Author: Tony Redmond

Latest Articles

Microsoft Forces Move from Azure AD Cmdlets for License Management 9 Comments

Microsoft Forces Move from Azure AD Cmdlets for License Management

On June 30, 2022, Azure AD and Microsoft Online Services cmdlets will stop working for license management. The result is that you need to upgrade PowerShell scripts which use these cmdlets. The choice is to use Graph API calls or cmdlets from the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK. In this article, we explore the steps necessary to upgrade a script to remove service plans from an Office 365 license (SKU).

September 9, 2021
Why Microsoft’s Workload-Agnostic Retention Strategy Sometimes Comes Up Short for Email 7 Comments

Why Microsoft’s Workload-Agnostic Retention Strategy Sometimes Comes Up Short for Email

Microsoft would like Office 365 tenants to use Microsoft 365 retention policies instead of Exchange Online mailbox retention policies. Their stance is reasonable because Microsoft's engineering effort is focused on workload-agnostic retention across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. However, mailbox retention policies continue to offer some advantages that aren't available in the Microsoft 365 equivalent. And they're cheaper too because they don't need Office 365 E3 or E5 licenses.

September 7, 2021
Teams Advanced Communications Add-on (Version 2) Ready to Go 4 Comments

Teams Advanced Communications Add-on (Version 2) Ready to Go

After a false start in 2020, Microsoft is coming back with version 2 of the Teams Advanced Communications add-on. The documentation lists four new capabilities. You'll have to make your mind up whether these features are worth whatever Microsoft asks for in terms of add-on pricing. We probably won't have that information until the preview phase of the features terminates at the end of 2021. I can't wait!

August 26, 2021
Unpatched Exchange Servers Remain at Risk
Exchange hybrid migrations

Unpatched Exchange Servers Remain at Risk

It's incredible, but reports still come in to prove that thousands of unpatched Exchange on-premises servers remain connected to the internet. New reports indicate that servers continue to be attacked and that thousands of vulnerable servers remain available as hacking targets. It's time to either get patched or move to the cloud.

August 21, 2021
Microsoft to Increase Prices for Office 365 and Microsoft 365 in March 2022 7 Comments

Microsoft to Increase Prices for Office 365 and Microsoft 365 in March 2022

After a decade of no price increases for Office 365 licenses, Microsoft plans to introduce new pricing effective March 1, 2022. The uplifts range from $3 to $4 extra per user per month. This doesn't sound much, but an extra $36 per user per year for Office 365 E3 quickly mounts up. And when you look at the overall installed base, some eyewatering numbers are involved. While we might complain about increases, I still think Office 365 and Microsoft 365 are reasonable value.

August 19, 2021
Teams Consumer Gets a New Boss Just in Time to Deliver Windows 11 Client

Teams Consumer Gets a New Boss Just in Time to Deliver Windows 11 Client

Microsoft has hired a new boss to lead development of Teams consumer. This is the version bundled in Windows 11 based on a new client architecture. But as we explain here, while Microsoft will ship a nice new consumer Teams client in Windows 11, there's a bunch of work to be done to ship an enterprise Teams client built on the new architecture. Don't expect this client to appear when Windows 11 ships.

August 19, 2021
How to Control Sending Email to Teams Channels 46 Comments

How to Control Sending Email to Teams Channels

If allowed by your organization, you can send email to a Teams channel. Teams uses the email to start a new conversation and this is a great way to get a debate going about something which first appears in email. Managing the Teams email integration features isn't hard. You can define domains to accept email from and enable or disable the feature. After that, it's up to team members to use the capability. Hopefully, they'll resist the temptation to remove email addresses from channels, which is something which should be limited to team owners.

August 18, 2021
Microsoft 365 Support for IE11 Stops Today 2 Comments

Microsoft 365 Support for IE11 Stops Today

From August 17, 2021, Microsoft 365 apps no longer support IE11 (the Teams browser client dropped support last year). IE11 fans need to move to a new browser. Microsoft would prefer if you choose the Edge browser, but anything but IE11 should do a better job in the future.

August 17, 2021
Exchange Online to Enable Plus Addressing Everywhere in January 2022 14 Comments

Exchange Online to Enable Plus Addressing Everywhere in January 2022

Microsoft has announced their intention to enable plus addressing across Exchange Online in January 2022. Plus addressing is a good capability, but it might cause some problems for tenants with mail-enabled recipients that have plus addresses in their set of proxy email addresses. Fortunately, we've written some PowerShell code to report those pesky addresses and to remove them if you want to do a big clean up before Microsoft makes the big switch in five months' time.

August 16, 2021
New Expiring Access Policy to Control Guest Access to SharePoint Online Sites 19 Comments

New Expiring Access Policy to Control Guest Access to SharePoint Online Sites

Microsoft has introduced a new feature to control how long guests have access to content shared with them in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. You can configure a tenant-wide policy and then tune the policy for specific sites. The new control does not affect guest access gained through membership of Microsoft 365 Groups. Here's what you need to know about SharePoint Online's guest expiration policy

August 11, 2021
Attend TEC 2021 and Learn from the Very Best

Attend TEC 2021 and Learn from the Very Best

TEC 2021, The Experts Conference, takes place as a virtual event on September 1-2. In this article, Tony selects his favorite sessions from the event agenda. This isn't to say that the other sessions are no good. Everyone's got their own favorite topics and there are many other TEC 2021 sessions covering other topics which will make others very happy.

August 4, 2021