sign in purgatory

[db042190]

hi i dont know if this is coincidentally related to the new fabric rollout and i apologize for posting here but suddenly i'm facing a never ending warning that i have only 14 days to deal with the issue shown below.  to make things worse, when i went and installed the authenticator on my phone i think i would have been smarter to register my "onmicrosoft" email (related to my tenent) rather than my personal email.  thats the acct i use to login to this forum.  i'm tempted to uninstall the authenticator on my phone and start all over with my onmicrosoft email but am even more fearful of what problems that will lead to because who knows what MS has recorded elsewhere at this time.  for the moment,   i'm clicking "choose another acct " when logging into this forum, entering my personal email (same one that knows i'm a 365 customer) and then clicking the proper code on the authenticator's notification on my phone.  i'm worried that i'm facing a time constraint, and i'm so annoyed because i needed to finish a course this weekend rather than deal with this.  at the moment i seem to chase my tail when trying to add my onmicrosoft email to authenticator.  and it seems silly that i'm being asked to install authenticator again when thats probably impossible.  the authenticator's displays are very confusing.  can someone help me to contact someone who can get me out of this mess?  the redacted item in my image is my onmicrosoft email acct.  one more silly thing is that when i click what appears to be a path for adding my onmicrosoft acct to authenticator on my phone, it tells me i need to go to aka.ms/mfasetup on a web browser which starts the whole vicious cycle over.  and to add to the insanity, if you hit the next button which shows at the same time as that message, you are taken back to the action required mesage.  i tried to read the post where instruction on all of this are written but its written in very confusing if then language.  It almost seems like tghe author there expected me to be born with the knowledge he or she is trying to convey.  one more thing, a week or two ago i got a warning (maybe thru email) that something sounding similar needed to be done on my tenent portal but when i went there i didnt see anything related to two factor auth.

 

[Greg_Deckler · Accepted solution]

@db042190 You can add multiple accounts to Microsoft Authenticator. I have probably a dozen or more accounts associated with mine. In theory, if you click Next you should be able to get to a point where a QR code is displayed for your onmicrosoft account. In your Microsoft Authenticator app on your phone, click on Verified IDs. Then click the Scan a QR Code button. Scan the QR code and it will add the account into your Microsoft Authenticator app as a verified ID.

[Greg_Deckler · Accepted solution]

@db042190 Awesome. Yeah, it can be a pain but in generally it doesn't work too bad, other than Microsoft Authenticator prompting you like 12 times to unlock it or confirm with your fingerprint every time you authenticate. It's like it's turned a 1 step process of entering your password into at least 5 steps, enter password,  open authenticator, unlock authenticator, confirm MFA, confirm authentication of MFA with another fingerprint or code. Sooooooo easy...

[db042190]

thx greg, i'll follow your suggested steps till i hit a wall.  and i'll document here what i'm running into.  i think authenticator knows of my onmicrosoft account because of how i muddles thru this, but the fact that i continue needing to "use another account" to login to the forum makes me think not in the way i would expect.  i may reboot my phone before moving forward.

[Greg_Deckler · Accepted solution]

@db042190 You can add multiple accounts to Microsoft Authenticator. I have probably a dozen or more accounts associated with mine. In theory, if you click Next you should be able to get to a point where a QR code is displayed for your onmicrosoft account. In your Microsoft Authenticator app on your phone, click on Verified IDs. Then click the Scan a QR Code button. Scan the QR code and it will add the account into your Microsoft Authenticator app as a verified ID.

[db042190]

thx greg.  this time on step 3.d i finally got different behavior which led to success.  i do not believe that cycling the phone was necessary.  i do believe that poking around for how the app wants a qr code (+ sign) and muddling thru that made the difference.  also i think understanding "after you install hit next" finally meant something to me.  this time it was already installed  so i wasnt distracted from coming back to the pc.  i also think that the confidence i got from your post that multiple accts are ok helped.

1. booted phone
2. cleared cache in chrome on pc
3. attempted to login to forum at https://community.powerbi.com/
a. got new fabric splash
b. clicked sign in on pc, entered onmicrosoft acct, next, and pswd, sign in, got action required
c. hit next, got auth splash suggesting download app, "after you install hit next"
d. hit next on pc, got a diffferent authenticator message, suggesting pick work or school when prompted,
e. hit next, i see qr
f. found the + button by hitting "back" a couple of times in authenticator and finally got to "scan request" etc

g. hit next on pc, auth registration has timed out error
h. tried again, got a 2 digit code which i entered on phone , saw success, logged into forum successfullhy this time.