Microsoft Working on G Suite to Office 365 Migration Tools
Microsoft is working on tools to move email, calendar, and contacts from G Suite to Exchange Online with availability in Q2 2019. It’s hardly a surprise.
How to Create a List of Teams for Processing in Power BI
Office 365 doesn’t include a way to export a list of Teams in a form that can be imported by Power BI, but PowerShell makes it an easy task to accomplish. Here’s a script to help solve the problem.
How to Add a Team Photo with PowerShell
Team owners can set the picture for their teams, but can tenant administrators do the same thing? As it turns out, no. But there’s a reason why.
Stream Intelligent Features Available to All Office 365 Commercial Users
Microsoft has made the intelligent features of Stream available to all Office 365 commercial customers, meaning that you can now luxuriate in closed captions, automatic transcripts and deep search, and face recognition.
Office 365 Privileged Access Management: Too Flawed and Too Exchange?
Microsoft has launched Privileged Access Management (PAM) for Office 365. The name’s incorrect because PAM only works for Exchange Online right now. PAM is based on RBAC, which is good, but is the implementation too Exchange-centric?
Office 365 Tenants to Microsoft: Send Training Tips to End Users – No Thanks!
Microsoft’s grand plan to send helpful emails to Office 365 users hit a roadblock when customers said “No thanks” to the idea. Microsoft has now taken the plan back for mature reflection. Does this kind of initiative reflect a certain arrogance on the part of Microsoft?
Teams Gets a PowerShell Refresh
The new version of the Teams PowerShell module (0.9.5) supports a Get-Team that’s actually useful because it can return a full list of teams in the tenant. But there’s still some work to do…
Thirty Days of Microsoft Graph
The Microsoft Graph developers and some other folks inside Microsoft have launched a new series of short blog posts to help people become acquainted with the Graph. It’s a nice idea, and one that’s worthwhile to read.
Block Guest Members for Individual Microsoft 365 Groups and Teams
By default, the Groups policy for an Office 365 tenant allows group owners to add guest users to group membership. You can block this access if necessary, but it’s probably not what you want to do as blocking brings guest access to a complete halt across the tenant.
How to Find Send As Records in the Office 365 Audit Log
Exchange administrators are accustomed to looking through mailbox audit logs to find details of events. Those same events are in the Office 365 audit log, so that’s the place to go look for information, like when you want to find out who sent a message from a shared mailbox using the SendAs permission.
Any Authenticated Users Permission Now Generally Available for Sensitivity Labels
Azure Information Protection rights management templates now support the Any Authenticated Users permission to allow Office 365 users to share email and documents with anyone who can authenticate with Azure Active Directory or has an MSA account or uses a federated service.
The Vexed Question of Microsoft 365 Backups
Backup vendors say you should definitely use their products to protect your valuable Microsoft 365 data. Backup products can do a good job, but the nature of Microsoft 365 creates many challenges at a technical level. A lack of APIs is the most fundamental issue, but the connected nature of Microsoft 365 apps is another.
Microsoft Cancels Windows S Client for Teams
Microsoft will retire the Windows S client for Teams on November 29, 2018. The decision to double-down on the Electron-based client is probably due to the fact that not many people use Windows S.
Purging Bad Stuff from Teams
Do you need to remove some offensive or otherwise doubtful material from Teams? If the original author won’t do the right thing, the team owner or an Office 365 administrator might have to step in to do the right thing.
Existing Guest Accounts and the Azure B2B Collaboration Policy
When you impose a block on certain domains, you’d like to think that applications like Teams will respect that block. As it turns out, if you have some lingering guests in your Azure Active Directory, the B2B collaboration policy might not be as effective as you’d hope.
How to Apply Encryption to Exchange Online Email Containing Sensitive Data
Office 365 offers different ways to apply encryption to important messages. When those messages hold sensitive data known to Office 365, like credit cards or passport numbers, we can define a transport rule or DLP policy to protect outbound email automatically. And while you can define rules and policies through the GUI, PowerShell is available too.
How to Migrate On-Premises Distribution Lists to Exchange Online
If you run a hybrid Exchange deployment, you probably have some on-premises distribution lists that you’d like to move to the cloud. Office 365 offers no way to do this, so it’s up to PowerShell. Instead of starting from scratch, you can use a script created by Tim McMichael of Microsoft and amend it to meet your needs. PowerShell is just great.
Protecting PDFs the Native Way
On October 12, Microsoft and Adobe launched the public preview of the native integration of Azure Information Protection for PDF files. Knowledge about protection is built into the latest version of the Acrobat reader, meaning that third-party tools are no longer needed to process protected PDFs.
Office 365 Now Has 155 Million Active Users
Office 365 continues to grow and has now reached the lofty heights of 155 million monthly active users. Just how long Microsoft can keep growing its cloud services is the question that no one can answer!
Use an Exchange Authentication Policy to Block Email Protocols
Microsoft has released a preview of the cmdlet set to allow tenants to create and manage protocol authentication policies for Exchange Online. It’s a great chance to disable basic authentication and reduce the attack surface for password spraying.
Can Teams Replace Email for Corporate Communications?
Tony spoke about “Can Teams Replace Email” at the Modern Workplace Conference in Paris on October 17. Here’s a sketch note about what he said and a copy of the slides.
Network performance and connectivity evaluation with Network Testing Companion
Microsoft has released a nifty Network Testing Companion to help Office 365 admins validate that their network can support the deployment of Teams and Skype for Business Online.
Office 365 E5 Accounts Now Keep Audit Log Data for 365 Days
Microsoft has updated its retention period for Office audit records from 90 to 365 days, but only for accounts with Office 365 E5 licenses. On another front, the problem with truncated audit records for Azure Active Directory events still persists.
T-Bot Gets a Bullet
The Teams T-Bot is no more and has been replaced by a snazzy new help “experience.” No doubt this is good news for those who consult help on a regular basis, but it won’t help Office 365 tenant admins much.
How to Make Public Folder Scalability Better Within Exchange Online
A recent update for Exchange Online gives extra control over who can access public folders. The change is intended to help with scalability, but it can be used to turn public folders off for any mailbox for which you care to disable access.
October 2018 Update Available for Office 365 for IT Pros eBook
The writing team is pleased to announce the availability of the seventh update for the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook. Sixteen of the 24 chapters are updated in this release, which is the most we have ever changed in a single update. Please be sure to download the new files at your earliest convenience.
How Exchange Online Room Mailboxes Use AutoUpdate and AutoAccept
Microsoft issued Message Center update MC151582 to tell Exchange Online administrators about a new default value for automatic processing of events sent to room mailboxes. Unfortunately, the PowerShell code in the update contains an error, so here’s some fixed code to check existing values and to set them to the new default, if you want to do that.
Managing Guest Users in a Microsoft 365 Tenant
How many guest users does your Office 365 tenant have? And how many of those accounts are actually used? Given that many Office 365 applications now generate guest user accounts to facilitate external access to content, managing these accounts is a growing concern.
Org-Wide Teams Don’t Need Azure AD P1 Licenses
The prospect of having to pay for many Azure AD Premium P1 licenses just because you use an org-wide team is horrible to contemplate. But don’t worry. You don’t have to because the Teams developers look after membership updates for you.
A Primer for Microsoft Forms
Everyone’s got a question to ask, and if you have an Office 365 business subscription, you can use Forms to do the asking. It’s quick and easy to build a simple questionnaire and not much more trouble to build something more complex.
How to Find Click to Run Configuration in the System Registry
Microsoft would like Office 365 tenants to use the Click to Run (C2R) version of the Office desktop applications because C2R is automatically updated with new features. We like C2R, but we also like knowing what’s installed on user workstations. Here’s how to check the Click to Run configuration with PowerShell.
Check Your Azure AD Accounts Before Adding Org-Wide Teams
Org-Wide Teams are a nice feature, but calculating their membership can be puzzling, as in the case of some perfectly valid accounts that were not added to a team. As it turns out, the error lies in Azure Active Directory.
How to License Exchange 2019 Hybrid Deployment
Microsoft has confirmed that they will not release a free hybrid license for Exchange 2019. That’s OK, because if you want to use Exchange 2019 as the HCW host, you simply assign the server one of your licenses. After all, the server won’t simply be running hybrid connectivity, will it?
New Training and Adoption Resources for Microsoft Teams
Microsoft is releasing new training resources and materials as part of its continuous commitment to help in the adoption and usage of Microsoft Teams. In the “Instructor-led training for Microsoft Teams” web site, anyone using or interested in using Microsoft Teams will find a series of free, live, online training classes designed to get you …
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How Event-Based Retention Works in Office 365
Everyone knows how simple date-based retention works, but what happens when you want to tie retention to a specific event, like the signing of a contract or the completion of a project? That’s when you need event-based retention.
How to Create Org-Wide Teams in Microsoft Teams
Teams supports the ability to create org-wide teams, but only if your tenant has fewer than 10,000 accounts. It’s a neat idea, if you can use it, but if your organization spans more than 10,000 accounts, there are other ways to foster company-wide communications.
Org-Wide settings in the Teams & Skype Admin Center
Microsoft designed the Teams & Skype Admin Center to make it easy to manage settings for both platforms. In the case of the organization wide settings, the latest updates in the Teams & Skype Admin Center provide the following features: Manage External access, Guest access, Teams settings and Teams upgrade options for the organization. This …
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The New OWA
Microsoft has a new OWA user interface in targeted release. So far it all looks good even if some features are still missing, Expect to see the new UI generally available in late 2018 or early 2019.
Teams and Slack By the Numbers
Slack is the most obvious competitor for Microsoft Teams. The question is how many users does each platform have? Here is our best guess.
Want to Write About Technology
Tony spoke at the recent Ignite conference about the knotty subject of writing about technology. Have a listen and see if you’re attracted to become a writer.