Proactive DNS Record Checking in Office 365

9th of June, 2014 / / No Comments

​Microsoft has released a new feature for Office 365.  It can automatically detects if DNS records are misconfigured for a custom domain.  This is a useful feature when you are setting up a new custom domain for an Office 365 tenant.  It also helps when Microsoft updates the Office 365 service in a way that requires DNS changes.

When Office 365 detects that DNS is misconfigured, an alert is generated in the Office 365 admin center. … [Keep reading] “Proactive DNS Record Checking 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”

Switching Between Office 365 Plans

4th of May, 2014 / / 2 Comments

​One of the challenges with earlier versions of Office 365 was the inability to switch plans.  Once you set up a tenant, there were certain aspects of the tenant which could not be changed.  For example, if you set up a small business tenant with 10 users, you could not increase the size of the tenant beyond the 25 user limit.  There was no way to convert a small business tenant into an enterprise tenant.  This meant that a small business growing rapidly might exceed the capacity of its Office 365 tenant.… [Keep reading] “Switching Between Office 365 Plans”

SharePoint Online Storage Improvements in Office 365

4th of May, 2014 / / 1 Comment

The following new features are now available in SharePoint Online as part of Office 365:

◦ A 1 TB site collection limit for OneDrive for Business and team sites
◦ Infinite tenant storage scale

1 TB site collection limit increase for OneDrive for Business and team sites

A 1 TB will let you create large team document centers that teams can use without needing to introduce multiple websites and unneeded complexities. All SharePoint Online site collections can now have up to 1 TB of storage allocation.… [Keep reading] “SharePoint Online Storage Improvements in Office 365”

Are My Cloud Services Vulnerable to “Heartbleed”?

16th of April, 2014 / / No Comments

I have been receiving questions from a number of customers about the “Heartbleed” vulnerability that has been widely reported by the media.  Many customers are concerned as to whether they are at risk by using cloud services from Microsoft and other providers.  There a reasonable concern with any IT service when it comes to security.  Your provider should be able to answer simple questions about whether a service is vulnerable or not to Heartbleed and what steps are being taken to mitigate the risk.… [Keep reading] “Are My Cloud Services Vulnerable to “Heartbleed”?”

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”

Office Click-To-Run 2.0

15th of April, 2014 / / No Comments

​I receive a lot of questions on the benefits of upgrading to new versions of Office.  Many people feel that they only use very basic features of Office.  Therefore, there is no real benefit of upgrading because they will not use any of the new features.  It is true that there are some advanced new features in Office 2013 that may not be of interest to the average user, there are some great new capabilities from which EVERY user can benefit.… [Keep reading] “Office Click-To-Run 2.0”