Entra Cloud Sync
Migrating from file shares to OneDrive and SharePoint can seem like a daunting task, but with proper planning and communication, your project can be a resounding success for both the migration team and business users. The key is to concentrate on three core pillars: cleanup, organization and migration.
In this week's show, myself and Paul meet up at South Coast Summit - a one-day conference in the UK. For the second time in around a month Paul's over in the UK and in this show we walk and talk on a surprisingly sunny October morning, discussing some of the key things we've learnt from the conference, and the benefits of a large independent conference that covers more than just Microsoft 365.
Many people use the PowerShell Send-MailMessage cmdlet to send email from Exchange Online. In this article, we explain how to use cmdlets from the Microsoft Graph SDK for PowerShell to do the same job. The reason why this is important is that Microsoft will eventually deprecate the Send-MailMessage cmdlet as part of its campaign to eliminate basic authentication from Exchange Online. A replacement will be needed for all those PowerShell scripts which uses Send-MailMessage. This is one solution.
After figuring out how to convert a script from using Azure AD licensing cmdlets (due to stop working in June 2022), we move on to create a licensing report for a tenant using cmdlets from the Microsoft Graph SDK for PowerShell. The code is pretty straightforward, but you need to do some up-front work to extract and prepare some input files containing product and service plan codes. Given that Microsoft is increasing its license fees, it's a good time to report this information...
An interesting and worthwhile interview (available on YouTube) with security researcher Amit Serper reveals a lot more detail about the Autodiscover credential leak reported by Guardicore last month. The interview (with three Office 365 MVPs) goes through the collection of leaked credentials, how Serper tried to reproduce the problem, and his interaction with Microsoft. It’s a real pity Serper didn’t include the information in his original report as it would have taken a lot of heat out of the situation.
The Microsoft 365 Community is introducing a public preview of a new project called “Microsoft 365 PnP Transformation Framework.” The goal of this new project is to help customers and partners to transform existing portals into Microsoft SharePoint Online modern portals.
Microsoft plans to remove the management of Exchange transport-rule based policies from the classic EAC in mid-2022. Given that Microsoft 365 DLP policies offer the same if not better functionality for Exchange Online and can process other workloads as well, it's a good time to consider transitioning away from the older technology. Microsoft is obviously not putting any engineering effort into Exchange-based DLP, so there's no good reason not to move over and use the technology they are investing in, The transition will take time and effort, but it will be worth it.
With the pace of Office 365 adoption globally, many administrators will inevitably find themselves in a position where they need to manage more than one tenant simultaneously. When managing at scale, PowerShell allows authentication to multiple tenants using different PowerShell instances. Profiles and containers are a great way to operate across multiple tenants and accounts without going through cumbersome sign-out processes and closing browsers.
On the show this week, I'm joined by new Microsoft MVP and Practical 365 writer, Mike Weaver as co-host since Paul Robichaux is away this week, and of course Mike does a sterling job providing perspective on the week's news alongside myself. Later in the episode though, Paul dropped in for our chat with Microsoft's Greg Taylor - who is back on the technical side of Microsoft Exchange Online working on solving one of today's most important issues - getting rid of Basic Authentication.
Along with the general availability of a new Graph Export API for Teams, Microsoft is introducing new licensing and charging models. Understanding the charging incurred for different uses will take some time to sort out and could pose real challenges for ISVs working in the migration space. Developers need to understand terms like model A and model B, seeded capacity, and consumption units and how these apply to their apps. The question now is if this is a test bed for Microsoft to apply similar charges to other APIs.
If you've migrated to Exchange Online, make sure you stop publishing your Exchange Servers to the internet. After a standard Hybrid migration, you still might be reliant on Exchange Server and in this article you can find out why and how to move remaining web services to Microsoft 365.
This article examines the different components of Defender for Office 365, and how you can customize the configuration beyond the baselines to enhance the relevance and impact the policies have on your tenant. The most important aspects to review when modifying the configuration from baselines and the reasons to consider each configuration option are highlighted, but they don’t take you all the way. The items listed here are a subset of what’s available, but when combined with the baselines will help you to bring your Defender implementation to the next level.
