Forum Discussion
MFA without a Cellphone
luvsql Did you find a resolution? We are in the exact same situation. For a variety of reasons, telling employees that they MUST use their personal phones is going to create enormous issues and perhaps legal ones too (not sure of it in the US). What if one forgets their smart phone one day? They can't get to their business email all day long? What if users have a work supplied smartphone but it is shared - can they still each use it for MFA? As another poster mentioned, many of our users can't use their smartphones at work because of the way the building is constructed - no signal. Our police officers are going to be out in their vehicles when accessing email - there is no way other than forcing to use their personal phones? We have one phone number for the entire organization for land lines, we each have an extension from then on, is there a desk phone option that would work in that scenario? Other posters have mentioned that in some countries, it is illegal to force employees to use their personal phones for business reasons. Why didn't MS think this through? Think about the REAL world?
If anyone has heard anything from MS or has a valid solution without using third party options, we'd LOVE to hear from you!
- No solution. I tried a couple key solutions that didn't work and they are so small one was lost immediately and $50-$75 to replace. We've settled on using text on personal phones since it doesn't require an app to be installed and for some of our users that have a Teams Business Voice license, using their Teams number to authenticate. However, Teams may stop working if can't authenticate then the number stops working.
If there is no cell signal then they could authenticate with wifi but that would require them to install the app so that's fine for our Employees we supply a phone to.
Microsoft needs to start selling keys so we know they're legit and easy to use that we can purchase along with our licenses. They are way too complex and some aren't certified.- 😞
I saw this https://services.mnsu.edu/TDClient/30/Portal/KB/ArticleDet?ID=114
and wonder how to configure on the admin side to get the option for Office phone. It seems to have the option to enter an extension which is what we would need. That would take care of the majority of our users. Looking through MS documentation, I don't see anything regarding this Office phone option.
