Month: February 2014

Microsoft Training and Certification Guide

This is a cool new app from Microsoft, that makes it really easy to find information about available certifications, and what level they have.

Cert Paths

http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/nb-no/app/microsoft-training-and/cebcb8be-d6c0-48dd-bace-1a916f3f5f12

It’s free, so the best way to get to know it is to just install it 🙂

Office 365 Message Encryption is here

They notified us in November last year, and today it has entered GA. The Office 365 Message Encryption is here.

It improves a lot in security, and gives you some nifty new solutions.

Here is a link collection describing it

Can’t wait to try it out

Use Rights Management Services with Office 365 Small and Midsize Business

Microsofts own Office 365 Service Description says no! How is that even possible?
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office-365-administration.aspx

Well listen up. There is this cool, free feature from Microsoft named Rights Management Services (RMS) for individuals, and there is even a whole TechNet page about it.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn592127.aspx

The RMS for Individuals gives you some of the rights you would get from the full implementation you would get in the enterprise versions. At least the possibility to set sharing, reading and editing locks on a document.

In this example, I have a Windows 8.1 Enterprise client, running an Office 365 ProPlus installation from my Office 365 Small Business Premium subscription. So far, nothing new.

Then, I go to https://portal.aadrm.com where I’m presented with a signup page.

There I simply type inn my email address from my Office 365 subscription and hit Get started. The service checks my account, before I get a message that my organization might already have an account for me. OK, that’s nice, so I click Next

Then I’m redirected to a more known webpage. It’s the signing page for Microsoft Online. I type inn my credentials, and click Sign in.

Then I get a page saying that they are preparing my account, and finally I’m on a page with some download options. I’m on a Computer running Windows, so I click the Windows symbol.

I’m then asked if a want to save or open. I can not belive that I will need to run this again, so I just click Open.

And the result is that I have a Explorer Window with a whole bunch of language named folders, and at the bottom a setup.exe file. My guest is to run that one, so I do.

Accept the UAC by clicking Yes, and a Setup Microsoft RMS window pops up. It’s first one of those classical Welcome screens telling us what will happen now. Click Next.

Now it’s Setting up Microsoft RMS, and to complete, I need to Restart. I do so.

Now, as my computer has restarted, it is time to try out the beauty. Start by opening for example Word 2013. And there, right in the middle of the screen. A new button named Share Protected.

Let us make a document. Type something and save the document on your computer. Then click the new button.

A new Window pops up, and ask you for your credentials. Type your Office 365 account details, and click OK.

This window popped up a few times for me, before I had the RMS client started.

Fill the form as you like, type some one’s email address in the Users field, and click Send. A Outlook New Message window opens, and you could customize the text a bit first, or just click Send as I did.

Now, when the receiver opens the document, he or she are able to see the content, read it and do whatever else you allowed I the previous window. Anything else, simply fail. Your document is safe.

Quickly add license option for all your users in Office 365

Just a simple PowerShell one liner for adding a new license pack for all your users in Office 365. Quite handy while in trial, and you just added for example the CRM Online pack.

First connect to Microsoft Online using PowerShell, and run Get-MsolAccountSku

That should return something like this

PS C:\Users\Anders> Get-MsolAccountSku

AccountSkuId          ActiveUnits     WarningUnits    ConsumedUnits
------------          -----------     ------------    -------------
aeb07:CRMSTANDARD     25              0               0
aeb07:ENTERPRISEPACK  25              0               24

Then simply run this command, and replace AccountSkuId, with the ID from the table above

Get-MsolUser | where {$_.isLicensed -eq $true} | Set-MsolUserLicense -AddLicenses "AccountSkuId"

This command simply gets all users in Office 365, and select only those who are licensed today, and then add the license. You can filter as you like in the where statement.

How to add permission for a mailbox folder in Exchange using PowerShell

This post is inspired from a question I answered over at the Microsoft Online Services Forum at TechNet.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/msonline/en-US/a1e21764-0c10-4e6b-94e6-fd5df5df1ed2/how-to-add-multiple-users-permissions-to-a-calendar-using-powershell?forum=onlineservicesexchange#dcd3af6e-7f50-4faf-9da8-cbe6d905d7a3

The case was something like this.

I have an organization that was recently setup in Exchange Online and they have unique circumstances in that every user in the organization needs “reviewer” access to every other users calendars.  I cannot change the default permission since new users added after this should not be able to see these calendars details.

Lets use PowerShell and prepare for such a deployment.

First I create two security groups. One containing the users that will have their mailboxes shared, and on that has access to these mailboxes. The names I have used there is complete conceptual, so in your production environment you probably your name them a bit more specific.

New-DistributionGroup -Type Security -Name "SG Users With Shared Calendar" -Alias "SG-Users-With-Shared-Calendar"
New-DistributionGroup -Type Security -Name "SG Users With Access To Shared Calendar" -Alias "SG-Users-With-Access-To-Shared-Calendar"

Then, we need to add the affected mailboxes to their respective groups. I just used Exchange admin center for this task, but there is of course possible to do the same using PowerShell and the Add-DistributionGroupMember CMDlet

Next single liner command to run is to give the second group access to the first groups calendar.

Get-DistributionGroupMember -Identity "SG Users With Shared Calendar" | foreach {Add-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity "$($_.Name):\Calendar" -User "SG-Users-With-Access-To-Shared-Calendar" -AccessRights Reviewer}

If you check the permission for a calendar owned by one of the users in the first group, you will see that it’s shared with our last security group

The script and way to solve this could of course be mixed up with both security groups and users to achieve the exact desired configuration, and apply to both Exchange Online and Exchange on-premises.

Below you find links to all the PowerShell CMDlets used in this post