Tracker Approval Process
The complexities of Office 365 tenants only increases the complexities of creating an Office 365 migration plan. To generate an initial assessment for a tenant, I created a PowerShell script to report the most important information that influences migration planning.
Microsoft has released security updates for Exchange 2013, 2016, and 2019. The updates address some known elevation of permission vulnerabilities. Microsoft says that there's no evidence that attackers have exploited the vulnerabilities "in the wild," but that's no reason to avoid installing the security updates as soon as possible.
On the latest update, it's a sunny day in our part of the world and we're enjoying the better weather by basking in the delights of Microsoft Research's New Future of Work report. We look at the detail - and think about what might be missing, and how to take action based on their findings. Other highlights this week: Office update changes might be on the way - we discuss whether that's good or bad; Teams gets new integrations for live events, and Calendly might have a new competitor on the block from Outlook, too.
IOT isn't just a buzzword, applied to the right problems. Combined with Microsoft Teams and the Power Platform, an IOT deployment can use information from the real-world to automate business processes and take the human factor out of tasks that are costly when people forget about them. In our guide and video series, find out what IOT devices can be deployed with Azure and Microsoft 365 easily, and how to leverage the information they provide with the Power Platform with real-world business process automation examples.
Organizations have lots of choice in terms of the licenses they buy to use Office 365 and Microsoft 365 functionality. If you're interested in compliance and data governance, maybe the Office 365 E5 plan delivers the best combination of functionality and price. Let's see what the numbers say.
Season 3 of the podcast discusses the biggest news for Exchange Hybrid organizations - as well as the changes from Azure Purview to Microsoft Purview - timely changes coming to the world of Microsoft 365 compliance.
Running an Exchange hybrid server in Azure is easy; the challenge is cost - the savior is automation. This article covers how to automate your Exchange Hybrid server in Azure and significantly reduce the cost of running your hybrid server in Azure with basic start/stop solutions, progressing to maintenance scripts to ensure the server is kept up to date regularly. It also explores how the maintenance scripts can be expanded to cover scheduled reporting or other tasks.
PowerShell uses a concept called pipelining to combine two or more cmdlets to perform a cohesive task. The PowerShell pipeline combines singularly useful cmdlets together to process data. Used intelligently, the pipeline is a great way to process data through a series of steps to automate common administrative operations. Mastering the pipeline, or at least becoming comfortable with pipelining cmdlets, is an essential skill for anyone using PowerShell to manage Microsoft 365 tenants.
Can you remove the last Exchange Server? Perhaps - but not without a few caveats. Read our take on this new capability and what it offers.
Microsoft released Exchange Server 2019 CU12 and Exchange Server 2016 CU23 on April 20. They also made some important announcements, including a new half-yearly servicing cadence for Exchange 2019, availability of free Exchange 2019 keys for hybrid servers, support for Windows Server 2022, and the beginning of the ability to remove the last on-premises Exchange server.
When Microsoft released cross-tenant access settings into preview, the natural focus was on how this capability enabled external access to Teams shared channels. However, the story is deeper because cross-tenant access settings are also available for Azure AD B2B Collaboration (aka guest user access). A different blocking mechanism is used and it delivers better results, once you're used to the new method.
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.
