I’m describing two different monitors below but others can of course be made. The only limitation is your creativity and, well, published RSS feeds. The monitors described here will require that you create an IFTTT account.

Office 365 IP Addresses

As you probably know, the IP address scopes for Office 365 change frequently, and if your firewall rules depend on known IP addresses in Office 365 it’s very important that you update those in a timely manner. To get a notification in your inbox (or whereever IFTTT supports) which, for me, works better that just a RSS subscription, create the following recipe.

Create trigger:

• This: RSS Feed
• Trigger: “New feed item”
• Feed URL: https://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-enterprises/o365ip.rss.xml

Create action

• That: Email
• Action: Send me an email
• Subject: Office 365 IP address change
• Body: Leave the default

Save recipe

Office 365 Service Health Notifications

Detailed descriptions of Office 365 service events can be found in the dashboard on your Office 365 tenant but if you want to be notified whenever there’s a new entry, create the following recipe.

Create trigger:

• This: RSS Feed
• Trigger: “New feed item” OR “New feed item matches” (to filter on specific type of events)
• Feed URL: https://rss.servicehealth.microsoftonline.com/feed/en-US/AA23D93D86BAA98841423D3CEB5FBCA5

Create action

• That: Email
• Action: Send me an email (multiple addresses or text message as option)
• Subject: Office 365 Service Health Notification
• Body: Leave the default

Save recipe

Hope you find this useful… :)

The solution here is to not use hard coded names but instead detect the name of the folder and use in in your script (or command line). To make that really simple, you can use this bit of PowerShell code:

1. $path = $user.Identity + ":\" + (Get-MailboxFolderStatistics $user.Identity | Where-Object { $_.Foldertype -eq "Calendar" } | Select-Object -First 1).Name
2. Set-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity $path -User Default -AccessRights LimitedDetails

The first line will search the MailboxFolderStatistics for folders of the type “Calendar” and return the first match.

Second line will use the variable $path to set AccessRights on the folder regardless of localization.

The $user variable could have been populated with Get-User or an input file.

Enjoy! :)

The script associated with the article can be downloaded here: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/GetLogFileUsage-8c981605

Enjoy!

I use this piece of code in pretty much all my scripts to keep track, very useful if you process large amounts of data:

   1: $i = 1

   2:  

   3: foreach ($item in $collection) {

   4:  

   5:     $pct = (($i / $collection.count)*100)

   6:     Write-Progress -activity "Processing..." -status "Progress: $([int]$pct)%" -PercentComplete $pct

   7:     

   8:     # processing stuff goes here

   9:  

  10:     $i++

  11: }

Feel free to use it wherever you want… :)

I’ve put together a small script that will automate this task given two command line arguments in the format:

.\convertUserToShared.ps1 <user@domain.com> <sec-gr-shared-mailbox-name>

Note:

Remember to assign an email address to the security group or you won’t be able to use it in Exchange Online. You may also want to hide it from the address book (set attribute: msExchHideFromAddressBook to True).

Now, to be able to perform the necessary operations you need the following plug-ins:

• Microsoft Online Services Sign-In Assistant: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=39267
• Windows Azure AD Module: https://technet.microsoft.com/library/jj151815.aspx

And I really recoomend upgrading Powershell as well:

• Powershell 3.0: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34595

Connect to Exchange Online AND Office 365 with the following syntax prior to running the script:

   1: $LiveCred = Get-Credential

   2: $Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri "https://ps.outlook.com/powershell/" -Credential $LiveCred -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection

   3: Import-PSSession $Session

   4: Connect-MsolService -Credential $LiveCred

I’ve commented directly in the source where needed, so the script should be fairly self explanatory:

   1: $count = $args.Count

   2: if ($count -lt 2) {

   3:     Write-Host

   4:     Write-Host "You need to specify username and security group as arguments: .\convertUserToShared.ps1 <username@domain.ext> <securitygroup>" -ForegroundColor Red

   5:     Write-Host

   6: }

   7: else {

   8:     $mbx = $args[0]

   9:     $secGroup = $args[1]

  10:     Write-Host Processing user: $mbx -ForegroundColor Yellow

  11:  

  12:     # Verify if group exist, remember to DirSync it first

  13:     $test = Get-Group $secGroup -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

  14:     if ($test -ne $null) {

  15:  

  16:         # Verify if mailbox exist

  17:         $test = Get-Mailbox $mbx -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

  18:         if ($test -ne $null) {

  19:     

  20:             # Do the "clever" stuff to find out if mbx is less than 4500 MB (leaves a little room up to 5 GB)

  21:             $stat = Get-MailboxStatistics $mbx

  22:             $tmp = $stat.TotalItemSize.Value.ToString().Split("(")[0].Replace(" ","")

  23:             $mb = Invoke-Expression $tmp/1MB

  24:             if ([int]$mb -lt 4500) {

  25:  

  26:                 # Setting the actual mailbox parameters

  27:                 Write-Host Converting user $mbx to shared and setting quota to 5 GB...

  28:                 Set-Mailbox -Identity $mbx -Type "Shared" -ProhibitSendReceiveQuota 5GB -ProhibitSendQuota 4.75GB -IssueWarningQuota 4.5GB

  29:  

  30:                 # Adding permissions

  31:                 Write-Host Adding permissions for $secGroup on $mbx

  32:                 Add-MailboxPermission $mbx -User $secGroup -AccessRights FullAccess

  33:                 Add-RecipientPermission $mbx -Trustee $secGroup -AccessRights SendAs -Confirm:$false

  34:  

  35:                 # Remove the license, Shared Mailboxes with a 5GB limit are free of charge

  36:                 Write-Host Removing license for $mbx

  37:                 $MSOLSKU = (Get-MSOLUser -UserPrincipalName $mbx).Licenses[0].AccountSkuId

  38:                 Set-MsolUserLicense -UserPrincipalName $mbx -RemoveLicenses $MSOLSKU

  39:                 Write-Host Done! -ForegroundColor Green

  40:  

  41:             }

  42:             else { Write-Host Mailbox is ([int]$mb) MB which is too large for conversion to a nonlicensed shared mailbox, reduce size and try again. -ForegroundColor Red }

  43:         }

  44:         else { Write-Host Mailbox: $mbx does not exist! -ForegroundColor Red    }

  45:     }

  46:     else { Write-Host Group: $secGroup does not exist! -ForegroundColor Red    }

  47: Write-Host

  48: }

Important:

If you’re synchronizing your accounts with Active Directory using DirSync (or FIM), please make sure that the following attributes are set on the modified Shared Mailbox objects in Active Directory:

msExchRemoteRecipientType = 100
msExchRecipientTypeDetails = 34359738368 (Optional but will set correct Remote Mailbox type on-prem)

If these attributes are not set correctly, you will risk that DirSync converts the cloud object back to a regular mailbox.

Note:

If you can make a regex that will do the job of line 22, you will be credited on this page! :)

I am putting together a list of common mistakes made when configuring Hybrid Deployment. Items will be added to the list as I see them or are made aware of their existence, feel free to send me suggestions.

Always use the HCW (Hybrid Configuration Wizard) when configuring Hybrid Deployment.

Admin account not mail enabled

I think that this is probably the most common mistake, especially in hosted environments where multiple people from different organizations are administrators on the the Exchange Organization.

Always mail enable Exchange Admin accounts, or the wizard may fail during Set-HybridConfiguration or Update-HybridConfiguration.

You may see errors such as: “ERROR:Updating hybrid configuration failed with error 'Subtask ValidateConfiguration execution failed: Configure Legacy Exchange Support” as a symptom of the Admin account not being mail enabled.

DNS TXT record

When running the Hybrid Configuration Wizard, you are asked to create a DNS TXT record as proof of domain ownership. Do not ignore this step, as the wizard will fail in the end.

Create the record and wait 15-20 minutes before continuing.

Three strikes and you’re out

If the Hybrid Configuration Wizard fails for any reason; troubleshoot the problem instead of just running the wizard again. If configuring a hybrid relationship fails three times, you need to wait 24 hours before trying again.

I hope this will ease your planning and troubleshooting. Enjoy…

I put together the following piece of code to simplify the operation:

$Mailboxes = Get-CASMailbox -ResultSize Unlimited | Where {$_.HasActiveSyncDevicePartnership -eq $True }
$User = $Mailboxes | %{Get-ActiveSyncDeviceStatistics -Mailbox $_.Identity} | `?{$_.DeviceImei -like "0123456789ABCDEF"}
$User | fl Mailbox, DeviceType

You can of course substitute $_.DeviceImei with $_.DeviceId if that’s what you’re looking for.

Enjoy :)

I’ve been using the example below to get “snapshots” of how a Jetstress test is going. Jetstress tests, as you know, can run for an extensive period of time before showing the final result, so it’s nice to get an indication of the result beforehand (without having to launch perfmon and adding counters etc.).

$jetstresscounters=@()

"MBX01", "MBX02", "MBX03" | % {
$jetstresscounters+= "\\$_\MSExchange Database(JetstressWin)\I/O Database Reads Average Latency"
$jetstresscounters+= "\\$_\MSExchange Database(JetstressWin)\I/O Log Writes Average Latency"
}
Get-Counter -Counter $jetstresscounters -ErrorAction:SilentlyContinue -MaxSamples 1 -SampleInterval 1

The example will read one sample of each counter from each of the servers (can be executed remote) and present the result when all counters have been read.

Increase MaxSamples to get more samples for each counter and SampleInterval to have the samples further apart. Notice that this of course will increase the run time of the script.

Hope you will find it useful in your deployment and testing.

Thanks to Bo Eschricht for idea and creative coding…

To automate this, use Powershell to parse and edit the file for you, as shown in the example below. Non-default installation path is used, so modify to suit your needs. The same code can be used when updating web.config or other configuration files.

$TransportConfig = "\D$\Exchange\Bin\EdgeTransport.exe.config"

$FullServerName = “server1.contoso.com”

$newcontent = ""

$RemoteFile = "\\" + $FullServerName + $TransportConfig
(Get-Content $RemoteFile) | Foreach-Object {
    $line = $_
    if ($line -like "*QueueDatabasePath*") {$line = '      <add key="QueueDatabasePath" value = "E:\Exchange\TransportRoles\data\Queue" />' }
    if ($line -like "*QueueDatabaseLoggingPath*") {$line = '      <add key="QueueDatabaseLoggingPath" value = "E:\Exchange\TransportRoles\data\Queue" />'}
    if ($line -like "*TemporaryStoragePath*") {$line = '      <add key="TemporaryStoragePath" value = "E:\Exchange\TransportRoles\data\Temp" />'}
    $newcontent += $line + [char]13 + [char]10
}
Set-Content $RemoteFile $newcontent

Hope this will save you some time configuring Exchange.

The really easy way, which is not very well documented in the Office 365 documentation is simply:

https://outlook.com/contoso.com

Needless to say, you have to replace the “contoso.com” part with your own domain… Another advantage is that this URL will take you directly to your inbox instead of the common landing page.

Don’t forget to sign out, if you’re accessing your mail account from a public computer.

Happy emailing!