iOS 8 Safari SharePoint 2013 Windows Authentication Support

Question

I would like to support SharePoint 2013 with default out-of-box settings on iOS 8 devices. I see a lot of forum discussion on both Apple and Microsoft sites regarding IIS Windows Authentication being broken with Safari in iOS 8. Without bypassing Windows Authentication, I'm looking for details on any scheduled software fix in iOS 8, or workarounds like using Chrome on iOS 8 as mentioned in some of the forum posts. Unfortunately the Chrome workaround is a partial fix as iOS 8 does not allow Chrome to be the default browser for links opened from email or elsewhere on your mobile device. Here are the relevant discussions and links I used while attempting to find a solution or verify the problem.

• Cannot see Sharepoint with iOS8 (Apple Support Communities)
• iOS 8 Safari not working with [...] Windows Authentication (Apple Support Communities)
• SharePoint 2013 is not compatible with iOS 8 (Microsoft TechNet Forums)
• sharepoint 2013 ios 8 safari (Google Search)

A note regarding Windows Authentication (NTLM/Negotiate) authentication default configuration for SharePoint 2013. For compatibility with various Microsoft products including the SharePoint Search Crawler, Microsoft Field Engineer Brian Pendergrass says "the crawler requires Windows Authentication [NTLM or Kerberos] in whatever zone your [sic] crawl …meaning your Default zone should include Windows Authentication)". Microsoft Office integration also seems to be optimized for SharePoint Windows Authentication. Based on this rationale, the default zone should always be configured for Windows Auth and only alternate zones should be used for alternative authentication like Forms Auth. Our organization chooses to deploy only one zone to require all SharePoint URLs to have the same form (SSL + Fully Qualified Domain Name) - thus we're stuck on a default zone with Windows Authentication.

Answer 1

Have you tried implementing the ADFS solution? Using client certificates

It's described here: https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/38086/sharepoint-repeatedly-prompting-ipad-users-for-credentials

And goes in to more detail here: https://paddleshift.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/authenticating-to-sharepoint-from-iphone-and-ipad/

Answer 2

When the page hangs after you enter your login press the refresh icon or open a new tab and navigate to the same site. It's still broken but this workaround seems to work for me.

Answer 3

When the page hangs, refresh is not available. The only option is to close and reopen Safari.

Answer 4

I found the following thread if .net pieces are not working. With some tweaking it looks like this can be fixed.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25978746/ios-8-safari-8-not-working-with-asp-net-ajax-extensions.

Answer 5

iOS 8.1 does NOT solve this problem... The problem still exists...same as it ever was.

Specifically, OOB SharePoint 2013 with Windows Auth. iOS 8 user (iPhone 6) using Safari attempting to authenticate to the site and is simply presented with username/password "Authentication Required" dialog over and over... Switch to Chrome and it works like a champ.

Not sure why, but someone named "Ian C" just deleted my other post... I will stop trying to help.

Answer 6

iOS 8.1 has been released and might improve the Windows Authentication issue for SharePoint 2013 (and other web sites using Windows Authentication).

Our first tests seemed to work well with SharePoint 2013 and iOS 8.1, but as time went on and more users tried we are seeing the same types of issues - multiple login popups and poor user experience on iOS devices using Safari.

Possible workarounds include using Forms Authentication on your SharePoint 2013 site, or trying the Chrome browser on your iOS device.

Please comment here if you have any details on what does and does not work with iOS 8.1+, Safari, and Windows Authentication sites.