End of Life for Office 2003

15th of April, 2014 / / No Comments

Every software vendor has a support lifecycle for its products. They release a product and then provide updates and support for a period of time. At the end of the support lifecycle, customers need to upgrade to a newer version in order to continue receiving support from the vendor.

Microsoft’s standard software lifecycle is 10 years for most of their products. This includes 5 years of mainstream support and 5 years of extended support. In some cases, Microsoft will continue support for longer than 10 years in response to a particular situation.… [Keep reading] “End of Life for Office 2003”

Simulate moving to the Cloud with NEWT

28th of March, 2014 / / No Comments

I’ve blogged a bit in the past about the unique challenges encountered when moving to the cloud and the unavoidable consequence of introducing new network hops when moving workloads out of the data centre. I’m currently working for a unique organisation in the mining industry who are quite aggressively pursuing cost saving initiatives and have seen cloud as one of the potential savings. The uniqueness of the IT operating environment comes from the dispersed and challenging “branch offices” which may lie at the end of a long dedicated wired, microwave or satellite link

Centralising IT services to a data centre in Singapore is all very well if you’re office is on a well serviced broadband Internet link but what of these other data centres with more challenged connectivity.… [Keep reading] “Simulate moving to the Cloud with NEWT”

Office 365 / SharePoint Sign-in with Xamarin.iOS

20th of March, 2014 / / 1 Comment

While coding up an iOS app with Xamarin I came across some odd behaviour when trying to programmatically sign in to O365 using HttpClient.

Xamarin

If you are not aware, Xamarin is built with Mono (the open source .NET Framework) and for all intents and purposes has the same namespace and language features as .NET 4.5. Excluding of course, all the Microsoft specific .NET parts.

HttpClient

OK I’ll set the scene. One of the requirements of my shiny new Xamarin app was to host a SharePoint site in a browser control.… [Keep reading] “Office 365 / SharePoint Sign-in with Xamarin.iOS”

Exchange 365 – Transport Rules & Distribution Groups

29th of January, 2014 / / No Comments

One of our customers is transitioning from on premise Exchange 2010 to a hybrid Exchange 365 (wave 15) environment and user management for Office 365 done through on premise Active Directory. Customer had quite a few transport rules setup up which needed to be migrated. This worked fine except for the rules using a “redirect the message to” action using a distribution group.

The error displayed in Exchange 365 generated is: The transport rule can’t be created because TR-Marketing@Company.com,… [Keep reading] “Exchange 365 – Transport Rules & Distribution Groups”

Windows Azure Active Directory Self Service Password Reset

10th of December, 2013 / / 1 Comment

Microsoft has recently released an enhancement to its Windows Azure Active Directory (WAAD) offering. This enhancement enables end users to perform self-service password resets in the case of a forgotten password. Previously this function was available to administrative accounts only.

WAAD self-service password reset (SSPR) is a premium offering, requiring Premium Features to be enabled for the WAAD.

Once WAAD Premium Features are enabled, the User Password Reset Policy can be edited and SSPR enabled. For the initial release, enabling SSPR does so for all WAAD user accounts.… [Keep reading] “Windows Azure Active Directory Self Service Password Reset”

Acme Packet SBC for Office 365 UM with CUCM

28th of November, 2013 / / 2 Comments

Office 365 Exchange Online can provide Unified Messaging (UM) functionality such as voicemail for on-premises telephony systems. Configuring integration between Exchange Online UM and Lync is a straightforward process assuming you already have Enterprise Voice and a Lync Edge server in place. There is TechNet documentation for Lync 2013 and Lync 2010 or an older Office 365 Checklist.

Things get a lot more complicated when you want to use a different telephony system, for example Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM).… [Keep reading] “Acme Packet SBC for Office 365 UM with CUCM”

Autodiscover Troubleshooting

9th of August, 2013 / / No Comments

Notes from the Field

I have been onsite working on remediating a partially completed Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010 migration. This environment was then configured for Exchange Online Hybrid using ADFS 2.0 and Dirsync.

After reviewing the Autodiscover configuration, I discovered that something wasn’t right. In addition to this, I had received the following issues list from the customer.

Symptoms

  1. Outlook for Office 365 mailboxes is not able to be configured using Autodiscover. This occurred on both domain and non-domain joined machines.
… [Keep reading] “Autodiscover Troubleshooting”

Wave 15 Shared Mailboxes in a Hybrid Configuration

8th of August, 2013 / / 1 Comment

Notes from the Field

I have been working on a customer site for some time now and have recently been migrated to Wave 15 of Exchange Online.

It was brought to my attention during the week, that since the migration, Shared Mailboxes which were created via the Exchange Online EAC could not receive external email. Shared mailboxes which were created in the on-premise environment and then migrated to Exchange Online are working as expected.

Note: The support staff have already created the Shared mailboxes using the Exchange online EAC and these mailboxes already have significant amounts of mail contained within.… [Keep reading] “Wave 15 Shared Mailboxes in a Hybrid Configuration”

Windows Azure Active Directory Module and Online Services Sign-in Assistant

18th of July, 2013 / / 2 Comments

Back in 2012, we talked about Office 365 – PowerShell Setup.  This was back in the days prior to the Microsoft Online Services Sign-in Assistant RTW, and before Windows 8 had gained a lot of traction.  Recent updates however have not made this such a straightforward process.

My first attempt at installing the Windows Azure Active Directory Module on Windows 8 failed with the error “must have microsoft online services sign-in assistant version 7.0 or greated installed”.  … [Keep reading] “Windows Azure Active Directory Module and Online Services Sign-in Assistant”

Exchange Online Inactive Mailboxes

20th of June, 2013 / / 5 Comments

In an enterprise deployment of Office 365 Wave 14, one of the recurring pain points was how to handle mailbox data retention once a user left the business and the data is required for compliance purposes. There were a number of options available to handle this:

  • Leave the mailbox in-situ and disable the user account
  • Change the license SKU to Kiosk Plan 2 as it’s a cheaper license cost and disable the user account
  • Migrate the departed user mailbox back to the on-premises hybrid Exchange platform
  • Use a 3rd party cloud archive solution

While all of these will work, on an enterprise scale they’re quite clunky and even with an identity management solution in place, they’re not particularly practical or cost effective.… [Keep reading] “Exchange Online Inactive Mailboxes”