So, today, I received an email from one of my esteemed colleagues asking how we could get B2B Azure AD tenant guests to show up in the Office 365 GAL. I thought, “Yeah, that should be something that’s possible. I mean, they have email addresses.”… [ Continue reading ]
Update: AAD Connect Network and Name Resolution Test
Update: This tool has a new shortlink: http://aka.ms/aadnetwork
Since the tool passed the 500 download mark a few weeks ago, I’ve started getting more questions (internal and external) about a few of the tests and checks. So, I decided to update/refine them to hopefully provide better guidance.… [ Continue reading ]
Update to the Create-LabUsers tool – now, with bigger foo
Update: I’ve added a shortlink for this tool: http://aka.ms/createlabusers.
In my quest to make the perfect tool for creating a realistic Lab Environment, I have added yet another feature, based on requests that I imagine people are making but have not yet told me about. … [ Continue reading ]
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.
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 ]
Connecting Splunk to Office 365 – Part 1: Add-On for Microsoft Cloud Services
I’ve had a number of customers ask me about configuring their monitoring systems to Office 365. So, rather than repeating the same information and re-issuing the same links (most of which contain outdated information), I’m going to put together a series on how to connect a few systems to Office 365. … [ Continue reading ]
Create realistic lab users
Update: I’ve added a shortlink for this tool: http://aka.ms/createlabusers.
In testing out some of my other tools over the last few weeks, I’ve found it necessary to create a some test users. A lot of test users. Not a normal “a lot,” either. … [ Continue reading ]
Update to the “Migrate EOP Settings” Tool
A little over a year and a half ago, I started working on a tool for a really large Office 365 / BPOS-Dedicated migration to Office 365 Government Community Cloud. As part of that migration, I wrote this tool: Migrating EOP Settings Between Tenants. … [ Continue reading ]
Configuring Skype for Business to prompt for audio device
This evening, I found myself needing to configure Skype for Business clients to prompt the user for the audio device when joining. The registry key to control this behavior, AllowOverridingDeviceAtJoinTime, has existed for quite some time:

For Communicator, the setting was located at HKCU:\Software\Microsoft\Communicator. … [ Continue reading ]
Updated Tool Roundup!
Over the last couple of days, I’ve updated a few tools that I have published on the gallery. Here’s the run-down:
AAD Connect Network and Name Resolution Test
I’ve been busy with this tool a lot lately, both adding tests and tweaking the way things are done. … [ Continue reading ]
Update to the AAD Connect Advanced Permissions Tool
A few users reported bugs with logging that I have updated. There was also an unreported bug when searching the XML generated by Get-ADSyncServerConfiguration for the connector’s AD user, which I have also resolved.
You can get the updated tool at https://aka.ms/aadpermissions… [ 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 ]
Update to the AAD Connect Network and Name Resolution Test Tool
A few months ago, I debuted a new tool for AAD Connect deployment (read about it here: AAD Connect Network and Name Resolution Test or download it here: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Azure-AD-Connect-Network-150c20a3) which allows you to test a number of conditions to make sure your server and environment are suitable for deploying AAD Connect.… [ 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 ]
