Posts

Identity

Remove an unwanted ProxyAddress pattern from users via AADConnect

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I had an interesting request from a customer the other day where they were synchronizing Active Directory into two disparate environments–Office 365 and another hosted Exchange environment.  In their new Office 365 environment, they didn’t want any address proxies matching a particular pattern to be part of a user’s proxyAddress array–BUT–they also didn’t want to remove them from their on-premises accounts since they are being used by their other hosting environment as an application routing address.… [ Continue reading ]

Configuration

Office 365 License Assignment

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There is perpetually a lot of angst around licensing users for Office 365 workloads.  Most of my customers over the years have wanted to ease into deployment, only enabling certain services at a time.  Of course, as an evergreen service, we are always adding features, leading to new service plans to disable as you discover them.… [ Continue reading ]

Client

Remove a user’s oldest ActiveSync device

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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 ]

Configuration

Sign an exported certificate from an F5

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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 ]

Configuration

Using XML to Backup and Restore Office 365 Settings

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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 ]

Configuration

Customizing the Windows PowerShell Console

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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 ]

Scripting

Wipe Content from an Exchange Online Mailbox

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This tool has been updated with new options.  See https://www.undocumented-features.com/2017/10/19/update-to-wipe-exchange-online-mailbox-script/.

Periodically over the years, I’ve run into content problems trying to migrate data to Exchange Online using third-party migration tools–they somehow get stuck, don’t like something existing in the destination mailbox (or didn’t write it properly in the first place) and you need a clean mailbox to restart the process. … [ Continue reading ]

Configuration

Office 365 PAC File

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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 ]

Configuration

Exchange 2013 Management Server for Office 365

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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.  For that, I've created a tool to help accelerate configuring Exchange to set and manage attributes and enable-cmdlets (such as Enable-RemoteMailbox).… [ Continue reading ]

Configuration

Bulk Upload Photos to Exchange Online

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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 ]