Author: Tony Redmond

Latest Articles

Reusing User Principal Names and Primary SMTP Addresses

Microsoft 365 user accounts have user principal names (for sign in) and primary SMTP addresses (to receive email). Is it a good idea to reuse user principal names or SMTP addresses that become available when an employee leaves the organization. It might seem like a good idea, but it's really not and should be avoided. We explain why here.

October 17, 2023

Teams 2.1 Client Hits General Availability

On October 5, 2023, Microsoft announced the general availability of the new Teams 2.1 client. Based on a new architecture and promising better performance and lower system resource usage, Teams 2.1 is available for Windows and macOS desktops and browsers. The signs are good as the client has been in public preview since March, but we'll only really know how successful the client is after several months of use.

October 5, 2023

Practical Graph: Use an Azure Automation Runbook to Remove Teams Chat Threads

A previous article explains how to delete Teams chats using an interactive Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK session. This article builds on that information and explains how to use an Azure Automation runbook to find and remove specified chat threads by scanning all user accounts. The results of the scan and any removed chat threads are emailed to a nominated address at the end of processing.

September 25, 2023

Practical Graph: Remove Teams Chat Threads with the Teams Delete Chat API

A beta version of a Graph API to delete Teams chat threads allows administrators to remove unwanted chats. This article reviews how the API requests work to delete, list, and undo deleted chat threads using cmdlets from the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK. The first step is to find chats to remove, so we wrote a script to report all the chat threads for the signed-in user.

September 18, 2023

Microsoft Changed the Way the Search-UnifiedAuditLog Cmdlet Works Without Telling Anyone

Microsoft has changed the way that the Search-UnifiedAuditLog cmdlet works without saying anything to Microsoft 365 customers. The results is that some scripts don't work and others won't return the expected results. This article explains what's happened and offers a workaround. Microsoft's actions are unexplainable, but it's the norm in this area where audit log changes happen without communication all the time.

September 5, 2023

Practical Graph: Bulk License Assignment

A reader asked how to use a CSV file for bulk license assignment with the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK. We didn't have one to hand, so we wrote a new script to illustrate the principles of how to process license assignments for a set of user accounts (which don't necessarily have to come from a CSV file). We even included some error handling!

September 4, 2023