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 ]
Creating and Managing Security and Compliance Filters in the Real World [Part 2]
Picking up where I left off on part 1 of this post, I wanted go into what it would take to refine some roles for managing eDiscovery for larger organizations.
In this scenario, we’re going to:
- Remove users from any existing eDiscovery roles or groups
- Create a security group to hold users that will perform eDiscovery searches
- Create a custom role group that has the appropriate eDiscovery roles and add the security group as a member
- Verify
If you didn’t read the previous blog post on this topic, I’d encourage you to go back and do so, since I’m going to continue using the same users and compliance filters.… [ Continue reading ]
Creating and Managing Security and Compliance Filters in the Real World [Part 1]
Diving deeper into the Security & Compliance Center, I decided to embark on trying to scope eDiscovery permissions to meet a certain set of requirements that we see when multiple business units want or need to maintain independence from a content search and discovery perspective.… [ Continue reading ]
Office 365 Administration Inside Out
Hey! It’s finally here! After months of hard work (almost a year from when we started until a copy at my doorstep), we’ve finally made it to the finish line! Also, pay no mind to my poor cuticles!

You can read the press release here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/microsoft_press/2017/11/27/new-book-microsoft-office-365-administration-inside-out-includes-current-book-service-2nd-edition… [ Continue reading ]
Block direct delivery to @onmicrosoft.com addresses in a hybrid environment
UPDATE: [11/20/2018] I had an error in the transport rule configuration in the last example, as well as a note that a TR would NDR external traffic. I have this post accordingly.
We’re all familiar with how Office 365 tenants work–when you spin up a new Office 365 tenant, you get a managed domain (tenant.onmicrosoft.com). … [ Continue reading ]
Office 365 Administration Inside Out
I meant to post this earlier, but I wanted to let everyone know that I’ve had the great honor of being able to write a book with some of the titans of Microsoft Consulting Services.  The book has all new content for Office 365 based on our experience in the field, and even features current service release updates. … [ Continue reading ]
Finding Duplicate Objects in Active Directory
For those of you that have embarked upon the trek to Office 365, you’ve undoubtedly run (or at least heard of) IDFix. It detects and fixes a number of conditions that will cause the directory sync to report errors.
Today, I want to focus on a tool I wrote for a customer almost 2 years ago that addresses conditions not yet identified or remedied by IDFix. … [ Continue reading ]
Quick and Dirty Array Subtraction – Otherwise known as “Just say NO to VLOOKUP”
Today, I had to subtract one list of users from another list of users. Some Excel wizards can do this with VLOOKUP, but I spend more time in trial-and-error with VLOOKUP and verifying my results that it would take to just do a CTRL-F for every object. … [ 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 ]
Subscribe to the Office 365 URLs and IP Addresses RSS Feed in Outlook
From time to time, we update the URLs and IP addresses that our services use. This happens as a normal course of business (deploying new services, adding new capacity in datacenters or regions). If your organization is trying to filter network traffic, you need to make sure you are allowing your users to these services. … [ Continue reading ]
Subscribe to the Office 365 Service Health Dashboard RSS Feed in Outlook
*UPDATE* We have deprecated the Service Health Dashboard RSS Feed. For service health updates, you can go to https://portal.office.com/adminportal/home#/servicestatus.
Periodically, services in Office 365 may become affected by a number of things (network availability, regional network disruptions, upgrades to the service environment, etc).… [ Continue reading ]
The personal importance of blogging
Over the years, I’ve come to develop a lot of solutions (processes, scripts, workflows, and other tooling) to help customers get the most out of their investments and solve business problems.
One of the most important habits I’ve developed is making sure that I write everything down, since many customers will have similar types of issues or requirements. … [ Continue reading ]
What is WinRM?
What is WinRM?
WinRM, for those of you not in the know, is really the Microsoft answer to an age-old problem in the Windows world–remote command and task execution. It’s the Windows equivalent of the Unix rsh, a native implementation of the PsExec (albeit, with the added complexity that seeps into nearly all Microsoft technologies). … [ Continue reading ]
Handy Office 365 PowerShell One-Liners
Here are some handy one-liners that you may find useful when managing Office 365.
Ok, some of them are a few lines, but they’re still handy.
… [ Continue reading ]Error uninstalling Exchange Server 2003: One or more users currently use a mailbox store on this server.
So, you’re transitioning your Exchange 2003 environment to an Office 365 environment and desperately want to drop kick your Exchange 2003 server out the door. After migrating everyone’s email, you open ESM, delete all of the mailboxes and start to uninstall Exchange. … [ Continue reading ]
