Author: Tony Redmond

Latest Articles

Practical Graph: How to Use Graph Schema Extensions

Sometimes Microsoft 365 tenants need to store specific data for objects like users and groups. The Graph provides several extensibility options. This article describes how to define and use schema extensions to store information about the container management labels assigned to Microsoft 365 Groups.

October 28, 2024

Practical Compliance: Using Purge Actions to Remove Mailbox Items

Compliance search purge actions are Microsoft's search and purge tool. Today, a purge action is limited to removing 10 items per mailbox. Microsoft is increasing the limit to 100 as part of its eDiscovery modernization project. This article reviews the state of the art for using PowerShell to purge mailbox items and contemplates how purges might work after modernization finishes.

October 21, 2024

Practical SharePoint: Intelligent Versioning Rolling Out

The deployment of intelligent versioning to SharePoint Online worldwide is proceeding. Intelligent versioning is all about reducing the amount of storage quota consumed by file edits. It's a great idea, but it has one downside for many Microsoft 365 tenants: retention policies and labels stop SharePoint removing unwanted versions. Read more here, including a script to interpret Microsoft file version data.

October 16, 2024

Practical Compliance: Microsoft Revamps Purview eDiscovery

Microsoft is giving Purview eDiscovery a make-over to introduce a modernized UI and to simplify the solution into standard and premium variants. Content searches are going away, but the same functionality is available as a standard case. It's time to prepare the folks who work on compliance and run eDiscovery investigations for the changes coming at the end of 2024/2025.

October 10, 2024

Practical Graph: Reporting Which OneDrive for Business Files are Shared and With Whom

Oversharing of information is a major concern in the AI era. This article describes how to write a script to report file sharing for OneDrive for Business accounts. The report details the files shared, the type of sharing link and access, and who can access the files. It's an example of using the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK to understand what's happening in a tenant.

October 7, 2024

A New Version of the Room Mailbox Statistics Script

The room mailbox statistics script has proven to be a popular script downloaded and used by many to analyze the usage patterns of room mailboxes. Recently, a reader pointed out that the Graph API request to fetch workspaces didn't work. Microsoft has changed the Places resource and the request now needed to run against the beta endpoint. All of which brought me to rewrite the script using the Graph SDK.

October 1, 2024

Agents are the Most Interesting Initiative in Copilot Wave 2

Microsoft's big launch of Copilot Wave 2 featured many new capabilities, like a super-duper focused Inbox for Outlook (one that works this time), Python in Excel, and a profusion of agents for SharePoint Online. The idea behind agents is pretty good and should be valuable, even if IT might have some dark thoughts about how agents might allow people to access information that they shouldn't (this won't happen).

September 19, 2024

Microsoft’s Simple Message: Prepare to Move to Exchange Server Subscription Edition

Microsoft plans a transition of the current Exchange Server licensing and support model to Exchange Server subscription edition (SE) starting in 2025. Organizations must prepare for the transition by upgrading servers to the latest cumulative updates of Exchange 2016 and Exchange 2019. The transition is unlikely to be seamless, but glitches can be avoided by good planning and careful monitoring of community discussions.

September 13, 2024