Undocumented Features

April 18, 2023January 4, 2024

Using AuthoritativeNull to overwrite an msExchMailboxGuid

While working on a unique tenant-to-tenant migration, we were going to be synchronizing a significant number of identities that had already been hybrid moved to a tenant from an on-premises Exchange organization.

Since they had existing values in msExchMailboxGuid, there was a likelihood that they might not be synchronized as just user identities–even though they were set with the msExchRecipientDisplayType of 6 (RemoteMailUser) and msExchRecipientTypeDetails of 128 (MailUser). … [ Continue reading ]

April 10, 2023

Find a value in any property in AD

A few days ago, I was trying to find all instances of a value stored in AD. I was trying to understand all of the places that a particular partial GUID value was being used. so I had to come up with a way to search all properties for all objects across the directory space.… [ Continue reading ]

March 28, 2023

“Get-Credential” fails with “Cannot process command because of one or more missing mandatory parameters: Credential.”

This morning, I was working with a new build of Windows 11 (22H2) and came across this frustrating error:

After running the Get-Credential cmdlet, the console is immediately returned to me with an error that I didn’t specify the -Credential parameter.… [ Continue reading ]

March 1, 2023

Microsoft 365 Administration: Inside Out is here!

Finally landed!

Got my author copies of Microsoft 365 Administration: Inside Out delivered. I’m super excited. Some folks who pre-ordered theirs have already received them as well.

I want to thank my great co-authors, Darryl Kegg (https://www.identitydude.com) and Ed Fisher.… [ Continue reading ]

February 17, 2023

Update to the Azure AD Connect Communications Test

It’s been a busy day heading into the weekend, for sure!

I’ve refreshed the Azure AD Connect Communications Test tool (and sad that I gave it such a pigeonholed name). It’s got new endpoints for GCCH and I’ve cleaned up some deprecated package management tool downloads in it.… [ Continue reading ]

February 17, 2023March 1, 2023

Disabling cloud accounts for on-premises service accounts that need a mailbox

So today, one of my former peers posed an interesting question to me:

Suppose I have customer that a bunch of service accounts that have on-premises mailboxes and need the object to show up in the cloud GAL, but the security organization maintains that those accounts must not be allowed to log into Azure AD. … [ Continue reading ]

February 13, 2023February 17, 2023

Locating accounts in Active Directory that are expired but still active

While working with a customer over the past few weeks implementing a new AAD Connect synchronization rule to disable expired accounts, we wanted to evaluate how many accounts might be selected by such a rule.

Checking hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of accounts by hand doesn’t rank high on anyone’s list–fortunately, that’s what PowerShell was made for.… [ Continue reading ]

January 25, 2023April 26, 2023

Working around accounts that expire with AAD Connect

When attempting to migrate a Microsoft 365 organization from federated authentication to Password Hash Sync, there are a couple of gotchas that can impact how you manage certain accounts. These changes in authentication behavior determine whether you need to implement new workflows or business processes–changes surrounding expired accounts and accounts flagged to force password change on next logon.… [ Continue reading ]

January 5, 2023March 21, 2023

Expanding the capabilities of your Ergatta Rower

Two years ago, I decided to pick up a Water Rower. After using it semi-regularly, I decided the thing I needed was some sort of gamification mechanism (as well as a better way of tracking stats, since the S3/S4 monitor that comes with rowing machines is literally one of the least intuitive pieces of consumer technology.… [ Continue reading ]

December 22, 2022August 29, 2023

Will ChatGPT become my robot overlord?

Over the month or so (which, in internet terms, is a lifetime), lots of folks have been interacting with OpenAI’s ChatGPT (https://chat.openai.com/). It’s prompted a number of responses from awe (“this is so cool!”) to workplace terror (“AI-generated code will replace real developers!”).… [ Continue reading ]

November 14, 2022March 13, 2023

Using SUMIFS() to track completion percentage

It’s that time of year again–where I’m using some downtime to churn out books like a madman.

Many of my projects are collaborative efforts, working with peers–and each of us specializing in a particular part of the content development.

We all know that Excel makes the world go round (arguably, it’s one of the most important pieces of business software to ever be created).… [ Continue reading ]

September 23, 2022September 23, 2022

Updating the RDP port for an Azure VM

This week, I found myself unable to log into an Azure-hosted VM due to a new managed firewall rule. The new rule was put in at priority 0 and it specifically blocks inbound 3389.

Now, with it blocked, I’m unable to log into the server to update it. … [ Continue reading ]

September 8, 2022January 19, 2024

Resetting a Surface Device from media when your device is toast

Sometimes, our instructions are lacking. Today, I needed to recover my Surface Book 2 device. I thought, easy—I’ll just use the Reset PC option inside the Control Panel.

After the initial reset (using the delete my files option), Windows Explorer wouldn’t launch.… [ Continue reading ]

August 22, 2022August 22, 2022

Workflow Automation with Microsoft Power Automate – Second Edition!

Hola!

I’m super excited to announce that the second edition of Workflow Automation with Microsoft Power Automate has been released! It’s available immediately.

This book features a ton of updates (product, connector, action and parameter names). We’ve changed the way some features work, so I wanted to capture those changes (the old ways still work, but it’s best to be up-to-date).… [ Continue reading ]