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OWA now boasts a useful mailbox option, which is helpful if you feel that you need to remove some old and lingering email. The funny thing is that Microsoft doesn’t seem to have told anyone about the feature – or my search-karma is failing me in finding any information about it.

In this Ask the Admin, Russell Smith looks at Microsoft SQL Server 2017 being available for the first time on Windows, Linux, and Docker and what this means for DevOps and database admins.

Microsoft has updated its Surface Book family to include updated internals like a quad-core processor and also a new 15in model.

Based on user feedback and a horrible year of change management missteps, Microsoft is changing the way it handles major updates for Office 365. The plan seems like it might work and let’s hope that it does. No one wants to experience the same kind of update surprises we have seen in 2017.

I have known about Azure File Sync for quite a while under NDA and have been itching to start talking about it. It’s a killer service that an incredible number of businesses could benefit from.

Because autumn is in the air, this edition of Short Takes looks at Microsoft’s new Amazon partnership, Windows phone is dead again, a new privacy problem, and much more.

In today’s Ask the Admin, I’ll look at Microsoft’s recommendations for securing Active Directory forests using its Enhanced Security Administrative Environment model.

Office 365 continues to grow strongly but all the added users (and tenants) do not seem to have impacted the reliability of the service, at least not measured by performance against the guaranteed 99.9% SLA for availability. Incidents do steal minutes away from users, but not enough to make a difference.

In this Ask the Admin, Russell Smith provides a brief overview of Microsoft’s Azure Confidential Computing technology and looks at how it might help persuade otherwise hesitant organizations to move sensitive data to the cloud.

Google announced Cloud Firestore, a fully-managed NoSQL document database that is designed to easily store and sync app and website data at global scale.

Adding a secondary administrator to OneDrive For Business in Office 365 is a very common ask for an Office 365 Administrator. Fortunately, this task can be achieved in at least 4 different ways as this article describes.

Microsoft clarified what AAD features need premium licenses at Ignite. Tenants need many of those features to control Office 365 Groups and Teams, and some of the listed features are surprising. Did you know that the group creation policy is a premium feature? Or adding a default classification. The chosen set of features seems odd, but at least Microsoft is now clear about what you must license.