Tony Redmond

PowerShell Critical for Office 365 Although the Microsoft Graph is gaining popularity as the method for automating administrative processes for Office 365 workloads, there’s no doubt that PowerShell remains the most common automation tool. The two approaches can be mixed to create solutions when neither is quite good enough and Microsoft is still working on…

The Joy of Seeing Everyone In June, Brad discussed the need for Teams to match the 7 x 7 grid view supported by Zoom. It’s a competitive need not to be perceived as a laggard in the video conferencing space at a time when home working makes remote conferences a necessity. Simply put, it’s cool…

Melding Teams at Work with Your Personal Life On June 22, Microsoft launched the preview of the much-awaited consumer iteration of Teams, which you can access through the Teams iOS and Android apps. Microsoft’s hope is that the millions of people who use Teams at work will make the leap to embrace Teams for their…

Slow Progress Towards Office 365 Compliance and Data Governance For years, I have been mildly to harshly critical of Yammer’s inability to march in the same step as the rest of Office 365, particularly in data governance and compliance. Much has been promised, but the delivery has been slow, even in Microsoft’s self-proclaimed “Year of…

Old Exchange Online Admin Center Due for Replacement You might have noticed that the Exchange Online Admin Center (EAC) is showing its age. Compared to the other workload admin centers in Office 365, EAC is positively creaking at the seams, much like myself. At the Ignite 2019 conference, Microsoft said that they are working on…

Office 365 Licensing Should be Part of Operational Reviews Many businesses are conducting operational reviews because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Previous standards, like the need for people to turn up in an office every day, have gone by the wayside as remote working becomes the new normal. Companies with Office 365 tenants should consider their…

Microsoft Forces More Artificial Intelligence onto Office 365 Tenants On May 13, Microsoft issued Office 365 notification MC212676 to inform tenants that a new Cortana daily briefing email was coming, saying: “The Briefing email from Cortana helps users start their day on track by surfacing information on upcoming meetings and outstanding tasks as well as…

ISVs are sometimes criticized because their backup products don’t do a great job of handling Office 365 data. That might be true, but the real issue is the lack of APIs delivered by Microsoft. The available APIs are rooted in an on-premises heritage and don’t cover apps like Teams which knit together multiple cloud components. Future developments will increase the challenge.

The Graph is the Source for Report Data The usage reports available in the Microsoft 365 admin center give a reasonable picture of user activity within a tenant. However, they don’t deliver the kind of flexibility that a customized report can provide. Given that the data comes from the Microsoft Graph, it seems reasonable to…

A New Start for Exchange PowerShell Last November, Microsoft announced a refresh of the Exchange Online PowerShell module at the Ignite 2019 conference. The big change was the introduction of nine cmdlets built on REST APIs to replace older cmdlets like Get-Mailbox and Get-MailboxStatistics. These cmdlets have been part of Exchange PowerShell since its introduction…

Know Data to Protect Data On May 14, Microsoft announced that discovery and review capabilities for labeled data and sensitive data types were generally available in the Microsoft 365 Compliance Center. Microsoft calls this “know your data,” part of their Information Protection and Governance framework. The idea is that if you understand your data, you…

Office 365 tenants often want to journal email from Exchange Online mailboxes. Things become a little more complicated when protected email is involved, but Exchange can decrypt protected messages and create journal reports with attachments containing the original encrypted message and a decrypted copy. That should be enough for journaling systems to process the journal reports and import messages into their repositories.