Author Archives: Tony Redmond

Update for Office 365 Expiration Policy Auto-Renews Based on User Activity

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The original Office 365 Groups expiration policy was pretty good. It helps tenants keep control of potential group sprawl by removing old groups based on age. Now the policy takes user activity into account. While still not perfect, the new implementation makes the group expiration policy even easier to use because owners don’t have to do anything to renew their groups if the groups remain in active use. You might debate the set of activities chosen by Microsoft to represent a good signal of group activity, but not the way the policy now works.

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Teams User Surveys Pose Privacy Concerns for Office 365 Tenants

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According to Office 365 notification MC187538, Microsoft plans to start asking users to give feedback about Teams in pop-up surveys within the app to help Microsoft improve functionality. That all sounds OK until you consider that Microsoft will control the data it obtains from users and tenants will have no insight into what their users have told Microsoft. That’s not right.

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When Technology Fails: Woes With SharePoint Online Restore this Library

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SharePoint Online Restore this library
SharePoint Online Restore this library

It’s great when Microsoft introduces new functionality to SharePoint Online to make the lives of administrators and users easier, which is what the Restore this library feature is all about. Then problems happen, and we understand where the flaw lines exist. Recovering from a recent ransomware attack caused one Office 365 tenant more problems than they thought likely because Restore this library didn’t work as well as expected.

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Exchange Online Exposes New Mailbox Activity Data

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Microsoft has updated the vererable Get-MailboxStatistics cmdlet in Exchange Online PowerShell to return a bunch of new mailbox activity properties. The properties cover different activities like email and calendar, but the problem with the LastLogon property remains and you still need to do some extra work to get accurate last login information for a user.

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BitTitan Introduces Cross-Tenant Teams Migration

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Moving Teams between Office 365 tenants has been a challenge since the earliest days of Teams. Now a beta Graph API has allowed BitTitan to create the ability to transfer team settings and channel conversations between tenants. The migration isn’t perfect, but it’s a good start and will improve over time as BitTitan and other ISVs work out the best way to move Teams content around.

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The Magic Behind OWA Likes

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OWA is the only Outlook client that supports “Likes.” This begs the question how OWA supports likes and where the information about likes is stored. Some probing using easily accessible tools reveals the answer. You might think that the answer only interests Office 365 Trivial Pursuit nerds, but it’s actually of real interest to eDiscovery investigators.

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Is Exchange Online Threatened by Ransomware?

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Some people worry that Exchange Online mailboxes could be compromised by ransomeware and people will be forced to pay BitCoin to decrypt their messages. It’s certainly a possibility, but out-of-the-box solutions exist if you’re unlucky enough to be infected. That is, if you’ve done the necessary up-front planning to prepare for the worst to happen.,

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Microsoft Deprecating Exchange Online’s Search-Mailbox Cmdlet

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Microsoft has started to flag its intention to deprecate the Search-Mailbox cmdlet. It’s probably the right time to remove this cmdlet from Exchange Online because Office 365 compliance searches can serve the same purpose. At least, compliance searches can do most of what Search-Mailbox does faster. Some functionality gaps need to be filled before we can bid adieu to Search-Mailbox, but its time is coming.

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Controlling Communications inside Office 365 Tenants with Information Barriers (Part 2)

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Office 365 with Teams
Office 365 with Teams

In part 1 of this series, we discussed how to setup Office 365 Information Barriers. We now get to the practical application of those barriers to stop different user groups communicating with Teams. Chats and VOIP calls are blocked, users are removed from team membership, and generally everything works as you’d expect.

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Controlling Communications Inside Office 365 Tenants with Information Barriers (Part 1)

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Office 365 with Teams
Office 365 with Teams

Office 365 Information Barriers allow organizations to erect logical firewalls between different user communities to ensure that regulatory and legal requirements are met. Teams and Exchange Online support Information Barrier policies, which replace Address Book Policies. Some work is necessary to get Information Barriers set up. We cover that work in this article and prepare the ground for deploying the policies to Teams.

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