Update to Create-LabUsers tool

Update: I’ve added a shortlink for this tool: http://aka.ms/createlabusers.

Because you didn’t ask for it, I went ahead and added to it.

Well, that’s a lie.  I actually had some really great ideas and feedback, so I’ve added a few new features that I wanted to draw attention to:

  • Detect existing Exchange session – If you cancel the script to create mailboxes while it’s running, you previously needed to run a Remove-PSSession to close the open Exchange session. 
[ Continue reading ]

ATP: Safe Attachments, Safe Links, and Anti-Phishing Policies or “All the policies you can shake a stick at”


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 ]

Connecting Splunk to Office 365 – Part 2: Microsoft Office 365 Reporting Add-On for Splunk

In Part 1 of this blog series, I went through the setup of the Splunk Add-On for Microsoft Cloud Services, which you can use to extract, query, and analyze data provided by the Office 365 Management Activity API.  In this particular post, we’re going to explore the Microsoft Office 365 Reporting Add-On for Splunk, which you can use to review message trace data from Office 365.… [ Continue reading ]

Change from AD FS authentication to Pass-Through Authentication with Seamless SSO

Update: We now have some public documentation available for this as well, so be sure to check there, too! https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/fundamentals/active-directory-deployment-plans

Imagine this scenario: You’ve been running Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) since before it was cool, and you’re tired of maintaining that highly available infrastructure (at least 4 servers) and the whole federation thing and its myriad of quirks and drawbacks and headaches (such as alt-id (which is still supported in Pass-through authentication with some caveats, listed below), claims rules, certificates, and the fun of trying to change UPN suffixes from one federated UPN to another).… [ Continue reading ]

Clearing Skype Cached data

Last year, I had a project that involved migrating a large customer from Office 365 Dedicated to Office 365 GCC (multi-tenant).  While Exchange hybrid moves were possible for the mailboxes, we were unable to perform the necessary hybrid migration configuration for Lync to migrate users. … [ Continue reading ]