One of the great things about Office 365 is how flexible the service is, it caters to those organizations who are looking for a service that just works out of the box as well as those who are looking to get stuck in there and really take things to the next level. A perfect example of this is a recent experience I had with one of my customers. This particular customer was looking to do some specific email reporting and after discussing their options, I thought it would be a good idea to put together this post.

There are a number of options available when it comes to reporting in Office 365. Firstly, the Office 365 admin center provides a number of pre-configured reports and while these are gorgeous looking reports, they may not always provide the level of detail you are looking for. You also have the option of rolling your own with the Office 365 Reporting web service but this requires some coding and depending on your requirements may end up being overkill. There is however a great option that falls nicely in the middle of these in the form of an Excel based reporting workbook called “Mail Protection Reports for Office 365”. This reporting workbook isn’t new, I remember first using it in a demo for an EOP session I presented at Office 365 Ignite in Sydney, Australia in late 2013 so it has been around for a while, but I’m surprised how little press it gets.

The workbook allows you to query specific date ranges and you can then filter and customize how the information is displayed. It provides spam, malware, transport rule and DLP reporting. Here are some examples:

The reporting workbook ended up being a perfect fit for their specific scenario. It is really simple to use and doesn’t require the use of PowerShell or any custom coding. You can download the Mail Protection Reports for Office 365 workbook here.

I’ve been dying to take the new Outlook for Mac (for Office 365 subscribers) for a test drive ever since I saw the announcement late last year. Having used both Entourage and Outlook for Mac 2011 in the past, I was excited to see what improvements the new version would bring. Let’s be honest, as good as they were, both the previous iterations were miles behind the Windows version of Outlook (which I live in daily).

While I haven’t spent an extended period of time using the new Outlook for Mac, I have to say I actually love it so far and I think it is safe to say that Outlook for Mac is no longer the poor cousin. I am really looking forward to the release of the next Office for Mac!

The new Outlook for Mac is currently only available to Office 365 commercial customers, Office 365 Home, Office 365 Personal and Office 365 University subscribers while the release of the next version of Office for Mac is currently planned for the second half of 2015.

Earlier today Microsoft announced the release of Exchange 2013 CU7, Exchange 2010 SP3 RU8 and Exchange 2007 SP3 RU15. In addition to fixes for customer reported issues and minor feature improvements they also include a security update to address elevation of privilege vulnerabilities in these versions of Exchange. More information about the vulnerabilities can be found in Microsoft Security Bulletin MS14-075. Tony Redmond has also written a great post about Exchange 2013 CU7 here.

The updates can be downloaded at the following links:

• Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 7
• UM Language Packs for Cumulative Update 7
• Exchange Server 2010 SP3 Update Rollup 8
• Exchange Server 2007 SP3 Update Rollup 15

I recently blogged about the "MigrationPermanentException: The target mailbox doesn't have an SMTP proxy matching 'company.mail.onmicrosoft.com'." error message that occurs when attempting to perform a remote mailbox move for a user that doesn’t have the correct SMTP proxy address. I put together a script to help simplify the process of adding the relevant SMTP proxy address to effected users.

Once launched, the script will prompt for your tenant routing domain in the format 'company.mail.onmicrosoft.com' and will search for all mailboxes in the organization that do not have an email address policy applied. A new SMTP proxy address will be added to all mailboxes without an email address policy. The proxy address will be based on the alias of the primary SMTP address and the routing domain entered, e.g if the primary SMTP address is john.smith@company.com and the routing domain entered is company.mail.onmicrosoft.com the resulting proxy address will be john.smith@company.mail.onmicrosoft.com.

Requirements: This script has been tested and is known to work with Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2013.

Usage: There are no parameters or switches, simply execute the script:

[shell].\Fix-ProxyAddress.ps1[/shell]

Execution Policy: The script has been digitally signed and will run just fine under a "RemoteSigned" execution policy.

Screenshots:

Download: I have published it to the TechNet Gallery, it can be downloaded by clicking here...

One of the most common error message I find when performing mailbox moves to Office 365 – Exchange Online is the “MigrationPermanentException: The target mailbox doesn't have an SMTP proxy matching 'company.mail.onmicrosoft.com'.” error:

The error message is pretty descriptive and is caused when the mailbox being moved doesn’t have a proxy address that matches the routing domain. In an Exchange hybrid deployment, the hybrid configuration wizard updates the on-premises email address policies to ensure that all mailboxes have the relevant SMTP proxy address added. This should work fine except in instances when for whatever reason a mailbox or group of mailboxes are not being updated by an email address policy. Typically because the “Automatically update email addresses based on the email address policy applied to this recipient” has been manually removed:

There are a couple of ways to fix this, you could just enable the email address policy for those particular mailboxes, but the risk with that option is that it may have been removed for a particular reason. Email address policies are additive only, so while an email address policy will not remove or overwrite an email address, it may change the default SMTP address.

Or, you may want to simply add the relevant SMTP proxy address for those mailboxes, this can easily be done via PowerShell. I have published a PowerShell script to simplify this process, check it out on the TechNet Gallery.

I had a great time attending and presenting at SharePoint Conference.ORG yesterday. I really enjoyed the great mixture of business, user experience and technical sessions. I presented a “Getting started with Office 365” session and as promised I am making my slide deck available.

[slideshare id=40574145&doc=gettingstartedwithoffice365-141021225449-conversion-gate01]

Slides also available on slideshare

For more information about SharePoint Conference .ORG check out http://www.sharepointconference.org/ or on twitter: @SPC_ORG

I recently came across an old script I wrote to simplify connecting to Exchange Online using remote PowerShell and thought I’d polish it up a little and release it in case it could help make life easier for someone else.

This page will be updated whenever new features are added to the script..

This script features a GUI that will prompt for your tenant credentials and then connect to various Office 365 services using remote PowerShell. The current version of the script allows connectivity to:

• Exchange Online
• Azure Active Directory
• Office 365 Security & Compliance Center 

Requirements:
The script will work natively in PowerShell 2.0+

Usage:
There are no parameters or switches, simply execute the script:

[shell].\Connect-EXO.ps1[/shell]

Execution Policy:
The script has been digitally signed and will run just fine under a "RemoteSigned" execution policy.

Screenshots:

Download:
I have published it to the TechNet Gallery, it can be downloaded by clicking here...

If your organization has an Exchange Hybrid deployment that is not running on Exchange 2013 SP1 or later you may want pay attention. On September 23, 2014, Microsoft will be making a certificate change to the Microsoft Federation Gateway which could affect you.

This change could also impact those who are sharing free/busy information between two different on-premises organizations. If you are already running Exchange 2013 SP1 then you are in luck as this task will be automated for you and you are not required to take any action. For those using older versions of Exchange, it is very important that you update your Federation Trust as failing to do so will result in loss of free/busy and mailtip functionality. Microsoft released the following post that provides more information as well as the recommended actions that should be taken, I strongly recommend paying attention to this if you are not on the latest version of Exchange 2013.

As cloud services and Office 365 in general continue to gain popularity, I find myself talking to more and more organizations who are looking to make use of these services. One of the challenges I come up against most often is the issue of workstation readiness and how many organizations tend to overlook the importance or simply glance over that section in the enablement plan. One of the great things about Microsoft Online Services is the rapid innovation and how quickly new features and brought to market. Unfortunately this also seems to catch many organizations off-guard.

I’m sure we can all agree that a workstation refresh project for even a small customer is a big undertaking and I’ve seen many Office 365 projects stall for a very long time due to workstation readiness and/or workstation refresh projects. As always, a thorough analysis and due diligence is required to ensure that all workstations in the fleet meet the published minimum requirements in order to ensure the best possible user experience. I’ve seen a whole lot of old and out of date information floating around so I thought I would put together a quick post to spell out the current requirements. In the past, there was a complex table that listed specific updates required by specific software versions and due dates, but thankfully Microsoft has recently simplified this list. In order to provide the best user experience, Office 365 is designed to work with:

• The current or immediately previous version of Internet Explorer or Firefox, or the latest version of Chrome or Safari.
• Any version of Microsoft Office in mainstream support.

The above list and additional information is published here. Using this guidance, the current workstation readiness requirements are:

• Internet Explorer 10 or 11 (The current or immediately previous version of Firefox, or the latest version of Chrome or Safari -  I never keep track of those because they change so frequently!)
• Microsoft Office 2010 or 2013

Still using Internet Explorer 8 or 9? How about Microsoft Office 2007? These versions are no longer officially supported by Microsoft and although Microsoft does not recommend using these older browsers and clients, the service won’t deliberately prevent these browsers and clients from connecting, but the user experience cannot be guaranteed in the longer term.

I am a firm believer that projects fail because of end-user perception, if users have a degraded experience they are likely to overlook all the cool new features and functionality you are providing. No matter how quickly you can pilot, deploy and migrate to Office 365, I strongly suggest spending some time analyzing your current workstation fleet to to ensure that your users have the best possible user experience.

Today was a good day! It stared out in Music City – Nashville, Tennessee, I went for an early morning run and was getting ready to kick-off my first project since relocating to the U.S a few weeks ago when, just after 8am I received an email informing me that I had been presented with a 2014 Microsoft MVP Award for my contribution to Office 365 technical communities during the past year.

I am extremely honoured to receive this award and join the MVP community, a community which I have long respected and admired.

Thanks to everyone reading my blog for all your comments and to everyone interacting on social media and in person at conferences and events. I look forward to continued contribution and to sharing my passion with you all.