Lync 2013 Persistent Chat Migration from OCS 2007 R2 Group Chat

6th of January, 2013 / / No Comments

One of the big changes in Lync 2013 was merging the Lync client and Group Chat (now called Persistent Chat) into a single client. The back end of Persistent Chat is also now an integrated component or role compared to the bolted on third party feeling of Group Chat. I hadn’t seen any companies deploy and use Group Chat until my last project which was to migrate all OCS 2007 R2 workloads to Lync 2013, including Group Chat.… [Keep reading] “Lync 2013 Persistent Chat Migration from OCS 2007 R2 Group Chat”

Office 365 Preview and Windows Azure Active Directory Rights Management

28th of November, 2012 / / 2 Comments

Recently I was asked to implement an Office 365 Preview for Enterprises tenant that would demonstrate the new functionality provided by Windows Azure Active Directory Rights Management (AADRM). Windows Azure Active Directory is the cloud identity management service that underpins Office 365 and many other Microsoft cloud products; you can read more about it here.

Rights Management Services (RMS) are a feature set that allows for the protection of information, regardless of where it goes or who it is sent to.… [Keep reading] “Office 365 Preview and Windows Azure Active Directory Rights Management”

Quality of Service (QoS) for Lync 2010 and Lync 2013

31st of October, 2012 / / 15 Comments

Microsoft have published a lot of documentation about Quality of Service (QoS) with Lync. There is the Word document Enabling Quality of Service with Microsoft Lync Server 2010, TechNet for QoS on Lync 2010 and TechNet for QoS on Lync 2013. From what I can see there are no QoS specific changes between Lync 2010 and Lync 2013, other than the documentation seems to have been improved – especially for the client QoS section.… [Keep reading] “Quality of Service (QoS) for Lync 2010 and Lync 2013”

Office 365 – Converting mailboxes to shared mailboxes

13th of October, 2012 / / 6 Comments

Office 365 introduces the concept of a shared mailbox. Shared mailboxes are free, as long as they are under 5GB in size.

There is plenty of documentation that describes the process to create a new shared mailbox, but how do you convert an existing licensed mailbox to a shared mailbox?

I have read through a number of Office 365 community forum threads that ask this question and provide a variety of methods to achieve this.… [Keep reading] “Office 365 – Converting mailboxes to shared mailboxes”

Office 365 – PowerShell Setup

13th of October, 2012 / / 5 Comments

PowerShell is the most important tool for Office 365 management and I find it helpful to have everything  just one click away. The following steps will give you a desktop shortcut to launch an Office 365 PowerShell session with the cmdlets loaded.

1. Install the Microsoft Online Service Sign-in Assistant and Azure Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell available here

2. Save the following script to c:\o365.ps1:

[code language=”PowerShell”]
$Cred = Get-Credential
Import-Module MSOnline
Connect-MsolService -Credential $cred
$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange… [Keep reading] “Office 365 – PowerShell Setup”

Office 365 Smart Links

12th of October, 2012 / / 8 Comments

So you’re using Federated Identities with SharePoint Online…

You may have noticed that every 1-2 days you have to re-authenticate to SharePoint Online.  This is the result of an Office 365 security feature that defines a 10 hour SharePoint cookie expiration. This authentication behavior is different to BPOS SharePoint Online, where users would be prompted to authenticate one time only. If you have come from BPOS, this change in SharePoint authentication behavior is probably undesirable. If you were excited about a transparent ‘single sign-on’ experience with AD FS 2.0 and Office 365, you might even be a little disappointed.… [Keep reading] “Office 365 Smart Links”

Office 365 – AD FS 2.0 with multiple domains and subdomains

26th of August, 2012 / / 11 Comments

AD FS 2.0 Update Rollup 1 allows a single ADFS farm to support multiple top level domains for Office 365 federated authentication. Unfortunately, the default claim rules generated with RU1 do not support multiple top levels domains with subdomains.

“If however, you have multiple top level domains (@contoso.com and @fabrikam.com) and these domains also have sub domains (@sales.contoso.com and @sales.fabrikam.com) the “SupportMultipleDomain” switch will not work for the sub domains and these users will not be able to login.”

… [Keep reading] “Office 365 – AD FS 2.0 with multiple domains and subdomains”

Configuring ASP.NET 4.5 for Windows Azure Active Directory

14th of July, 2012 / / 6 Comments

Yesterday, the Active Directory team announced the Developer Preview of Windows Azure Active Directory (AD). Windows Azure AD is Identity Management as a Service. Today, it is the identity provider for Office 365, Dynamics CRM Online, and Windows Intune. The Developer Preview enables developers to implement Web Single Sign-On (SSO) for Software as a Service, and line-of-business, and cloud applications.

With the new announcement, Vittorio Bertocci published a deep-dive article that describes Web SSO with Windows Azure AD.… [Keep reading] “Configuring ASP.NET 4.5 for Windows Azure Active Directory”

Office 365 Licensing with Powershell

2nd of April, 2012 / / 8 Comments

The Basics

Recently I’ve had to explore the dark art of license assignment using Powershell. It’s not particularly well documented so this might help you…

Displaying a list of the current licensing assignment is pretty straightforward. Get-MsolUser can be used to return information on an individual or a list of users.

Get-MsolUser -All run on its own will return all of the users available in the tenant along with whether or not there is a user license assigned.… [Keep reading] “Office 365 Licensing with Powershell”

Lync 2010 Mobility – Push Notifications

1st of January, 2012 / / 5 Comments

Through reverse engineering here is my take on how Lync Mobility push notifications function for Apple and Windows Phone devices. This article assumes that push notifications is configured and the user is granted the policy to permit push notification (default). Push notifications is only applicable when the application is running in the background (inactive). When the Lync Mobile application is active, HTTPS communications via the Reverse Proxy is used. As you’ll see below, the reverse proxy continues to be the transport for IM conversations, and the push notification is simply the notification service for the device.… [Keep reading] “Lync 2010 Mobility – Push Notifications”