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.
Exchange Online keeps message trace data online for 10 days. If you want an email traffic report covering longer periods, you need to retrieve historical message data (for up to 90 days) and report that data. That's the easy description. This article explains some of the complexities involved in generating a 90-day email traffic report for a Microsoft 365 tenant.
Room mailboxes are a well-known part of Exchange Online. With a little planning, it's easy to add automated bookings for room mailboxes. In this example, we create a room mailbox and configure it to allow salespeople to book customer meetings during a conference.
As is the norm for any Microsoft conference, the Microsoft Ignite 2023 announcements came thick and fast. Most of the announcements featured a heavy emphasis on some form of Copilot. Quite how useful all this AI-powered assistance will be in real life remains to be seen. Here's the Practical365 take on the important Microsoft 365 announcements at Ignite.
Directory extensions allow organizations to customize the data stored for Entra ID objects such as users, groups, and devices, You need to create and manage directory extensions with PowerShell. This article explains how to do the job with cmdlets from the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK.
A Teams external access whitelist controls the domains that users can connect to for federated chats. Organizations often limit federation using a whitelist to reduce the possibility of attacks through chat communications. This article explains how administrators can discover the set of domains users chat with by analyzing chat information using the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK.
