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Configuration
Featured

Configure Teams to Co-exist with Google Workspace

With the rise of stay-at-home orders due to COVID-19 over the past several weeks (now turned months), I’ve engaged with many customers who want to use Microsoft Teams to as part of their work-from-home tool set.  Many of my customers have investments in both Microsoft Office 365 as well as Google G Suite Workspace or Google Apps (frequently with other third-party IdP, metadirectory, and federation services thrown in the mix), so it’s not always just as easy as “flipping a switch.”… [ Continue reading ]

Configuration
Featured

Exchange Online Protection (EOP) Best Practices and Recommendations

Yes. I said it.

Someone needed to put a line in the sand and today, that person is me.  I’m going to say these are some best practices.

But of course, your mileage may vary, depending on your type of organization (users at a local bank or city government will have different threats presented to them than an engineering firm with international customers, for example). … [ Continue reading ]

Books

Expert Microsoft Teams Solutions available for pre-order

At long last, I’m pretty excited to announce this labor of love with some of my peers / teammates:

We’re still finalizing a few things (so a few chapter titles/headings may change), but here’s the top level outline:

Chapter Title Topics
1 Teams Overview Azure AD architecture Organization and user interface Instant messaging, chat, and presence Calendaring Mobile Devices
2 Approvals Creating and responding to approvals Administration of the Approvals app
3 Task Management Planner, To Do, and the Tasks App
4 Bookings Creating and managing a booking calendar Integration with other apps and services
5 Meetings Scheduled, Ad-hoc, and Channel meetings Meeting features (including transcription, recording, webinars, break-out rooms, and registration) Meeting options Audio conferencing
6 Meeting Room Licensing and configuring Meeting Rooms Room scheduling Meeting room devices
7 Live Events Scheduling live events Presenting and sharing content and invitations External meeting production
8 Teams app development Building and publishing apps in Teams
9 Workflow integration Connecting Power Automate to Teams, including posts and notifications
10 Power Virtual Agents Creating and publishing chat bots
11 Phone System Terminology, including calling plans, communication credits, conferencing, and emergency policies Calling features Licensing
12 Cloud Phone System Architecture Cloud-only and direct-routing configurations Implementing phone system features, including E911, creating and assigning phone numbers, policies (call park, calling, caller ID, emergency) Configuring outbound calling
13 Microsoft Teams devices Working with phones, Teams rooms, collaboration bars, and Teams displays
14 Planning and adoption The Microsoft Teams adoption framework
15 Governance Identity and authentcation Compliance (including retention and information barriers) Lifecycle management (including provisioning and access packages
16 Integration with Exchange Hybrid Enabling and configuring hybrid connectivity between Teams and Exchange
17 Security and Data Protection Conditional Access Data Loss Prevention
18 Reporting Call Quality Dashboard Call detail reports User-based call reports Live events Teams usage

You can go pre-order it here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09DDV1WR6… [ Continue reading ]

Identity

Update to Find-DuplicateValues script

Hey! As we enter the waning days of summer, I wanted to update a tool that I’ve had sitting around for a while.

Years ago, when I was in Microsoft Consulting Services, I ran into one particular customer that had manually populated the mail property of thousands of service accounts, groups, vendor accounts, and contacts–not with the object or user’s individual email address, but with the email address of the person who managed the AD object. … [ Continue reading ]

Configuration

Manual OAuth Configuration for Microsoft Teams in a Hybrid Scenario

There are times when your organization (or a customer’s organization) just can’t run the Exchange Hybrid Configuration Wizard.  If you’re embarking on one of our strategies to take advantage of Microsoft Teams while your mailboxes are still on-premises, the Exchange Hybrid configuration is the go-to way to get there, since it sets all this stuff up automatically. … [ Continue reading ]