Department uses cloud-based technologies to enable its ‘ICT as a service’ strategy

11th of September, 2014 / / No Comments

Customer Overview

The Department of State Development and Infrastructure Planning (DSDIP) plays a critical role in leading a state-wide, coordinated approach to infrastructure, planning and development whilst ensuring a sustainable future for Queensland communities.

The Department of Local Government, Community Recovery and Resilience (DLGCRR) is responsible for overseeing the legislative framework in which local governments operate and enhance community recovery and future resilience.

Business Situation

The Department of State Development and Infrastructure Planning was using an externally hosted Microsoft Exchange 2003 environment for their email.… [Keep reading] “Department uses cloud-based technologies to enable its ‘ICT as a service’ strategy”

Securing Emails Outside of Your Organization With Office 365 Message Encryption

3rd of August, 2014 / / 1 Comment

​For those of you who have been concerned about email security for a number of years, you may remember a solution from Microsoft called Exchange Hosted Encryption (EHE).  This was a cloud based service which allowed organizations to encrypt emails according to certain defined rules.  For example, you could encrypt emails where the intended recipient was outside of your organization and certain keywords or regular expressions where detected such as a credit card number.  This was a very useful service for protecting emails sent to ANY user, regardless of the relationship with the user’s company. … [Keep reading] “Securing Emails Outside of Your Organization With Office 365 Message Encryption”

End User Access To Spam Quarantine in Office 365

13th of July, 2014 / / No Comments

One of the ​features of Office 365 which gets very little attention is Exchange Online Protection (EOP). EOP is a Microsoft cloud service which protects Exchange Online in Office 365 from spam and viruses. EOP is a built-in capability of Office 365. There is no additional license required to use it.

Emails which EOP detects as spam are trapped in a quarantine area. Users were notified that email was quarantined by an automatically generated email message from EOP.… [Keep reading] “End User Access To Spam Quarantine in Office 365”

Hybrid Exchange 2007/2013 and Lync EWS Integration

14th of May, 2014 / / 1 Comment

I came across an interesting issue recently with a client currently running Exchange 2007 and looking to migrate to Exchange Online. Since Update Rollup 10 for Exchange 2007 Service Pack 3, it has become possible to coexist Exchange 2oo7 and Exchange 2013.

After installing Exchange 2013 as the Hybrid server, this particular client ran into an issue with the Lync 2013 client losing EWS integration with any mailboxes that still reside on Exchange 2007. The net effect of this is that any users that hadn’t been migrated from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2013 or Office 365 would have to rely on Outlook MAPI (and Outlook being open) for anything to do with the Personal Information Manager feature of Lync.… [Keep reading] “Hybrid Exchange 2007/2013 and Lync EWS Integration”

Moving Dirsync Between Active Directory Forests

12th of May, 2014 / / 10 Comments

With the ever growing popularity of Office 365 it’s no surprise that situations are starting to pop up where organizations want to move Dirsync between forests. A recent example of this was a customer who divested from a parent company leading to an inter-forest migration using the traditional ADMT tool set. Consequently directory synchronization (version 2.0) also had to be moved between forests. The good news is that this IS possible despite a fair amount of web content to the contrary.… [Keep reading] “Moving Dirsync Between Active Directory Forests”

DirSync and Distribution Group Self Service Management

6th of May, 2014 / / 2 Comments

If you’re an Office 365 Exchange Online customer and currently utilizing Directory Synchronization (DirSync) to synchronize between an on premise Active Directory and the Azure Active Directory you’ll be all too familiar with the limitations that are imposed around the management of distribution group membership. Namely an Exchange online user specified as the owner of a distribution group will not be able to manage the membership of that group through the standard Outlook Address Book interface as detailed here

In the background, if we think about this in relation to DirSync functionality, the group is being pushed from the on premise Active Directory to the Azure Active Directory in a one way sync.… [Keep reading] “DirSync and Distribution Group Self Service Management”

Removing an Exchange Hybrid Configuration

5th of May, 2014 / / 7 Comments

I was recently working with a customer who were performing an organization led de-merger, for the purposes of this blog entry lets refer to them as ‘CompanyA’ and ‘CompanyB’.  Prior to the de-merger CompanyA hosted an on premise Exchange 2013 environment that both CompanyA and CompanyB utilized for the purposes of mailbox/public folder hosting. At the point of the de-merger, CompanyA were going to retain their existing Exchange environment and CompanyB were planning to move to O365.… [Keep reading] “Removing an Exchange Hybrid Configuration”

Protect Your Identity in the Cloud With Multi-Factor Authentication

16th of April, 2014 / / 2 Comments

Multi-factor authentication is now available for both administrator and end user accounts.  This service is now available Office 365, Windows Intune, and Microsoft Azure.

One of the risks of cloud technologies is that they are accessible from anywhere.  This means that any hacker can try to log into your account from anywhere in the world.  User names are usually public and widely known (i.e. an email address).  The only thing standing between the hacker and your personal data is a password. … [Keep reading] “Protect Your Identity in the Cloud With Multi-Factor Authentication”

MEC ‘14

15th of April, 2014 / / No Comments

Earlier this month I attended the Microsoft Exchange Conference in Austin, Texas, which was a fantastic opportunity to find out what is in store for the future of Exchange and to connect with other peers and people from the product groups at Microsoft. There were over 100 sessions meaning MEC was packed with loads of quality information – although it was impossible to get to see it all. It was great to see these sessions presented by the Program Managers, Lead Developers, MVPs and Masters.… [Keep reading] “MEC ‘14”

Exchange 2013 DNS Settings Cause Transport Services to Crash

22nd of November, 2013 / / 2 Comments

I ran into a problem at a customer recently with two Exchange 2013 servers where the ‘Microsoft Exchange Frontend Transport’ (MSExchangeFrontEndTransport) service would crash continually. It would eventually bring down the ‘Microsoft Exchange Transport’ (MSExchangeTransport) and ‘Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Transport Submission’ (MSExchangeSubmission) services. This meant the server was responding to SMTP connections with ‘451 4.7.0 Temporary server error. Please try again later. PRX2’ on attempting to submit a message.

The primary error in the Event Log was Event ID 1000:

Faulting application name: MSExchangeFrontendTransport.exe,
… [Keep reading] “Exchange 2013 DNS Settings Cause Transport Services to Crash”