Using PowerShell to remove users from an Exchange Online in-place hold policy

20th of November, 2015 / / No Comments

Originally blogged @ Lucian.Blog. Follow Lucian on Twitter @lucianfrango.

In-place hold, legal hold, compliance hold, journaling and/or select “D”: all of the above, when it’s simplified down to its simplest form is storing emails for X amount of time in case there’s a problem and these need to be reviewed. What’s great about Office 365 Exchange Online is that there is the ability to store those emails in the cloud for 2,555 days (or roughly speaking 7 years).

Let’s fast forward to having in-place hold enabled for an Exchange Online tenant. In my reference case I have roughly 10,500 users in the tenant and numerous in-place hold policies, with the largest containing 7,500 or so users. I’ve run into a small problem with this Hybrid based environment whereby I need to move a mailbox that is covered by an in-place hold policy (let’s call it “Lucians Mailbox Search Policy”) back to on-premises for a couple of reasons.

The following blog post outlines how to remove users from an in-place hold via PowerShell as the Office 365 / Exchange Online Control Panel may not let you do that when you have thousands of users in a single hold policy.
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Windows Server 2012 R2 (ADFS 3.0): Migrating ADFS Configuration Database from WID to SQL

19th of November, 2015 / / 17 Comments

You already have a working ADFS setup which has been configured to use the Windows Internal Database (WID) to store its configuration database. However, things may have changed since you implemented it and you may now have one (or more) of the below requirements which will need an upgrade to SQL server.

  • Need more than five federation servers in the ADFS Farm (supporting more than 10 relying parties)
  • Leverage high availability features of SQL or
  • Enable support for SAML artefact resolution or WS Federation token replay detection.
… [Keep reading] “Windows Server 2012 R2 (ADFS 3.0): Migrating ADFS Configuration Database from WID to SQL”

Modern Authentication updates for Office 2013 (MSI-based)

7th of November, 2015 / / 8 Comments

Earlier this year, Office 2013 Modern Authentication using the Active Directory Authentication Library (ADAL) moved to public preview. The steps to take part in the preview and to prepare the Office 2013 software are well documented, particularly by one of my fellow Kloudies (see Lucian’s blog here).

However, you may find that despite creating the registry keys and installing the required updates, Modern Authentication is still not working – something I recently encountered with MSI-based installations of Office 2013 SP1 in a Windows 7 SOE.… [Keep reading] “Modern Authentication updates for Office 2013 (MSI-based)”

How to parse JSON data in Nintex Workflow for Office 365

20th of October, 2015 / / 1 Comment

A workflow is usually described as a series of tasks that produce an outcome. In the context of Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies, a workflow is defined more precisely as the automated movement of documents or items through a specific sequence of actions or tasks that are related to a business process. SharePoint Workflows can be used to consistently manage common business processes within an organisation by allowing the attachment of business logic that is set of instructions to documents or items in a SharePoint list or library.… [Keep reading] “How to parse JSON data in Nintex Workflow for Office 365”

[UPDATED] Azure AD Connect: SyncRuleEditor.exe and why is targetAddress missing

17th of September, 2015 / / No Comments

Originally  blogged @ lucian.blog. Follow Lucian on Twitter @LucianFrango. Send Lucian an email.

Today is back to AAD Connect. I want to talk about Office 365 migrations and how they can be tricky with various options and scenarios around hybrid or non hybrid. On a recent project we were migrating a client from IBM Lotus Notes to Exchange Online in Office 365. The plan and proposed solution was designed to not use Exchange Server Hybrid on-premises and use Dell Software Migrator for a direct migration from on-premises to the cloud.

The client has never had Exchange Server on-premises before and was running a well-managed ADDS deployment spanning three sites across three continents. To allow for the schema requirements for Exchange Online, Exchange Server 2013 was downloaded and the ADDS schema was extended with that from Exchange Server 2013. All simple, standard stuff right?..

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Office 365 SSO: Configuring multiple Office 365 tenants to use a single AD FS instance

8th of September, 2015 / / 13 Comments

Q: Can multiple Office 365 tenants use a single AD FS instance to provide SSO?

A: Yes

Overview

  • Office 365 tenant 1 is configured with the domain contoso.com
  • Office 365 tenant 2 is configured with the domain sub.contoso.com
  • Single Active Directory Forest with multiple UPNs configured (contoso.com and sub.contoso.com)
  • Single AD FS instance including an AD FS Proxy/Web Application Proxy published with the name sts.contoso.com
  • Two instances of Azure ADConnect configured with container filtering to ensure users are only synchronised to a single tenant

Configuring SSO

The Federation Trust for Tenant 1 is configured by establishing a Remote PowerShell session (with the Azure Active Directory Module loaded) and running the standard ‘Convert-MsolDomainToFederated’ cmdlet:

[code]Convert-MsolDomainToFederated -DomainName contoso.com… [Keep reading] “Office 365 SSO: Configuring multiple Office 365 tenants to use a single AD FS instance”

Skype for Business Online to On-Premises Migration

26th of August, 2015 / / 11 Comments

Okay guys – you’ve been told “lets move everyone back from the cloud! We need Enterprise Voice for our users” This will go against most Microsoft sales materials as we should be looking towards cloud.

If you are part of an organisation that has been birthed out of Skype for Business Online (SFBO) as part of your Office 365 subscription, it would make sense that you would have never had on-premises Lync or SFB servers in your Active Directory domain.… [Keep reading] “Skype for Business Online to On-Premises Migration”

Programmatically interacting with Yammer via PowerShell – Part 2

14th of August, 2015 / / 15 Comments

In my last post I foolishly said that part 2 would be ‘coming in the next few days’. This of course didn’t happen, but I guess it’s better late than never!

In part 1 which is available here, I wrote how it was possible to post to a Yammer group via a *.ps1 using a ‘Yammer Verified Admin’ account. While this worked a treat, it soon became apparent that this approach had limited productivity rewards.… [Keep reading] “Programmatically interacting with Yammer via PowerShell – Part 2”

Kloud Solutions named as Microsoft Australia Partner Awards finalist in four categories!

10th of August, 2015 / / No Comments

MELBOURNE, VICTORIA – 10 August, 2015 – Today, Kloud Solutions proudly announced it has been named a finalistin four categories in the 2015 Microsoft Australian Partner Awards (MAPA):

  • Cloud Productivity
  • Cloud Platform
  • Managed Service
  • Social Enterprise

Earlier this year, Kloud won Cloud Productivity Partner of the Year and was recognised as a finalist for Enterprise Mobility Suite Partner of the Year at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Orlando, Florida.

Kloud’s managing director Nicki Bowers is proud of the recognition, saying it is representative of the way customers entrust Kloud with their journey to the cloud.… [Keep reading] “Kloud Solutions named as Microsoft Australia Partner Awards finalist in four categories!”

Azure Active Directory Connect Export profile error: stopped-server-down.

5th of August, 2015 / / 14 Comments

Follow Lucian on Twitter @LucianFrango.

A couple of weeks ago I deployed Azure AD Connect in production. It was a relatively smooth process. The wizard did most of the work which was great. There was a few hiccups (blog post) along the way, which, in most cases is expected if the problems are not so serious.

Fast forward to my second install of the latest and greatest sync service for Azure AD and Office 365 cloud identities and we have problem no. 2. This time, though, I can say that the process ran through allot smoother. There was no real errors. Things were looking straight great and I was looking at my next task with some enthusiasm.

However, come 8.30ish this morning and going over the AADConnect server once more for peace of mind, I had noticed that the “Export” profile task that runs as the last task in the scheduled hourly run for AADConnect synchronisation (I’ve set it to 60min), unfortunately had a nice little error for me:

2015-08-05--AADC-Error--01

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