I Keep Getting Prompted to Authenticate in SharePoint Online!

9th of July, 2014 / / 5 Comments

Every once in a while I come across a problem which is vexing and irritating and equally, an absolute joy when it is finally resolved.

The Scene

This particular issue had been on-going for some time with one of my customers with reports coming in from various people saying that they were being prompted to authenticate when opening an Office document in SharePoint Online. “I’ve already logged in so why do I keep getting these prompts?!”… [Keep reading] “I Keep Getting Prompted to Authenticate in SharePoint Online!”

Azure Active Directory Synchronization Tool: Password Sync as Backup for AD FS Federated Domains

9th of July, 2014 / / No Comments

Kloud has helped many Australian businesses leverage Microsoft cloud services such as Office 365, Intune and Microsoft Azure and most have implemented Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) to provide a highly available Single Sign-On (SSO) user experience. In mid-2013, the Windows Azure Active Directory Synchronization Tool was updated to support password synchronisation with Azure Active Directory, which provided an alternative way to leverage on-premises authored identities with Microsoft’s cloud services.

Password synchronisation is a feature of the Azure Active Directory Sync Tool that will synchronise the password hash from your on-premises Active Directory environment to the Azure Active Directory.… [Keep reading] “Azure Active Directory Synchronization Tool: Password Sync as Backup for AD FS Federated Domains”

Do It Yourself Cloud Accelerator – Part II BranchCache

2nd of July, 2014 / / 2 Comments

In the last post I introduced the idea of breaking the secure transport layer between cloud provider and employee with the intention to better deliver those services to employees using company provided infrastructure.

In short we deployed a server which re-presents the cloud secure urls using a new trusted certificate. This enables us to do some interesting things like provide centralised and shared caching across multiple users. The Application Request Routing (ARR) module is designed for delivering massively scalable content delivery networks to the Internet which when turned on its head can be used to deliver cloud service content efficiently to internal employees.… [Keep reading] “Do It Yourself Cloud Accelerator – Part II BranchCache”

Education institute improves productivity and reduces costs with Microsoft Azure and Office 365

12th of June, 2014 / / No Comments

Customer Overview
Principals Australia Institute (PAI) provides quality professional learning, leadership development and support to principals and school leaders. PAI’s programs and services help build effective, inspirational and sustainable leadership in Australia’s 10,000 government, Catholic and independent primary and secondary schools.

Business Situation
PAI expressed a desire to improve productivity, manage costs and reduce overall risk to its business. Kloud worked with PAI IT staff to provide a roadmap towards a set of IT reforms that delivered on these goals.… [Keep reading] “Education institute improves productivity and reduces costs with Microsoft Azure and Office 365”

Kloud Solutions Microsoft Partner Competencies

9th of June, 2014 / / No Comments

Many customers are curious about Kloud’s qualifications to provide consulting and managed services for the technologies in which we specialize. Many of these technologies are very new. How can customers be assured that Kloud Solutions has the right qualifications?

Kloud Solutions has completed the requirements for the following Microsoft competencies:

1. Gold Communications Competency Partner

2. Gold Identity and Access Competency Partner

3. Silver Application Development Competency Partner

4. Silver Collaboration and Content Partner

Here are some of the reasons why Kloud has pursued and earned these competencies with Microsoft:

1.… [Keep reading] “Kloud Solutions Microsoft Partner Competencies”

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”

Do It Yourself Cloud Accelerator

6th of June, 2014 / / 2 Comments

This intro is unashamedly lifted from a Microsoft article but I couldn’t say it any better: “The cloud has enormous potential to reduce operational expenses and achieve new levels of scale, but moving workloads away from the people who depend on them can increase networking costs and hurt productivity. Users expect high performance and don’t care where their applications and data are hosted” Cloud is a journey, to get there takes more than just migrating your workloads to the cloud.… [Keep reading] “Do It Yourself Cloud Accelerator”

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”

Lync IP Phones – VVX Media Phone Alternative

8th of May, 2014 / / 6 Comments

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Updated 16 July 2014: The new 5.1.1b VVX Firmware has been released by Polycom and can be found here
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The Polycom VVX Media Phones offer an additional option for Lync Enterprise Voice customers over the traditional consumer choice of ‘Optimized for Lync’ Aries phones running Lync Phone Edition firmware. I recently came back in touch with these devices and this blog post is some of my latest observations.

Microsoft extended support for the Aries phone firmware till 2023 which shows Microsoft’s commitment to traditional telephony devices and to vendors of Lync IP phones continuing sales for some time into the future.… [Keep reading] “Lync IP Phones – VVX Media Phone Alternative”