, except for applications authorized in the allow list. The value set by the Set EWSEnabled command must of course have been configured to True.
• Starting in April 2027, EWS will be completely blocked, also for applications on the allow list.
• In May 2027, EWS APIs will permanently disappear from Exchange Online environments.

What Does Promodag Plan to Do About This?

The migration of the code used until now to access mailbox content is underway in order to allow us to offer as smooth a transition as possible, and therefore a reporting function that is as close as possible to the existing one as far as the supported technologies allow.

• However, some information will be permanently lost, the most important being the loss of access to archive mailboxes, public folders, and permissions on mailbox folders.
• In addition, it will certainly be necessary to re-create all custom reports related to mailbox content.
• Finally, it will probably be necessary to add additional Microsoft Graph permissions to our application published in Microsoft Entra ID; if this is the case, we will be sure to notify you in due time.

What Can You Do on Your End?

For now, we recommend that customers whose environment is either hybrid or fully hosted in Office 365 verify whether they use certain Promodag Reports content reports (categories: Mailbox Content and Public Folder Content).

If this is the case, they can run the Set EWSEnabled command and set its value to True for their entire Office 365 tenant. This will prevent an unfortunate blockage in the coming months.

As soon as the allow list (AppID Allow List) becomes available, they can include our Microsoft Entra ID application in it, whose default name is "Promodag Reports RBAC Application". This will allow them to continue using EWS until our development of a version using Microsoft Graph instead of EWS is completed.

Conclusion

The retirement of EWS APIs in 2026, following that of MAPI in 2018-2019, is just another chapter in the long history of Promodag Reports development. We continue to improve our product continuously and will keep you informed of ongoing changes through this blog and our newsletters.