Author: Tony Redmond

Latest Articles

Microsoft 365 License Management for User Accounts with the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK 61 Comments

Microsoft 365 License Management for User Accounts with the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK

MSOL and AzureAD license management cmdlets stop working at the end of March 2024. By then, Microsoft 365 will have switched to a new license management platform. The Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK includes cmdlets which can replace the older code, once you know how. The good news is that this article is packed full of practical examples of how to add, remove, and update licenses assigned to Entra ID user accounts.

April 13, 2022
How to Figure Out What Microsoft Graph Permissions You Need 32 Comments

How to Figure Out What Microsoft Graph Permissions You Need

The Microsoft Graph operates on a least permission model, which means that developers are forced to ask for permissions for the actions they wish to perform. This is a very different approach to the way traditional PowerShell modules work, so it's an area to focus on when converting scripts which use cmdlets from the Azure AD and MSOL modules to the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK. In this article, we look at four ways to find out what permissions are needed to perform different actions and explain how the Graph use the permissions.

April 12, 2022
How to Create and Use Azure AD Cross Tenant Access Policies 24 Comments

How to Create and Use Azure AD Cross Tenant Access Policies

Azure AD cross-tenant access settings or policies define how your tenant collaborates with other Microsoft 365 tenants. By default, collaboration using Azure B2B Direct Connect is disabled, so some work is needed to prepare for Teams shared channels. In this article, we look at how to set up cross-tenant policies to enable collaboration to begin using Teams shared channels.

April 7, 2022
Creating New Microsoft 365 Accounts with PowerShell 3 Comments

Creating New Microsoft 365 Accounts with PowerShell

It's common to find a requirement to create new Microsoft 365 accounts with PowerShell. We're at a point of transition when the old method of using the Azure AD module will switch to the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK or Graph API queries. In this article, we explain how to create new accounts and assign licenses with both the Azure AD module and the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK.

March 21, 2022
Many Successes and a Few Hiccups in the First Five Years of Microsoft Teams 4 Comments

Many Successes and a Few Hiccups in the First Five Years of Microsoft Teams

In November 2016, Microsoft launched the preview version of a new application they called Teams. General availability duly came on March 14, 2017. Five years later, there's no denying the success of Teams and its influence across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Along with the success, Teams has had its glitches and failures, but the overall balance sheet is very positive.

March 14, 2022
Protecting Administrator Mailboxes from Phishing and Other Threats

Protecting Administrator Mailboxes from Phishing and Other Threats

One way to protect administrator mailboxes is not to use them. And if you want administrators to use separate mailboxes for their permissioned and non-permissioned activities, that's what you might do. However, we can be smarter and use transport rules to selectively block email sent to administrator mailboxes to dissuade internal people from sending email and blocking all but the most essential email coming in from external domains.

March 7, 2022
Diving into the Details of Microsoft Teams Shared Channels 72 Comments

Diving into the Details of Microsoft Teams Shared Channels

A year after announcing Teams shared channels, Microsoft is preparing to release the code into public preview in March 2022. The new collaboration mechanism uses Azure AD B2B Direct Connect instead of guest accounts, meaning that external members of shared channels use credentials issued by their home tenant to gain access. You'll need to configure a cross-tenant access policy to allow shared channels to work externally. Once that's done, the collaboration floodgates open.

February 23, 2022
Threat Explorer and Investigations: Useful Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Features 19 Comments

Threat Explorer and Investigations: Useful Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Features

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (plan 2) contains the Threat Explorer feature. It's a useful way to investigate problematic messages which arrive in a tenant. The automated investigations feature can highlight messages containing malware by assembling evidence about warning signs in the message or its contents, and administrators can then action the recommendations up to and including the removal of messages already delivered to user mailboxes. Automating investigations is a good thing, if you afford Defender for Office 365 Plan 2.

February 21, 2022