John Policelli's Blog

Covering Identity and Access Solutions, Unified Communications, Collaboration, and Infrastructure

Tag Archives: Office 365

Hybrid Free Busy Troubleshooter

Microsoft has released the Hybrid Free Busy Troubleshooter. A Hybrid Deployment consists of an on-premises Exchange server environment that has at least one Exchange 2010 or Exchange 2013 server. In this environment there is also a DirSync (Directory Synchronization) server, and in many cases, a deployment of ADFS (Active Directory Federation Services) to provide single sign-on capabilities to the users. The idea of the hybrid environment is to allow two separate organizations (Exchange Online and Exchange On-Premises) to feel like one organization.

Free Busy is the most commonly used “feature set” in a hybrid deployment. According to Microsoft, if you were to resolve issues with Free Busy lookups, many of the other potential issues you have with your hybrid deployment would be resolved as well.

The Free Busy Troubleshooter can be found at http://aka.ms/hybridfreebusy.

Office 365 Outlook Connectivity Troubleshooter

Microsoft has released the Office 365 Outlook Connectivity Guided Walkthrough, which is designed to enable you to isolate and resolve any connectivity or performance issues with Outlook clients connectivity to an Office 365 mailbox.

The guided walkthrough supports the following types of mailboxes:

  • User mailbox
  • Archive mailbox
  • Shared mailbox

For each type of mailbox, the guided walkthrough also presents different types of issues.

The Office 365 Outlook Connectivity Troubleshooter can be found here http://aka.ms/outlookconnectivity.

New Office 365 Tenant Reports

The next release of Office 365 includes new tenant reports focusing on Mail, Protection, and DLP. A complete list of available reports, and description, can be found here. The following is a list of the available reports:

  • Mailbox login activity
  • New and deleted mailboxes
  • New and deleted groups
  • Filtered inbound mail
  • Filtered outbound mail
  • Inbound malware detection summary
  • Outbound malware detection summary
  • Outbound suspicious filtering summary
  • Inbound rule summary
  • Outbound rule summary
  • Inbound DLP summary
  • Outbound DLP summary

The New Microsoft Connectivity Analyzer Tool

image

Microsoft has released a downloadable version of the Remote Connectivity Analyzer website, called Microsoft Connectivity Analyzer. This tool is a companion tool to the Remote Connectivity Analyzer website. The Remote Connectivity Analyzer website enables IT Administrators to pinpoint connectivity issues by simulating connectivity from a location outside the customer environment. However, the new Microsoft Connectivity Analyzer lets both email users and IT administrators run the same tests within the user’s environment.

These allow you to identify connectivity issues that occur between email clients and a server that is running Microsoft Exchange Server. The tools can also be used to identify connectivity issues between email clients and Office 365. The tools simulate several client logon and mail flow scenarios. When a test fails, many of the errors message provide troubleshooting tips to help the user or IT Administrator to resolve the problem.

The Microsoft Connectivity Analyzer can be downloaded here. The Remote Connectivity Analyzer website can be found here.

New Policy for Inactive Migration Batches

1108.office%20365%20new.png-100x100

Microsoft is introducing a new policy for migration batches in Exchange Online/Office 365. The new policy applies to active migration batches with a status of “Synced” that have no administrator-initiated activity for the last 90 days. These migration batches will be stopped, and then deleted 30 days later if no further activity is taken by the administrator (stopping and restarting a migration batch or editing a migration batch).

.Full details on this new policy can be found here.

Understanding Office 365 ProPlus Client Deployment Scenarios

1108.office%20365%20new.png-100x100

Office 365 ProPlus offers flexible software delivery options to suit organizations of all sizes and desktop service architectures. From small businesses where users often install their own software, to large enterprises where hundreds of applications are centrally delivered by the IT department to every user, Office 365 ProPlus installation adapts to your processes and workflows.

The Office 365 Preview blog has a post that outlines the client deployment options, which can be found here.

Comparison of how Availability is Calculated in Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps

The Why Microsoft blog has an interesting article that details the difference in how availability is calculated in Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps. The article focuses on seven important criteria in considering cloud service availability, and compares how each is calculated in Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps. The seven criteria include: 

  1. Percentage of users affected by an issue  
  2. Which customers are used in calculating availability  
  3. Services reflected in the availability calculation  
  4. Number of cloud services covered by the Service Level Agreement  
  5. Number of cloud service outages across a range of providers  
  6. Amount of resources the provider invests in delivery  
  7. Amount and timing of customer remedy for any lost productivity  

In my opinion, the calculations used for Google Apps Availability are heavily skewed in Google’s favor, rather than valuing the customer. 
 
 
The article can be read here.

Lync 2010 Mobility and Mobile Clients

Anyone following Lync should know by now that Microsoft (finally) released a Lync 2010 client for Windows Phone today. Microsoft also officially announced that Lync 2010 clients for iPhone, iPad, Android, and Nokia Symbian have been submitted for approval to their respective app stores. Availability can be tracked here. 

The Lync 2010 mobile clients combine instant messaging, conferencing, and calling features in a single application that’s both familiar to Lync users and optimized for mobile productivity.

The Lync 2010 clients can be used to connect to on-premise deployments of Lync Server 2010 or Lync Online in Office 365, both of which require some configuration before mobile clients can connect.

To allow mobile clients to connect to Lync Online in Office 365, you will need to add a DNS CNAME entry for Lync mobile devices, which is covered here.

To allow mobile clients to connect to an on-premise deployment of Lync Server 2010, you will need to install cumulative update for Lync Server 2010: November 2011, and then enable Mobility, which is covered here.

DIY Troubleshooting Support Tool for Office 365 Released

Microsoft has released a DIY Troubleshooting Support Tool for Office 365. The DIY Troubleshooter offers a refined set of options to guide you to a resolution as quickly and painlessly as possible. The Troubleshooter pinpoints key technical support issues and provides immediate solutions without the need to post questions to the community or submit a support request ticket. The tool’s cool and modern interface conveniently displays hundreds of possible help and support assets (i.e. Help topics, KB articles, videos, wikis, blog posts) from within the Office 365 suite. As you move through a list of troubleshooting options, the tool dynamically displays funneled-down content to lead you towards the answers you need. The DYI Troubleshooter is available for Office 365 for professionals and small businesses and for Office 365 for enterprises and can be found here.

Explanation of Service Availability in Office 365

Kumar Venkateswar, a senior product manager on the Office 365 Technical Product Management team, explains Service Availability in Office 365 in a post on the Office 365 Technical Blog. His post covers the availability features that distinguish Office 365 from on-premises systems that are based on Exchange 2010 Server, SharePoint 2010 Server, and Lync 2010 Server. Office 365 provides these high availability features:

Continue reading →

Office Web App Integration with Outlook Web App in Exchange Online

Microsoft has introduced an update to OWA in Exchange Online that now integrates the Office Web Apps into the attachment previewing experience for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. Along with continued PDF support, this means Exchange Online users get high-fidelity previews of Office documents on the web, in exactly the same format they were created.

Click on the “Open as web page” link you see next to Office document attachments to start using this feature in Exchange Online today.