• How to check emails go through Safe Attachment module and defense of Zero Day Attack does work;
• How to be confident that feature Safe Link works successfully;
• How to set up exclusions to disable Safe Attachments or Safe Links based on flexible conditions;
• Considerations regarding Dynamic Delivery in Safe Attachments;
• How to make a live demo of Safe Attachments or Safe Links

• Goto the Exchange Admin Center.
• Select the mail flow link in the left nav
• Select rules from the top nav
• Select the + icon to add a new rule
• From the pull down menu select create a new rule…
• At the bottom of the new rule dialog, select More Options… to expand the dialog to all option.
• Under Apply this rule if… chose The sender is located… and then Inside the organization
• Under Do the following… chose Modify the message properties… and set message header

• Click the Enter text… link to the right of Set the message header.
• To skip Safe Attachments enter:
  • X-MS-Exchange-Organization-SkipSafeAttachmentProcessing
• To skip Safe Links enter:
  • X-MS-Exchange-Organization-SkipSafeLinksProcessing
• Then click Enter text…  next to to the value
• And enter 1 and click OK.

The Business subscriptions as well as E1 - that’s where you will find the Plan 1. E3 and above has Plan 2 included, which now gives you initial 5 TB cloud storage (if you need more, you can contact support to get it). You should also remember that SharePoint online Plan 2 includes the OneDrive Plan 2 - so you also get 5 TB. OneDrive for Business service description

Other differences between two plans:

• data loss prevention (only in P2),
• Compliance features - eDiscovery hold and export, preservation hold library (P2 only),
• Ranking models (also only in P2).

You should also be aware of the limits in SharePoint, which apply to personal sites (so - OneDrive for users): SharePoint Online software boundaries and limits

The above are the much more general ones, but what you should really care about are the limits for sync applications. Right now there are two applications available - the classic client (groove.exe) and the new generation sync client (onedrive.exe). The default is the first option, but you can always check what you are using (See - Which OneDrive sync client am I using? )

As the name suggest - the classic one has much more strict limits, than the new client. The biggest differences: File size limit for syncing - 2gb vs 10gb, Number of items that can be synced - 20000 (in OneDrive library) vs 30 million - worth noting that groove can only sync 5k elements from SharePoint library.

So why don't we use the new client by default? The biggest downside is that new client (the global availability version) DOES NOT support syncing the SharePoint libraries locally (for now, so 5th on January). HOWEVER - this feature is available in the preview - see below site for more info on how to test this: Get started syncing SharePoint sites with the new OneDrive sync client Preview

It should be GA very soon, so check yourself whether this option is available already!

If you need more information about the limits (file types, invalid characters etc.) see the links below:

• OneDrive for Business classic (groove.exe)
• New generation sync client (onedrive.exe)

REMEMBER - you can install these two clients side-by-side! So if you need the SP library sync option, but you cannot use the preview version of new sync client - you are free to use groove.exe for SP libraries.

In the future (or maybe now already) most of us will want to migrate to new client. There are already guides available on how to do this: Transition from the previous OneDrive for Business sync client

And also

Get started with the new OneDrive sync client in Windows Important! New sync client is also available on MAC!

As of 16th of December 2016 the OneDrive for Business portal is available in preview to First Release customers. You can finally administrate this feature in a very similar way that you do with Exchange or SharePoint. See the announcement blog to learn more: Announcement: New OneDrive Admin Center Preview

And that’s basically it - the OneDrive for Business is very useful to keep all the documents you work with in one place. You can sync them from your local work laptop and access them basically anywhere with internet connection.

If you have any questions - let us know. See you in cloud!

Cheers,

Kuba

So to start things up - what are the licensing options for SfB Online? You could go with standalone or with a subscription that would include that product. So what's available at the moment:

Standalones:

• Skype for Business Online Plan 1
• Skype for Business Online Plan 2

And skype comes as a part of several other subscriptions...

Business:

• Business Essentials
• Business Premium

Enterprise:

• Enterprise E1
• Enterprise E3
• Enterprise E5

Additional to that there is offer for Education, Government and non-profit organizations, but let's focus on traditional model for today.

So - what is the difference between the plans? It is easy to see when we look at one particular source - service description:

Skype for Business Online service description

To sum up - what you get with P2, that is not available in P1:

• Sharing - Desktop sharing, Application sharing, file transfers, video-based sharing (unless they are invited by Plan 2 user for the desktop, application and video-based sharing)
• SfB Online meetings - basically everything available in P2, nothing in P1 (see the link above to check details)

How it stands with subscriptions - it used to be considered very simple - P1 for Business/E1 plans and P2 for the other. Unfortunately it changed a little bit as well. I will not showcase all the differences here, but to pinpoint few most important features:

• The SfB Online meetings that are unavailable in P1? - available in Business plans and Enterprise plans (except for PSTN Conferencing add-in which I will explain later).
• Skype Meeting broadcast - only in Enterprise at the moment.
• Voice options - a lot of differences here, if you plan to deploy hybrid - you should really focus on this part.
• Archiving - that actually depends on whether or not you have Exchange Online with archiving or not.

And that’s pretty much it. However - not quite… All the plans (both standalones and subscription packs) support all the clients, BUT not all the plans have all the clients. What am I talking about? Check the note at the top of the standalone comparison table:

In short - we support the Skype for Business full client, but do not provide it in that subscription (same with Business subscriptions!). Oh, I might have forgot - there is not only one client for SfB - there are several :)

So what kind of clients are available? Well, we mostly differentiate between two (not counting the web apps) - the SfB Full client and Basic client. To get the full client you basically need to subscribe to one of the Enterprise plans - E3/E5 or a standalone ProPlus ( so the Office application pack). For everyone else, that is SfB standalone, business plans and E1 subscribers - you can get Skype For Business Basic.

So what are the differences there? Mostly voice support. Unfortunately the links on the TechNet site are sometimes taking us to old comparison table. Fear not - there is table for the new versions available!

Client comparison table Skype for Business

Biggest differences (apart from voice support I mentioned already):

… Pretty much nothing. You still get the audio/video calls or conferences. You can send and receive IMs, check the status of others and send files.

This is really important as I have been asked few times already "why we cannot use full client" while a lot of you do not need the features in the full client. This of course does not apply to people who deploy voice within their companies.

So we have talked about the licenses and clients. What is left - add-ons. At the moment you have few options:

• PSTN Conferencing
• Cloud PBX
• PSTN Calling - which is kind of an add-on to cloud pbx add-on (available only in US, Puerto Rico, UK and recently also in France).

You can check what is what in the hyperlinks above, but a short intro - PSTN Conf enables you to connect to ongoing conference using your mobile phone, Cloud PBX is basically a phone system and PSTN Calling - connecting SfB to line phones without the on premise infrastructure.

So what add-ons are available for what subscription? Check the link below:

Skype for Business Online add-ons

With PSTN Conferencing - available for all Enterprise customers, SfB Online Plan 2, O365 ProPlus and Business Premium. If you have plan other than the ones listed - you should consider an upgrade.

As a side note - for small/medium companies it might be a good idea for only ONE person to have upgraded plan + PSTN Conferencing add-on. That person should then schedule the conferences and provide the option to call-in.

For Cloud PBX - well, you need the Enterprise plan. If you use standalones or Business subscriptions you have to upgrade.

As for PSTN Calling - since one of the requirements is having cloud pbx the requirements are the same.

IMPORTANT! Remember that the Enterprise E5 licenses have the PSTN conferencing and cloud pbx add-ons included!

Also important that some of the subscriptions (for example bought from partners) will not have the add-ins available online. Check the link above for more information!

So, with all that information I hope it is a little more clear for you. If you have any questions - do not hesitate to comment! All feedback is very welcome.

Cheers!

Used scripts and a sample CSV file were uploaded to GitHub. You can access them using the following URL: https://github.com/danpdc/Office-365-Powershell 

From there you can download a ZIP file containing all resources.

First of all, the September webcasts will be shorter, at around 1 hour. However, what we will do are only live demos, so we will use slides mostly for the intro.

These are the planned Office 365 Labs webcasts for September:

1. Office 365 Labs – Using PowerShell to automate tasks

Description: Task automation is very important for CSPs and for in general when managing larger (or many) Office 365 environments. In this webcast of the Office 365 Labs series we will showcase the power of PowerShell when it comes to get things done in a very fast way. Specifically, we will demonstrate how fast we can create users using PowerShell, assigning licenses using different license options and perform different operations on Azure Active Directory and Exchange Online.

Registration link: click HERE

2. Office 365 Labs – Mastering Azure AD Connect

Description: Azure AD Connect is a wonderful tool that synchronizes AD objects to Azure AD. In this webcast of the Office 365 Labs series we will look deep into the secrets of Azure AD, we will show exactly how synchronization works and show how certain issues could be solved very fast. We will also look into Azure AD Connect filtering options, aiming to understand how Synchronization rules should work.

Registration link: click HERE

3. Office 365 Labs – Mail flow

Description: During this webcast of the Office 365 Labs series we will dive deeply into different mail flow scenarios, aiming to exactly understand the transport pipeline for each scenario. We will also look into NDRs, delivery reports and headers. Finally, we will demonstrate how to use the message trace features in Exchange Online to troubleshoot mail flow issues and much more.

Registration link: click HERE

4. Office 365 Labs – Getting the best out of Outlook and Exchange Online

Description: Outlook is a very popular e-mail client that works best with Exchange and Exchange Online. In this webcast of the Office 365 Labs series we will understand how Outlook connects to Exchange Online. We will look into Exchange Online Autodiscover and we will concentrate on how to troubleshoot Outlook connectivity issues.

Registration link: click HERE

5. Office 365 Labs – OneDrive Synchronization 101 

Description: During this webcast of the Office 365 Labs series we look into OneDrive for Business synchronization process. We will talk about the Next Generation sync client and the older OneDrive Sync client. Finally, we show live how to troubleshoot OneDrive for Business synchronization issues.

Registration link: click HERE

6. Office 365 Labs - Sharing and collaboration with internal and external users in SharePoint Online

Collaboration is vital in today’s business. SharePoint Online comes with a huge set of collaboration features aimed for both internal and external users. In this webcast of the Office 365 Labs Series will showcase these features. Finally, we will show how to troubleshoot sharing and collaboration issues in SharePoint Online.

Registration link: click HERE

7. Office 365 Labs – AD FS and multi-factor authentication explained

Description: Security is very important in a cloud world and that’s why ADFS and multi-factor authentication are strongly recommended when using Office 365 services. In this webcast of the Office 365 Labs series we will look under the hoods of ADFS, aiming to understand the authentication process. We will also show live how to troubleshoot ADFS issues and how to perform certain very important tasks, like authentication audits and IP address tracking.

Registration link: click HERE

8. Office 365 Labs – Exchange Online compliance features (In-Place Archive, In-Place Hold, eDiscovery)

Description: Compliance is a very important topic nowadays and that’s why in this specific webcast of the Office 365 series we will look into the Exchange Online compliance features. During this webcast we will demystify features like In-Place Archive, In-Place Hold, Litigation Hold and eDiscovery.

Registration link: click HERE

By clicking on the registration link for each webcast you will find out the exact date and time when we will deliver each webcast. However, all webcasts will be recorded and posted on our YouTube Channel.

In order to register for the webcasts, you need to provide a Microsoft account. Pay attention, because all the details and calendar invite will be sent to the mailbox that is associated with your Microsoft account. Make sure to check that mailbox once you have registered for the webcasts.

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment. We will try to answer it as soon as possible.

So let's start with the "stranger". In-Place archive provides additional storage space for mailbox data. This is achieved by adding a secondary archive mailbox (called In-Place archive) to each user's primary mailbox once this feature is activated by an administrator. Users can then move emails from their primary mailbox to the archive mailbox and vice versa. The size of such an archive mailbox is virtually unlimited (limit is set to 100 GB initially, but can be raised by 70 GB by Office 365 support) for the E3, E5 plans. So, simply put, In-Place Archive is about email storage and not about compliance.

In-place hold and litigation hold are similar things. That's why the are treated in a single TechNet article. However, this is also the reason why confusion is generated. When a reasonable expectation of litigation exists, organizations are required to preserve electronically stored information (ESI), including email that's relevant to the case. This expectation often exists before the specifics of the case are known, and preservation is often broad. Organizations may need to preserve all email related to a specific topic or all email for certain individuals. And we can achieve this using in-place hold and litigation hold. 

So what's the difference? Litigation hold is normally used when you want to put an entire mailbox on hold. You can achieve this either using EAC, or PowerShell with: Set-Mailbox bsuneja@contoso.com -LitigationHoldEnabled $true. So this is an operation that you perform directly on a mailbox.

In-place hold, on the other side, is a little bit more about fine tuning, because it allows administrators to create hold based on different criteria, like keywords. In this scenario a created in-place hold could span across elements in several mailboxes at a time. For example, you can create an in-place hold on the keyword "contract" and all emails containing this keyword will be put on hold, no matter in which mailbox they are. That's why a mailbox could be subject to several holds at the same time (ex: for the keywords "contract" and "credit card"). And that's particular useful, since it wouldn't be wise to simply put all mailboxes on litigation hold (due to performance problems). What we could do, for example, is put the mailbox of the CEO on litigation hold and create other in-place holds using keywords. In this case Exchange Online would immutably preserve all email in the CEO's mailbox and all e-mails (no matter in which mailbox) that contain the defined keywords.

A final question would then be: Ok, I created holds, but how to I access those e-mails? And here, in-place eDiscovery joins the compliance game! In Exchange Online, the in-place eDiscovery feature is integrated with the in-place hold feature. So you use a common wizard to perform a search and place a hold based on that specific search criteria. Then, as long as you don't delete that search, new emails matching that criteria will be preserved.

Let's take a look in my Exchange Online Admin Center. As we can see, I performed the highlighted search on February 15th:

First of all, in normal environments, when users start Office ProPlus for the first time, they have to activate it. After that, the product is licensed and it should appear also in the Office 365 portal. In this case, the license token is stored in the user profile and is valid for 30 days. If the computer has an internet connection, then this token will be automatically renewed once it get close to the expiration date.

We can't, however, activate and license Office like this in an RDS environment. And the most compelling reason is that the end user will run out of available installations. Let's say that in a bigger company, there is an RDS farm containing 6 nodes. On Monday, the user is redirected to Node 1, Tuesday on Node 2 and so on. Now if Saturday the user is redirected to Node 6, he won't have any available Office installations left. That's why Office ProPlus needs to be installed using shared computer activation.

In this scenario we have a totally different activation process. The licensing token is stored in the %localappdata%\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Licensing folder and is only valid a couple of days. That's why, everytime a user will start Office ProPlus he will be prompted to activate the software again. And this is what end users want to avoid.

Here we have to say that the only way to avoid continuous activation is to implement also AD FS.  This is the way admins can enable a seamless authentication to Office 365 and this helps us out in an RDS environment. We won't go through the process of setting up AD FS to work with Office 365, as this will be discussed in another blog post. However, there are two very important things to note when deploying ADFS in this scenario:

1. The federation service FQDN needs to be added to the Intrane zone in Internet Explorer;
2. Automatic logon in the intranet zone should be ebanled:

Also, when you deploy AD FS don't forget that this is a system critical component so we would also need to plan for high availability.

Unfortunately, there is no other supported workaround to implement a seamless Office ProPlus activation process in RDS environments.