Integrating Yammer data within SharePoint web-part using REST API

29th of August, 2017 / / No Comments

Background

We were developing a SharePoint application for one of our client and have some web-parts that had to retrieve data from Yammer. As we were developing on SharePoint Online (SPO) using a popular SharePoint Framework (SPFx), so for the most part of our engagement we were developing using a client-side library named React to deliver what is required from us.
In order for us to integrate client’s Yammer data into our web-parts, we were using JavaScript SDK provided by Yammer.… [Keep reading] “Integrating Yammer data within SharePoint web-part using REST API”

Sharing a report using a Power BI app

2nd of August, 2017 / / 1 Comment

History

You have created reports and built dashboards in Power BI desktop to surface your data from multiple data sources, it is a time for you to share dashboards to a wider audience in your organisation and looking for how to do it. Power BI service came up with a powerful feature of Power BI apps to cater such scenarios.
If you have not yet created reports or did not setup a gateway for leveraging our on-premises data, please follow my earlier posts Setup a Power BI Gateway and Create reports using a Power BI Gateway to do so.… [Keep reading] “Sharing a report using a Power BI app”

Create reports using a Power BI Gateway

27th of July, 2017 / / No Comments

Background

Once you have a Power BI gateway setup to ensure data flow from your on-premises data sources to Power BI service in the cloud, next step is to create reports using Power BI desktop and build reports using data from multiple on-premises data sources.
Note: If you didn’t have a gateway setup already, please follow my earlier post to set it up before you continue reading this post.

Scenario

All on-premises data is stored in SQL server instances and spread across few data warehouses and multiple databases built and managed by your internal IT teams.… [Keep reading] “Create reports using a Power BI Gateway”

Where's the source!

26th of July, 2017 / / No Comments

SauceIn this post I will talk about data (aka the source)! In IAM there’s really one simple concept that is often misunderstood or ignored. The data going out of any IAM solution is only as good as the data going in. This may seem simple enough but if not enough attention is paid to the data source and data quality then the results are going to be unfavourable at best and catastrophic at worst.
With most IAM solutions data is going to come from multiple sources.… [Keep reading] “Where's the source!”

Setup a Power BI Gateway

21st of July, 2017 / / 2 Comments

Scenario

So, you have explored Power BI (free) and wanted to start some action in the cloud. Suddenly you realise that your data is stored in an on-premise SQL data source and you still wanted to get insights up in the cloud and share it with your senior business management.

Solution

Microsoft’s on-premises data gateway is a bridge that can securely transfer your data to Power BI service from your on-premises data source.

Assumptions

  • Power BI pro licenses have been procured already for the required no of users (this is a MUST)
  • Users are already part of Azure AD and can sign in to Power BI service as part of Office 365 offering

Pre-requisites

You can build and setup a machine to act as a gateway between your Azure cloud service and on-premises data sources.… [Keep reading] “Setup a Power BI Gateway”

Decommissioning Exchange 2016 Server

26th of June, 2017 / / 2 Comments

I have created many labs over the years and never really spent the time to decommission my environment, I usually just blow it away and start again.
So I finally decided to go through the process and decommission my Exchange 2016 server in my lab environment.
My lab consisted of the following:

  • Domain Controller (Windows Server 2012 R2)
  • AAD Connect Server
  • Exchange 2016 Server/ Office 365 Hybrid
  • Office 365 tenant

Being a lab I only had one Exchange server which had the mailbox role configured and was also my hybrid server.… [Keep reading] “Decommissioning Exchange 2016 Server”

Exchange 2010 Hybrid Auto Mapping Shared Mailboxes

30th of May, 2017 / / 2 Comments

Migrating shared mailboxes to Office 365 is one of those things that is starting to become easier over time, especially with full access permissions now working cross premises.
One little discovery that I thought I would share is that if you have an Exchange 2010 hybrid configuration, the auto mapping feature will not work cross premises. (Exchange 2013 and above, you are ok and have nothing to worry about).
This means if an on-premises user has access to a shared mailbox that you migrate to Office 365, it will disappear from their Outlook even though they still have full access.… [Keep reading] “Exchange 2010 Hybrid Auto Mapping Shared Mailboxes”

Try/Catch works in PowerShell ISE and not in PowerShell console

30th of May, 2017 / / No Comments

I recently encountered an issue with one of my PowerShell scripts. It was a script to enable litigation hold on all mailboxes in Exchange Online.
I connected to Exchange Online via the usual means below.

$creds = Get-Credential
$session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/ -Credential $Creds -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection
Import-PSSession $session -AllowClobber

I then attempted to execute the following with no success.

try
{
Set-Mailbox -Identity $user.UserPrincipalName -LitigationHoldEnabled $true -ErrorAction Stop
}
catch
{
Write-Host "ERROR!"
… [Keep reading] “Try/Catch works in PowerShell ISE and not in PowerShell console”

Send mail to Office 365 via an Exchange Server hosted in Azure

24th of February, 2017 / / No Comments

Those of you who have attempted to send mail to Office 365 from Azure know that sending outbound mail directly from an email server hosted in Azure is not supported due to elastic nature of public cloud service IPs and the potential for abuse. Therefore, the Azure IP address blocks are added to public block lists with no exceptions to this policy.
To be able to send mail from an Azure hosted email server to Office 365 you to need to send mail via a SMTP relay.… [Keep reading] “Send mail to Office 365 via an Exchange Server hosted in Azure”

Free/busy Exchange hybrid troubleshooting with Microsoft Edge

24th of February, 2017 / / 1 Comment

Those of you who have configured Exchange hybrid with Office 365 before know that free/busy functionality can be troublesome at times and not work correctly.
Instead of searching through Exchange logs I found that you can pin point the exact error message through Microsoft Edge to assist with troubleshooting.
To do so;

  1. Open Microsoft Edge and login to Office 365 OWA (https://outlook.office365.com/owa) with an Office 365 account
  2. Create a new meeting request
  3. Press F12 to launch developer tools
  4. Conduct a free/busy lookup on a person with a mailbox on-premises
  5. Select the Network tab
  6. Select the entry with “GetUserAvailability”devtools-getuseravailability
  7. Select the body tab (on the right hand side)
  8. The MessageText element will display the exact error messagedevtools-messagetext