Configuring Intune Service to Service Connector for Exchange Online with a Service Account

4th of May, 2016 / David Lee / 2 Comments

If you are considering the use of Intune Conditional Access with Exchange Online it is generally recommended that you configure the Intune Service to Service Connector. While it is not mandatory, it does provide your Intune Administrators the ability to report on the effectiveness of the Conditional Access Policies on your mobile ActiveSync clients within your Exchange Online environment. In addition, if you wanted to enforce the use of the Outlook iOS/Android app using Exchange ActiveSync policies, as per my previous blog post here, setting up the connector would allow you to configure the ActiveSync access rules straight from the Intune Admin Portal.… [Keep reading] “Configuring Intune Service to Service Connector for Exchange Online with a Service Account”

WPAD and Proxy Auth Cause Exchange HCW to Fail

4th of May, 2016 / Joel Neff / No Comments

A recent conversation with a colleague reminded me of an issue I’ve faced a number of times (and forgotten to blog about) when running the Exchange Hybrid Configuration Wizard (HCW) on Exchange 2010 or 2013 in an environment where Web Proxy Autodiscovery Protocol (WPAD) is used.

The Problem

The most common scenario where I’ve seen this come into play is along the lines of this:

WPAD is used to distribute Proxy.PAC to client machines
Customer permits direct connection from Exchange servers to Internet
From an elevated command prompt, run “netsh winhttp reset proxy” to ensure a direct connection
Change Internet Options settings from “Automatically detect settings” to “Disabled”
Browse to a site restricted by the proxy to confirm proxy bypass is working
Can connect to Exchange Online using Remote PowerShell
Run the HCW but it fails with the following error in the logs:
ERROR : System.Management.Automation.RemoteException:

… [Keep reading]

Enforcing Outlook App in Exchange Online and Intune Conditional Access

29th of April, 2016 / David Lee / 25 Comments

[UPDATE 23/11/16] Microsoft have announced a new method of doing what I describe in this blog post. Matt Shadbolt from the Intune Engineering team has a nice blog post that describe how to use this new process, based on Intune MAM policies. The below information is still useful though if you want to do more specific restrictions (e.g. iOS vs Android native clients).

What is Intune Conditional Access?

Intune Conditional Access is a pretty neat feature that allows administrators to enforce compliance policies to devices prior to allowing them access to sync their mail with Exchange Online. … [Keep reading] “Enforcing Outlook App in Exchange Online and Intune Conditional Access”

Exchange Server hybrid “edition” myths and misunderstandings

28th of April, 2016 / Lucian Franghiu / 35 Comments

There’s a common misunderstanding that Exchange Server hybrid (whichever version you may be running) is needed to be kept on-premises forever if you have Azure AD Connect. AADC syncs on-premises Active Directory with Azure AD. When AADC and federated identity is enabled, MOST of the cloud attributes in Azure AD are READ ONLY. From that statement it’s been understood that hybrid is needed to be maintained to do all that Exchange Online remote management goodness. Wrong!

I hate to burst the bubble here, but, I’m going to burst the bubble.

Exchange Server Hybrid

Being a consultant, I’m going to do that frustrating thing and say those famous words: “it depends on the situation”. I love being ambiguous sometimes as it affords room for different options and ideas which is great for brainstorming and architecting.

Looking at Exchange Server hybrid functionality independently of thinking about the common tech phrase “hybrid”, what does Exchange Server hybrid do? Put simply, which isn’t very clear on TechNet or other publications, hybrid creates send and receive connectors between on-premises and Office 365 EXO. It’s now just a wizard / setup application that completes a few commands that can be achieved manually through powershell. It’s not even an Exchange Server role anymore.

Using saved credentials securely in PowerShell scripts

21st of April, 2016 / David Lee / 30 Comments

One of the most common tasks out in the field is the need to run PowerShell scripts that require credentials to be saved in some form of another so that they can be fed into scripts to be executed autonomously. This is particularly common in cloud environments where the current user context in which the scripts are run (e.g. within a scheduled task) are insufficient or not appropriate for the remote execution. Office 365 management is a perfect example of this, where often a credential object must be passed in order to connect and execute the cmdlets.… [Keep reading] “Using saved credentials securely in PowerShell scripts”

Implementing Microsoft (Office365) Peering for ExpressRoute

21st of April, 2016 / Shane Fisher / 13 Comments

Notes from the Field

I have recently been involved with an implementation of Microsoft Peering for Expressroute with a large Australian customer and thought I would share the experience with you.

Firstly, and secondly, make sure that you read the specific guidance from Microsoft regarding prerequisites for Microsoft Peering. (See below)

Configure Microsoft peering for the circuit

Make sure that you have the following information before you proceed.

A /30 subnet for the primary link. This must be a valid public IPv4 prefix owned by you and registered in an RIR / IRR.

… [Keep reading]

Programmatically read email from an Exchange Sever Mailbox

19th of April, 2016 / Vibhu Kuchhal / 21 Comments

I can’t recall how many times I have come across a requirement to programmatically read emails from an Exchange Server mailbox and take some action based on the presence of new messages. The component reading the emails can read the mail content, parse its contents and transmit the data to other downstream systems. In this blog I’m going to take a look at one way we can do this.

Objective

In my scenario there was a requirement to develop a program to retrieve mails from an Exchange mailbox and, based on a specific criteria, send the email to multiple users based on an distribution list identifier.… [Keep reading] “Programmatically read email from an Exchange Sever Mailbox”

Implement a SharePoint Timer job using Azure WebJob

15th of March, 2016 / mmasoodwordpress / 1 Comment

The SharePoint Timer service runs in background to do long running tasks. The Timer service does some important SharePoint clean up tasks in the background but can also be used to provide useful functional tasks. For instance, there may be a situation when you want to send newsletters to your users on regular basis or want to keep your customer up to date with some regular timed information.

I will be using SharePoint Timer Service to send an email to newly registered customers/users for this demo.… [Keep reading] “Implement a SharePoint Timer job using Azure WebJob”

AAD Connect: Custom AAD Attributes & Scheduler PowerShell

10th of March, 2016 / Michael Pearn / 3 Comments

Following on from the posts from my esteemed colleagues: Lucian and Josh, I thought I’d post my experiences working with the latest version (v1.1.110.0) specifically two areas:

Working with the AAD Connect Scheduler, that is now based in Powershell and whose configuration is now stored in AAD, using the ‘Set-ADSyncScheduler’ commands
Working with ‘extension Attributes’ using Directory Extensions feature of AAD Connect

Both of these features are new to the latest version of AAD Connect.… [Keep reading] “AAD Connect: Custom AAD Attributes & Scheduler PowerShell”

Exchange Server 2016 Hybrid upgrade considerations

7th of March, 2016 / Lucian Franghiu / 9 Comments

Exchange Server 2016, RTM as of October 2015, is still very much freshly baked having just come out of the oven from Redmond. Two recent projects that I’ve worked on have required me to consider deploying it as the “Hybrid” server (not an actual role- I’ll get to that later) for integration and coexistence with Office 365 Exchange Online.

With anything new there is a learning curve as to how the new product now works (not that dissimilar from previous versions of Exchange Server) and what will work with the existing environment to not compromise service.

There is an unwritten assumption that is made in our hybrid guidance that you have already properly deployed and completed the coexistence process with the current versions of Exchange in your on-premises environment.

– The Exchange Team