The tenant block list controls traffic that Exchange Online blocks from different domains. The block list is an important tool but maintaining it can take a lot of time. This article discusses how to automate the process using a combination of SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK.
A January 19 report from the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) tells of an attack by Russian state actor Midnight Blizzard against Microsoft corporate systems. The attack resulted in the exfiltration of some email and documents from email accounts owned by senior Microsoft employees.
In a January 15 announcement, Microsoft says that they have removed the previous restrictions that applied to purchases of Copilot for Microsoft 365 licenses. Office 365 E3 and E5 tenants can now buy and deploy Copilot and the requirement to buy a minimum of 300 licenses is gone. Suddenly, 2024 has become much more interesting from an AI perspective for many Office 365 tenants.
People have used Outlook's Junk Email Options for years to maintain sets of safe and blocked recipients. The possibility exists that Outlook's safe list might interfere with the processing of email by Exchange Online Protection. This article explores the feasibility of disabling Junk Email Options to use tenant-level blocks instead.
Microsoft 365 subscriptions are what tenants buy to access functionality. The service plans in the subscriptions (product licenses) control what features are available. This article explains how to use PowerShell to generate a report about subscriptions and the service plans in each license.
Exchange Online recipient filters calculate the membership of dynamic distribution groups. The filters support email addresses, but they don't work. Another method is needed to create dynamic distribution lists based on user mailbox email addresses, as we describe in this article and script.
Cmdlets from the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK are available to manage conditional access policies. The challenge in using PowerShell rather than the Entra ID admin center GUI is how policy settings are structured. But practice (and some experimentation) makes perfect, as we discuss in this article.
Sometimes tenants need to switch Microsoft 365 licenses for Entra ID user accounts, usually to upgrade functionality. This is easy to do manually for one or two accounts, but it's a boring exercise when you need to process more, especially when each account might have a different set of disabled service plans in the original license. This article explains how to process account licenses with PowerShell.
This article is a review of Microsoft 365 in 2023 covering topics like Copilot, the new Teams client, security, the ban on old servers sending email to Exchange Online, and Microsoft's ongoing attempts to monetize the installed base with premium products and add-ons.
The Exchange Mailbox Folder Assistant (MFA) is responsible for processing retention policies against Exchange Server and Exchange Online mailboxes. In this article, we review details of how the MFA works and how administrators can gain an insight into what it does.
A common question at conferences is how to start with Microsoft 365 PowerShell scripting. We all have our own approach. This article lays out a simple three-step method to write scripts to interact with Microsoft 365 objects.
The Invoke-HoldRemovalAction cmdlet is available in the compliance module. Its role is to remove obsolete eDiscovery holds from Exchange Online mailboxes and SharePoint Online sites. Old, lingering holds can prevent the removal of objects, so it's good to get rid of them.
