• Use Portal and disable for each user once created. 
• Use Powershell connected to ExO and disable for individual user
  • Use Get- and Set- Commands in a single command to disable it for multiple users. 

• All admins need to be made aware of this procedure
  • New admins must be specifically told to perform the disable operation post creating a new mailbox.
• Error prone as it can be missed(Human error)

• ADSyncAdmins
• ADSyncBrowse
• ADSyncOperators
• ADsyncPasswordSet

Praveen Kumar E

• Install Hyper-V in our lab machine
• Created a Virtual Machine
• Made it a Domain controller
• Created a bulk of users via script

Now we downloaded the AAD Connect software . Always search and download the latest version.

Installed .net 4.0 and 4.5.1.

Now when I tried to install the AAD Connect I go the below error.

Installed the below

• SP1 on Windows 2008 R2(It is a 1.9 GB file)
• Windows Management Framework for PowerShell

• Location to install AAD Connect
• If we have a Pre-existing SQL Server its settings(If we are not using Windows Internal Database, In this post, we will talk about doing an install which uses the WID)
• If we have an existing Service account that should be used for this that has local admin credentials on this server
• Any custom Sync groups that you want to sync

Praveen Kumar E

But what would you sync? We need AD objects to Sync. Ok let's creat100 users manually well we don’t have time for that, do we?

I will help you easily create any number of users.

Create a CSV file like shown below and save it as 1.csv. Import this CSV to your virtual machine and have it under the PowerShell default directory

Open Powershell and run the below command to import the ActiveDirectory Module

import-module ActiveDirectory

Run the below script to display the entries, I usually do this to very if the script is working fine and is able to read the items just fine. (Change the domain name from praveen.local to your domain in the below script) Import-Csv .\1.csv | foreach-object { $SamAccountName = $_.FirstName + "." + $_.LastName $SamAccountName = $SamAccountName.ToLower() $userprinicpalname = $SamAccountName + "@praveen.local" $displayName = $_.LastName + ", " + $_.FirstName Write-host "SAM is" $SamAccountName Write-host "UserPrincipalName is" $userprinicpalname Write-host "DisplayName is" $displayName }

Once you get proper Output for the above script we are ready to create users. Use the below script to Create all users in one go. Note: You can modify the CSV if you want to give custom names to users

Import-Csv .\1.csv | foreach-object { $SamAccountName = $_.FirstName + "." + $_.LastName $SamAccountName = $SamAccountName.ToLower() $userprinicpalname = $SamAccountName + "@praveen.local" $displayName = $_.LastName + ", " + $_.FirstName New-ADUser -SamAccountName $SamAccountName -UserPrincipalName $userprinicpalname -Name $displayName -DisplayName $displayName -GivenName $_.FirstName -SurName $_.LastName -Department "Test" -Path "CN=Users,DC=praveen,DC=local" -AccountPassword (ConvertTo-SecureString "YourPass!" -AsPlainText -force) -Enabled $True -PasswordNeverExpires $True -PassThru }

Ok, we are done with the basics and we are all set to install and configure AAD Connect. Oh, Ya !

Praveen Kumar E

Prerequisites :

Download Windows 2008 hard disk from the internet or download the ISO. I have downloaded the virtual hard disk itself

Open Hyper-V > Select your Server and then right click and say New > Virtual machine

Name your Virtual Machine (This is not the FQDN of the virtual machine), to identity in Hyper-V

For DC I usually give 1 GB, but you can give 2048 MB as we will be running AAD Connect from the same machine

Follow the prompt on the screen to complete the wizard

Once created, double click on the VM and select File > Settings  > Hard Disk > New

Here select the master Hard disk as shown below

Now start the machine and set the password. Also, create a new Virtual network of type "External" and add this machine to that network

Once the machine starts > Go to Server Manager > Add roles > Active Directory Domain Services

Complete the wizard

Restart the machine and open command prompt and type DCPROMO  to get the installation wizard

Create a new forest 

Here add in your domain name you have ownership of. Note you need internet routable domain if you want to create a hybrid Lab etc. For AAD Connect I am going to use .local domain so that we can discuss the issues we might face during AAD Connect configuration

Bonus: I usually save all the management consoles in a single MMC and save it on the desktop. It saves me a lot of time

We are almost ready to sync, are we forgetting something? The next post in this series will have details about creating Bulk users to facilitate Directory Synchronization.

Praveen Kumar E

In the last post, we saw "Requirements and Prerequisites" for installing Exchange 2016.

In this post we will be will look into the installation process.

We can either do a CMD line or a GUI based install. Here I will be showing how to do a GUI based install.

Double-click on  the "setup.exe" and follow the wizard as show below

More Information: 

Exchange 2016 system requirements

From <https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996719(v=exchg.160).aspx>

Exchange 2016 prerequisites

From <https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb691354(v=exchg.160).aspx>

       

This is 2 part post, in part one, we will talk regarding "Requirements and Prerequisites".

Exchange 2016 system requirements

Once the Hardware and Software requirements are in place we are ready to install the pre-requisites.

We need the latest version of .Net . I had installed .Net 4.6.2.

We can just install the Remote Server Administration like shown below if we just want to install the Mangement tools.

Because we are installing the Mailbox role we need to run the below command

"Install-WindowsFeature AS-HTTP-Activation, Server-Media-Foundation, NET-Framework-45-Features, RPC-over-HTTP-proxy, RSAT-Clustering, RSAT-Clustering-CmdInterface, RSAT-Clustering-Mgmt, RSAT-Clustering-PowerShell, Web-Mgmt-Console, WAS-Process-Model, Web-Asp-Net45, Web-Basic-Auth, Web-Client-Auth, Web-Digest-Auth, Web-Dir-Browsing, Web-Dyn-Compression, Web-Http-Errors, Web-Http-Logging, Web-Http-Redirect, Web-Http-Tracing, Web-ISAPI-Ext, Web-ISAPI-Filter, Web-Lgcy-Mgmt-Console, Web-Metabase, Web-Mgmt-Console, Web-Mgmt-Service, Web-Net-Ext45, Web-Request-Monitor, Web-Server, Web-Stat-Compression, Web-Static-Content, Web-Windows-Auth, Web-WMI, Windows-Identity-Foundation, RSAT-ADDS"

Post installing the pre-requisites we are ready to prepare the domain for Exchange 2016 Installation.

For testing purpose, I prepared the domain and AD using Exchange 2013 installation bits and later used Exchange 2016 bits to perform the same steps to see if we are getting any error. We were not getting any error as expected.

Also if in your org you don't have Exchange 2013, and you might need to bring in Exchange 2013 at some stage then its required to have a install of Exchange 2013 with all roles in it. If Exchange 2016 is installed in a environement where there is no Exchange 2013 then at later stage we might not be able to install Exchange 2013 in that environment.

Now we have performed the below

• Installed .Net on the computer
• Installed the Pre-requisite features
• Prepared
  • Schema
  • Domain
  • All domains

Now we are ready to install Exchange 2016 in our environment. In part 2 we will cover that.

More Information: 

Exchange 2016 system requirements

From <https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996719(v=exchg.160).aspx>

Exchange 2016 prerequisites

From <https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb691354(v=exchg.160).aspx>

       

Navigate to http://staffhub.ms or https://staffhub.office.com/ to go to the StaffHub.   

You will be greeted by the below Welcome Screen.

To start we need to create an Office 365 Group to work with StaffHub. You can give a name of your choice. 

Provide a Phone number to get an SMS with a link to install the Mobile APP

In the next screen give the users in your Organization who you want to add to this group. (You can also do this later). A link gets sent to the user as well.

Once we click on the "Finish setup" an email is sent to all users who are added to this Group.

The below image shows the default View users and administrator gets when they log into Staffhub.

Now we can click on any particular day to create shifts and assign to that user as shown below. 

Once the necessary changes are made(you can do changes for more than one user at once) and click on Publish.

You can right click on any day and perform the below actions.

1. Add time Off
2. Add Shift
3. Edit Shift details
4. Copy & Paste
5. Delete

At the top Navigation, we have the below options

1. Team --> To add users to the Team/Group
2. Schedule --> To see the schedule of the team
3. Files --> To share files with our team

Like shown in the image below we can add any kind of file PDF(like rules), Video(any how to), etc that we want to share with the entire team.

We have Members and Settings

Members to add and review the members of this Group

Settings to modify/update the settings with respect to this Staff group. We can also Delete this StaffHub group using the option in the settings page.

Below is the Sample email that gets sent to the users who are added to the StaffHub Group.

Users can connect to the group using the StaffHub or their Mobile phone(which is the intended way to consume this application) or via portal --> People --> Modern groups(as shown below).

In conclusion, I see StaffHub as an optimized way for Floor agents and managers in industries such as hotels, restaurants, retail stores, on construction sites, etc to schedule work, share files and much more within team members with the help of Modern Groups in the background.

More Information

============

Introducing Microsoft StaffHub

From <https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Introducing-Microsoft-StaffHub-92e9480f-0a37-47d2-ac96-2d11ee5f0656>

Announcing the public preview of Microsoft StaffHub—the new app for deskless workers

From <https://blogs.office.com/2016/09/26/announcing-the-public-preview-of-microsoft-staffhub-the-new-app-for-deskless-workers/>

Meet Microsoft StaffHub

From <https://staffhub.office.com/>

Assign Microsoft StaffHub licenses to users

From <https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Assign-Microsoft-StaffHub-licenses-to-users-715ea897-6cd1-4125-8cdf-10557f6acf78?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US>