The hosting venue has changed to serve you better.
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 ]
With the advent of scammers, spammers, phishers, and other types of baddies, and the complementary rise in anti-malware, anti-spam, domain and sender verification techniques, we’re in a perpetual cat-and-mouse game. I’ve had several customers over the past few weeks ask me about best practices for configuring some of the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) features.… [ Continue reading ]
Happy New Year, everyone!
I’m super excited to be part of of my publisher’s #NewYearNewSkills initiative. If you’ve been curious about how to get software to help you do less of the less important stuff so you can do more of the more important stuff but weren’t sure where to start, my book “Workflow Automation with Microsoft Power Automate” is a great place to start! … [ Continue reading ]
This week I wanted to do something a little bit fun. You’ve probably seen scripts that keep your mouse moving so your machine doesn’t go to sleep…
But have you ever seen one with PowerShell?
Yes, with the [System.Windows.Forms.Cursor]… [ Continue reading ]
Kind of excited to see the stats counter on my blog roll over this week, topping 1 million visits in the past year and a half since migrating from the TechNet blog platform!
Thank you for joining me! … [ Continue reading ]
A few weeks ago, while helping a customer configure Exchange Hybrid for Teams, we ran into this interesting error:
As I’ve stated previously, interesting in the context of both technology troubleshooting and doctor’s visits is rarely something you want to hear.… [ Continue reading ]
This week, while helping a customer onboard to Azure AD Connect, we ran into an interesting error:
Azure Service Connectivity Failed, Unable to proceed
The on-premises synchronization service is not able to connect to Azure Active Directory.… [ Continue reading ]
This past weekend, while working with a customer on a new proof-of-concept deployment of Exchange Hybrid and Microsoft Teams, we had a need to validate that no user accounts would be inadvertently updated during the upgrading of Exchange 2003 Recipient Policies to modern Exchange email address policies.… [ Continue reading ]
This morning, while attempting to set up a virtual machine in my lab environment, I encountered an error while attempting to install the MSOnline module–the NuGet and PowerShellGet components were not already installed. Easy enough–the installation procedure prompts to install them anyway, so just hit yes, right?… [ Continue reading ]
Today, a colleague asked how to disable OneDrive for Business for a customer.
The answer, of course, is like many tech answers.
In this case, it depends on whether you mean “prevent OneDrive from provisioning” or “prevent users from accessing OneDrive sites that have already been provisioned.” … [ Continue reading ]
This week, I was testing something for a customer that required me to check back on a data replication/sync task. The fun part about continuously checking on something is that I’m human and I will eventually forget (or get bored and just stop doing it). … [ Continue reading ]
Heyo!
I’m working on a project that needs geocoding and decided to see what Power Automate actions are available to me. Sure, I could construct an HTTP REST call to a service, but maybe there’s any easier way?… [ Continue reading ]
What a crazy year it has been! This week, I sent off the final drafts for my fifth book published this calendar year.
This hefty book (600+ pages) covers installation and configuration of the SharePoint server platform. … [ Continue reading ]
We all end up doing a lot of work that we don’t need to do. That’s not to say that it doesn’t need to be done–it might be a critical operation that needs to be performed, but does it need to be done by you?… [ Continue reading ]
If you’re wondering (or even if you’re not) why I’ve been quiet on my blog lately, it’s because I’ve been furiously working trying to finish up a new book: Workflow Automation with Microsoft Power Automate.… [ Continue reading ]
Today, I found myself working with a customer that was experiencing delivery failures to some Office 365 recipients from all external senders.
As problems go, this one definitely finds itself in the “interesting” category. … [ Continue reading ]
It’s officially available for ordering. Woo!
You can order it at all the usual places, including Amazon and Packt!
If you’re preparing to take the exam, you can get started immediately with the electronic copies. … [ Continue reading ]
Yesterday, while working with my colleague Michael Anderson, I needed to investigate where a particular on-premises value was being synced in AAD. The result is this table:
| AD Property | Get-MsolUser | Get-AzureADUser | Get-User | Get-CSOnlineUser | |
| Friendly name | ldapDisplayName | ||||
| Telephone number | telephoneNumber | PhoneNumber | TelephoneNumber | Phone | Phone |
| Pager | pager | – | – | Pager | – |
| Mobile | mobile | MobilePhone | – | Fax | MobilePhone |
| Fax | facsimileTelephoneNumber | Fax | FacsimileTelephoneNumber | Fax | Fax |
| IP Phone | ipPhone | – | – | – | IPPhone |
| Home | homePhone | – | – | HomePhone | HomePhone |
| {otherMobile} | {AlternateMobilePhones} | – | – | – | |
| {otherIpPhone} | – | – | – | – | |
| {otherHomePhone} | – | – | {OtherHomePhone} | – | |
| {otherFacsimileTelphoneNumber} | – | – | {OtherFax} | – | |
| {otherPager} | – | – | – | – | |
| {otherTelephone} | – | – | {OtherTelephone} | {OtherTelephone} | |
It’s important to note that values displayed in braces { } are multivalued attributes, so if there’s something stored in one on-premises that you need or want to map to a a different attribute in Azure AD, you’ll need to either map it to another multivalued attribute or extract the value so you can write it to a single-valued string attribute. … [ Continue reading ]
At long last! I’m super stoked to announce that I just approved the cover artwork for my upcoming MS-301 certification prep book. It’s all done but the crying!
Speaking of crying, there is a bit of sadness–we (somewhat unexpectedly, to me) announced the retirement of the MS-301 exam last month. … [ Continue reading ]
This past week, I’ve been heads down working on an application to take inbound data from one application that doesn’t have a webhook or API available and query a Dynamics 365 instance.
In order to query Dynamics 365 (or any Azure/Microsoft 365 service, to be honest) successfully, you’ll need to work with OAuth. … [ Continue reading ]
Yesterday, I needed to help configure a SharePoint Server 2019 User Profile service to import from local Active Directory using the native SharePoint Active Directory Import.
In order to perform Active Directory Import, the service account you specify must have Replicating Directory Changes permissions.… [ Continue reading ]
Yesterday, a peer brought an interesting problem to me:
His customer had been storing data in the on-premises msExchExtensionCustomAttribute properties for users and wanted to be able to use that data in Exchange Online for filtering and dynamic group membership.… [ Continue reading ]