Tony Redmond

Microsoft has made a big thing about the one-click option in the Exchange Online Administration Center (EAC) to convert a traditional email distribution group to an Office 365 Group. However, the option only works for groups that consist of Exchange Online mailboxes.

Tony Redmond explores some things he found out or explored during the week, including a solid DLP roadmap for Office 365, how BMC Remedy creates incident tickets from DLP audit events, that Veeam now offers a backup for Exchange Online, how QUADROtech’s ADAM plans to drag public folders into the 21st century, and more.

Office 365 Groups occupy a special place in Microsoft’s collaboration strategy. The link-up between Yammer and Groups was the headline news for some, but a lot of other facts were revealed at the Ignite conference, mostly around operational improvements to help tenants manage groups better. Here’s some of what occurred.

There’s lots to hear and learn about with regard to Office 365 at the Microsoft Ignite conference in Atlanta this week. All of the product groups are putting their best face forward to impress and amaze customers with what has happened or what will happen inside the service. Here’s some of what I have been hearing.

Yammer and Office 365 take two very different approaches to collaboration, but both exist inside Office 365. Although slow in coming, Microsoft has finally given details about how Yammer and Office 365 Groups will connect to each other. AAD is the glue and SharePoint, notebooks, plans, and calendars are the common functionality available to both types of groups.

An exhausting first day at Ignite brought lots of Office 365 news. Surprisingly, the number of Office 365 MAU hasn’t grown, at least not publicly, and confirmation arrived that the Outlook apps now run in the Microsoft Cloud. Lots of focus on using intelligence to repel threats. MyAnalytics arrived, and Exchange 2016 CU3 embraced the Outlook REST API.

The world of Office 365 is ever-changing. This week my attention was distracted by the inability of the Admin Center to report unlicensed accounts, a Watson dump in an ActiveSync cmdlet, some interesting data about the number of Office 365 users affected by outages as revealed through an API, and more odd entries in the Audit Log. Thankfully Ignite is next week and nothing will happen.

With all the focus and attention paid to Office 365, you’d be forgiven for assuming that not much happens in the world of on-premises software. Microsoft will support Exchange 2016 until 2025 and has to maintain the software through patches and updates until then. Exchange 2013 isn’t forgotten either. New cumulative updates are available for the two servers. Cue excitement all round.

Ignite is fast approaching and I have an impossible schedule at the event, so I’ll be viewing a lot of Channel 9 videos afterward.

Inactive mailboxes are only available inside Exchange Online and don’t exist outside Office 365. Litigation or in-place holds keep inactive but soft-deleted mailboxes in a state in which their data is easily accessible for compliance and recordkeeping purposes.