Blog — MCSMLab

Posts in Office 365

Upcoming Features for Skype for Business Online

Generally, I write about Exchange and Office 365 topics, but recently I’ve been doing more work in the Skype for Business Online area. That is still Office 365, but it’s an area I haven't paid much attention to in the past. Until the release of the E5 license with Cloud PBX, I don’t think there was a reason to pay attention to Skype for Business Online. It was really only good for IM and presence, and there was nothing to configure or set up there.

With the recent release of the Cloud PBX features, I’ve been spending a lot more time thinking about Skype for Business Online, so I figured I would start writing about it, too. In this post, I’m going to look at some of the upcoming Cloud PBX features.

Office 365Nathan OBryanAugust 15, 2016Skype for Business, Office 365, New FeaturesComment

New Features in Outlook and Exchange Online

Microsoft has been busy releasing features for Exchange Online over the last couple of weeks, so I thought this would be a good time to talk about three new features: Focused Inbox, Outlook Mentions and Certificate Based Authentication.

What is Focused Inbox?

Focused Inbox is a feature that came from Microsoft acquisition of Acompli in December 2014. Focused Inbox has been a part of the iOS Outlook app since it was launched shortly after Acompli was brought into Microsoft.

Office 365Nathan OBryanAugust 1, 2016New Features, Focused Inbox, MentionsComment

Migrating Distribution Lists to Office 365 Groups

Office 365 Groups (that’s Groups with a capital “G”) are a newish feature of Office 365 that allow for collaboration across several different cloud applications. Office 365 Groups are the cloud only evolution of Site mailboxes, a technology introduced with Exchange and SharePoint 2013 that gave users a single place to access data stored on both Exchange and SharePoint.

Since those days, Office 365 Groups has grown to include significant functionality. The problem has been that, at least until recently, there was no native migration path to transform your on-premises distribution lists into Office 365 Groups other than manually recreating them. In this post, I’m going to walk you through the process of migrating on-premises distribution lists into Office 365 Groups.

Office 365Nathan OBryanJuly 18, 2016Groups, Distribution Lists, MigrationComment

Office 365 Security & Compliance Center – Part 2

Office 365 is a collection of online services that allow organizations to use Exchange, Skype for Business, and SharePoint in the cloud. In the nearly five years that Office 365 has been available most of the organizations using Office 365 have used it just like that; for Exchange or Skype for Business or SharePoint in the cloud. Some organizations are using more than one of those services, but for the most part they are still using them separately.

Office 365Nathan OBryanJune 8, 2016compliance, securityComment

Email Safety Tips in Exchange Online

Phishing attacks are ever more common for all email users. These attacks can be specifically targeted to organizations and individual users, allowing them to appear very convincing. Most phishing email are easy to spot, but even the savviest of us can be caught off guar, end up clicking on a dangerous link in an email message, then all the sudden a bunch of servers start getting encrypted and your whole weekend is ruined. In an attempt to help reduce this problem, Microsoft is currently rolling out email safety tips as part of Exchange Online Protection in Office 365.

Office 365Nathan OBryanJune 1, 2016EOP, spam, phishingComment

Auditing and Reporting for Office 365

Moving to Office 365 means a pretty big adjustment. Administrators who were used to doing things one way are going to have to make adjustments as their organizations migrate their infrastructure into Office 365. One of the areas where new Office 365 administrators often feel most in the dark about is changes in their environment.

Office 365Nathan OBryanMay 10, 2016Reporting, PowerShell, Office 365Comment

AAD Connect Advanced Deployments and Troubleshooting

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post here covering how to deploy Azure Active Directory Connect 1.1. Due to popular demand, today I'm going to circle back and review some of the advanced configurations of AAD Connect as well as some troubleshooting tips to cover you in case you run into a hitch with your AAD Connect deployment.

Since there is a lot to cover, and I have limited space in which to do it, I’m not going to go super deep into each of these topics. Instead I’m going to give you a high-level overview. I’ll try to link to resources where you can get more information on each topic as appropriate, and you can reach out to me via the comments below or on Twitter if you’d like me to answer any specific questions.

Office 365Nathan OBryanApril 19, 2016AAD COnnect, Azure ADComment

Mailbox Auditing for Office 365 – Part 2

In Part 1 of this series we started to explore the auditing functionality natively available within Exchange Online as part of your Office 365 tenant. If you’re not caught up, go back and read that blog post first. If you’re all caught up, then let’s get to it.

Office 365Nathan OBryanApril 11, 2016Comment

Enabling DKIM in Exchange Online

Spam is the bane of all messaging administrators, as well as a major pain for all email users. Using email means a consistent battle against spam, malware, and unwanted nonsense flooding your inbox. There are a number of different tools and tactics we, as administrators, can use to reduce the impact of these attacks and recently Microsoft has added another one to the toolboxes of Office 365 customers. In this blog post I'm going to explain what DKIM is, and how you can use it to help make the world a safer place for legitimate email messages.

Office 365Nathan OBryanMarch 30, 2016EOP, DKIM, spam, securityComment

Deploying Azure Active Directory Connect 1.1

Active Directory Synchronization for Office 365 and Azure has been a vital, but fairly straight forward, part of Office 365 migrations for almost 5 years now. DirSync was updated to Azure Active Directory Sync, and AAD Sync was updated to Azure Active Directory Connect. In this blog post, I’m going to cover everything you need to know about deploying the newest version of AAD Connect

Office 365Nathan OBryanMarch 16, 2016idenityComment

Mobility & Office 365: How To Enable Your Mobile Workforce

Find out how Microsoft Office 365 makes it possible for information workers, who were formerly required to work in an office building, to do their jobs from anywhere with an internet connection. O’Bryan covers the major features in Office 365 including:

Groups
Planner
SharePoint Online
OneDrive for Business
Skype for Business
Office 365 mobile apps
Mobile Device Management (MDM)
InTune
Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS)

Office 365Nathan OBryanMarch 14, 2016Comment

Azure AD Connect 1.1 Filtering – Part 3

In Part 1 of this series, we covered the basics of setting up filtering for AAD Connect and the details of setting up domain filtering. In Part 2, we covered up the process of setting up OU filtering for AAD Connect. In Part 3, we’re going to cover setting up attribute filtering.

Office 365Nathan OBryanMarch 8, 2016AAD COnnect, Filter, Azure Comment

Azure AD Connect 1.1 Filtering – Part 1

As DirSync evolved to AAD Sync, and AAD Sync evolved to AAD Connect, there have been significant changes to the way we accomplish tasks with these tools.

With the recent release of Azure Active Directory Connect v 1.1, Microsoft has made several updates to how various aspects of the process of syncing your on-premises Active Directory accounts into Azure Active Directory. There have been some pretty significant changes in a couple of areas, with one of those being sync filtering. In this series of blogs posts, I’m going to walk you through the options and processes for filtering your sync jobs.

Office 365Nathan OBryanMarch 4, 2016AAD COnnect, DirSync, Azure ADComment

The Confusing Case of Cross-Forest Delegation

If you've even participated in an Exchange Online migration at almost any level, it's likely you've run into the issue of cross-forest delegation. You know that Exchange allows you to delegate rights from one mailbox to another, allowing users to access other mailboxes. When you do an Exchange hybrid migration, there are some special considerations you have to take to keep these delegated rights working. Depending on who you ask, you'll get all kinds of different answers about what works when. In this blog post I will explain the confusing case of cross-forest delegation, and what you can expect to work or not work.

Office 365Nathan OBryanFebruary 18, 2016delegation, free/busyComment

Deploying Office Online Server for Exchange 2016 – Part 3

Welcome back. If you’ve read the first two posts in this series (Part 1, Part2), then your caught up. If not, I’d suggest you go back to those before proceeding on with this one. In this post, we’re going to talk about some new information about OOS, and some points I missed in the first two parts.

Office 365Nathan OBryanNovember 4, 2015OOS, modern attachments, Exchange 2016 Comments