Boom Boom, I am back with my 5th blog, this blog is for Microsoft Partners who uses Office365 Partner Portal to manage their clients. Trust me with Office365 Partner Portal managing client have become very simplified and we are getting lots of positive feedback for the same.

However, with my support experience most of the partner they don't know that they can manage their client using powershell as well. Below is the listed commands which you can use to manage your clients using powershell

Below powershell will help you to connect and manage Exchange Online for your client using Office365 Partner Admin Center credentials.

How to connect to Exchange Online PowerShell for your client using Office365 Partner Admin Center credentials.

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$LiveCred = Get-Credential

$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/PowerShell-LiveID?DelegatedOrg=<tenantname>.onmicrosoft.com -Credential $LiveCred -Authentication Basic –AllowRedirection

Import-PSSession $Session

For example:

$LiveCred = Get-Credential

(Here it would prompt for username and password user your Office365 Partner Admin Center credentials.)

 $Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/PowerShell-LiveID?DelegatedOrg=santp365.onmicrosoft.com -Credential $LiveCred -Authentication Basic –AllowRedirection

Import-PSSession $Session

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How to connect to Windows Azure Active Directory Module for PowerShell. Below is the commands:

Connect-MSOLservice –Credential $livecred

And below :

$MSOLTenantid = (get-msolpartnercontract -domain <name.onmicrosoft.com>).tenantid.guid

In this example I am trying to connect my test tenant i.e. santp365.onmicrosoft.com using my Office365 Partner Admin Center credentials.

Connect-MSOLservice –Credential $livecred

(Here it would prompt for username and password user your Office365 Partner Admin Center credentials.)

$MSOLTenantid = (get-msolpartnercontract -domain santp365.onmicrosoft.com).tenantid.guid

Note: This only works if your clients are part of your Office365 Partner Admin Center.

After this blog I believe most of the partner would have like to have access to Office365 Partner Admin Center. You can contact Microsoft Partner Network team to get access to Office365 Partner Admin Center.

I hope above steps will help many Partners to effectively manage their client in Office365 using powershell.

Regards,

Santp.

Did anybody missed me and my blog's. I will take it as yes :), Yes I am back with my 4th blog. This time it is about

"Bulk White-listing in Transport Rule."

We have scenario where we have more 100 of Domain or IP or Email address which we wanted to white-list. How to achieve the same. Please find the powershell command which we can use to achieve it.

 How to whitelist multiple Domains.

• Create a csv file were you add all your domain name in a column. Attached is the snapshots for the same.              

• Connect to exchange online powershell

• Run the below commands

• $csv = import-csv "C:\Users\santoshp\Desktop\domainlist.csv"

• new-transportrule "domainlist" -senderdomainIs $csv.domain -setscl -1

• "domainlist" is the name of Transport Rule.

   

How to white-list multiple IP address.

• Create a csv file were you add all your domain name in a column. Attached is the snapshots for the same.

• Connect to exchange online powershell

• Run the below commands

• $csv = import-csv "C:\Users\santoshp\Desktop\IP.csv"

• New-TransportRule "IP address" -SenderIpRanges $csv.IP -SetSCL -1

How to whitelist multiple email address.

• Create a csv file were you add all your domain name in a column. Attached is the snapshots for the same.

• Connect to exchange online powershell

• Run the below commands

• $csv = import-csv "C:\Users\santoshp\Desktop\email.csv"

• New-TransportRule "Senders" -AnyOfRecipientAddressContainsWords $csv.Email -SetSCL -1

I hope above steps will help many admin's to add bulk Domain, IP address & recipient to Transport rule.

Regards,

Santp.

I am back with my 3rd blog and this blog is primarily with testing SMTP relay with Office365 for that matter this testing can be used against any email applications which does SMTP relay.

I would primarily concentrate with Office365 SMTP relay. There have been scenario with me while troubleshooting SMTP relay I really wanted some reliable tool to troubleshoot issue from customer machine or network. 

• Telnet works awesome if your SMTP server is Office365 MX record.
• If you use Office365 SMTP server i.e. smtp.office365.com on telnet it does not work because authentication is mandatory and for some reason I was not able to make authentication work in Telnet

After lots of research and brainstorming I was able to get awesome reliable tool i.e. PowerShell (which is installed on most of the windows machine). I am going to share the step which I used to test customer's scenario.

How to test SMTP server using PowerShell.

This command is to drop email using SMTP server

$msolcred = get-credential | save the credential of from address

Send-MailMessage –From user@domain.com –To user@hotmail.com –Subject “Test Email” –Body “Test SMTP Relay Service” -SmtpServer smtp.office365.com -Credential $msolcred -UseSsl -Port 587

This command is to drop email using MX records

Send-MailMessage –From user@domain.com –To user@hotmail.com –Subject “Test Email” –Body “Test SMTP Relay Service” -SmtpServer domain.mail.protection.outlook.com 

I hope above steps will help many admin's to affectively troubleshoot and test SMTP relay server against Office365 or any SMTP email servers.

Regards,

Santp.

I am back with my 2nd blog and this blog covers myth around SPAM notifications Email.

Exchange Online Protection, is been great product to support because of integration with Exchange 2013, however it missed this important feature called End-user Spam Notification email. Let me correct myself this feature was there but it was not effective

However recent upgrade ensured end-user SPAM notification is effective and it is functioning. Additionally, EOP Spam Notification email is quite improvised as compared to FOPE. Out of everything, this update ensured administrator is freed from managing quarantine mailbox for end users.

Additionally, we can configure Spam Notifications for 1 days (by default it is 3 days), Advantage end user can proactively manage their SPAM Quarantine mailbox themselves proactively.

However, my document titled “Myth” now what is that myth which we wanted to know. Myth revolves around SPAM notification frequency for 1 day, There is bit of confusion with administrator i.e. If you set SPAM notification email frequency to 1 day you expect it to come every day and there is complain from end user who states it comes every 2 days.

Technically, when you set SPAM notification email to 1 day it makes changes to the system in the backend, however the working of Spam notification email is bit different.

By default @ background there is Spam notification clock running which would check the Spam emails and will send SPAM notification email to end user, when you set SPAM notification to 1 day by design it would check SPAM emails every 24 hours and check for new SPAM emails in subsequent 24 hours and it would SPAM notification emails to end users. Let’s understand this with example.

For Example:

Let’s assume Spam notification email is checked@ 09:00 AM by system, by its functionality It would send SPAM notification email to end user for all SPAM email received till 09:00 AM. However any email which is came after 09:00 AM will be sent next days and this functionality of SPAM notification email is by design.

Above part is actually myth and many administrator would be having confusion about it. I hope I was able to make the myth clear around it.

Links:

https://blogs.office.com/2013/09/19/manage-spam-notifications-with-exchange-online-protection/

Regards,

Santp

If you are wondering how to get a copy of Office 2013 (ProPlus) via Office365, so that administrator's can deploy it more than 1 computer and simultaneously save network bandwidth (because as of now setup is streamed to Click-to-Run exe which in return downloads the required files)

Please find the simplified steps for Office365 ProPlus Deployment for more than one computer. Note: This steps have been tested in Lab environment, however we recommend you to test the same before you implement on production.

   1)   Download Office Deployment tool for Click to Run, once you run this tool it would extract 2 files I.e.

         a)  Setup.exe: This file would be responsible to do 1 time download of Office 2013 installation required files as well as to trigger installation on end users machine.

         b)  Configuration Files: It is an XML file which will play important role for Downloading Office 2013 setup file as well as while installing on client machine.

    2)   Editing Configuration file (1.B) as per you’re requirement, Note: By Default this XML file is dummy, we have to ensure that we configure it properly. Configuration is very simple. You have to make a note of 2 points in configuration XML

          a)  Share drive location which will be available for all the end users.

          b)  Which bit of operating system it is.

          c)  By Passing EULA screen for end users.

          Note: In Configuration file there are other parameters like Logging, Update Installations and Property name. You can go in details about this parameter in below link: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219423.aspx

          This is how my test configuration XML looks. I have highlighted IMPORTANT points which need to be noted.

    3)  This steps would be about downloading required files for Office 2013 installation. This is one time download and pretty simple. Please find the screenshot for the same.

          a) Navigate to the drive where you have downloaded: Office Deployment tool for Click to Run and run the command as per screenshot:

          Setup.exe /download

    Note: Configuration file play very vital role for download, reason your configuration file have information about bit and accordingly the setup would be downloaded, please check my point 2C, very important point to be noted.

    4) Finally we are all set, with configuration and downloaded. It is time to test our Office 2013 Deployment.

        a) Login to the machine were you wanted to deploy Office2013.

        b) Open Command Prompt and run the following command:

         \\SERVER\SHARE\SETUP.exe /configure \\SERVER\SHARE\DEPLOY.xml where Deploy.xml is configuration file.

Finally, Our Office 2013 centralized deployment steps is been simplified. My above work is been tested on my test environment and lot of references are been used.

I would like to highlight few references which helped me to write my blog:

System requirements for Office 365 ProPlus
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg998766.aspx#Reqs 

Deploy Click-to-Run for Office 365 products by using the Office Deployment Tool\
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219423.aspx#DeployProcedure 

Remove or update Click-to-Run for Office 365 products                
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219423.aspx#RemoveUpdate 

Click-to-Run Configuration.xml quick reference
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219426.aspx#BKMK_QuickReference   

64-bit editions of Office 2013
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee681792.aspx 

Thanks for Reading,
Santp,
I have a Cloud Power.