A few weeks ago, I saw something come up for a peer that needed a way to manage the maximum number of ActiveSync devices that a user had connected in Office 365. Using only native Exchange policies, we can’t do that (MDM solutions solve this problem by manning the Exchange ActiveSync quarantine). … [ Continue reading ]
Sign an exported certificate from an F5
I’ve run into this delightful scenario a few times–the network team generates CSRs and certificates for the environment, and since they want to do SSL termination on their network devices, complete the certificate process there. When you ask for an export of the certificate from, say, an F5, they will just give you the unsigned certificate–so that when you import it into your server, you end up with something unusable, since it has no private key.… [ Continue reading ]
Deploying the Office 365 Proxy PAC to manage your users
Several months ago, I released a tool (the Office 365 Proxy Pac Gen) to generate a Proxy Automatic Configuration file that can be used to bypass local proxy servers for Office 365 services. I also wrote a blog (Office 365 PAC file) on using the tool.… [ Continue reading ]
Using XML to Backup and Restore Office 365 Settings
Frequently, I am asked to make changes to a customer's environment. I'm a belt and suspenders kind of guy, so my backups have backups. At any rate, normally when I am performing changes in a tenant (or Exchange on-premises environment, for that matter), I make two sets of backups–one by piping a Get-cmdlet to Export-CSV (so I have a readable copy), and one by piping the same Get-cmdlet to Export-Clixml (so I have a way to set the nodes as parameters and import them back).… [ Continue reading ]
Customizing the Windows PowerShell Console
Another blog on customizing the PowerShell console? Really?
Yes. This is actually what I use on a day-to-day basis as a consultant managing many projects at once. I find that I’m usually running various PowerShell sessions concurrently and having to keep which one is which can be difficult without having to stop and check which server or Office 365 tenant I’m connect to, or what type of activity I’m performing.… [ Continue reading ]
Extending Active Directory Users and Computers with Custom Attributes
If you’ve ever wanted to add columns for unlisted attributes to Active Directory Users and Computers, you’ve been out of luck without editing the displaySpecifiers manually.
Until I had enough of it.
How does it work? I’m so glad you asked. … [ Continue reading ]
Disconnect all PSTs from the Default Outlook Profile
Today, one of my consultant peers posed a problem to me: a customer wanted to import all PSTs into Office 365 archives, but in order to do that, had to disconnect them from the user’s default Outlook profile.
Fortunately, you can expose a number of methods and properties from the Outlook ComObject inside PowerShell, so this wasn’t terribly difficult (although, I’m still trying to figure out how to do this against all Outlook profiles configured).… [ Continue reading ]
Finding Active Directory objects with Inheritance Disabled
From time to time, an issue that crops up during Exchange or Office 365 migrations is the dreaded “insufficient access rights:”
It’s commonly manifested like this (though I have seen it displayed other ways as well):
… [ Continue reading ]Warning: Unable to update Active Directory information for the source mailbox at the end of the move.
Removing a folder across OneDrive for Business sites
This tool has been deprecated and replaced with the OneDrive for Business Admin Tool: http://aka.ms/OneDriveAdmin.
On a customer call a few weeks ago, I was asked if we could remove a specific folder across all (or a subset of) their OneDrive for Business sites. … [ Continue reading ]
Office 365 PAC File
When we talk about Office 365 services with our customers, a lot of the discussion revolves around the networking components. While we generally have a “good idea” of networking, we’re not experts in your technology and will frequently tell you to go talk to your vendors. … [ Continue reading ]
Exchange 2013 Management Server for Office 365
For most of our large enterprise, commercial, and government customers, an Exchange hybrid environment provides a validated and supported method for deploying, migrating, and managing both an on-premises Exchange organization as well as Office 365.
In some cases, though (such as migrating from a hosted platform or other 3rd-party products that don’t have Active Directory integration), you may not need everything hybrid provides or may not have a need to support the infrastructure migrating mailboxes cross-premises. … [ Continue reading ]
Add an Email Address Template to all Email Address Policies
So your company just bought another company. Or you’re moving to Exchange Online. Or you registered a new domain. Any reason, really, that you could want an email address template added to all of your Email Address Policies.
Not so bad if you have one or two policies But what if you have 10? … [ Continue reading ]
Bulk Upload Photos to Exchange Online
Ever since the advent of DirSync, you’ve been able to add a picture’s binary content to the thumbnailPhoto attribute in AD and synchronize it to Office 365. This blob would be rendered as a photo next to the user’s name in Outlook, OWA, and Lync. … [ Continue reading ]
Configure Coexistence Mail Routing without a Secondary Routing Domain
Recently, I had to work with a customer whose existing mail host was (surprise) not excited to configure a secondary domain for us to help migrate out of the hosted environment.
To give a little background, when we configure a traditional hybrid environment (I love using those terms together), we are configuring two disparate environments to share a single address space. … [ Continue reading ]
Manually configure Outlook for Office 365
In case you ever need to configure Outlook for an Office 365 tenant that *does not* have AutoDiscover records published, here is how to do it.
1. Log into PowerShell for tenant and run the following command:
Get-Recipient | Select-Object Identity,Mail,ExchangeGuid | Export-Csv .\recipientlist.csv… [ Continue reading ]