Category Archives: BPOS

Podcast on the TalkingOffice365.com site

Sure I may post a wealth of free technical advice and information on this site, but that’s not where my experiences and knowledge end.
Recently I was interviewed by the TalkingOffice365.com site for their podcast series. In the interview we spoke about my experiences with BPOS, how this affects business, and where we’re going with Office 365.
Have a listen here: http://www.talkingoffice365.com/03-loryans-office-365-lessons-learnt-from-working-with-bpos/

Spotlight on Simplicity: synchronizing passwords with BPOS

Something commonly forgotten about when setting up BPOS for a customer that uses Active Directory – is that a new set of password management exists in BPOS.
This can exist in scenarios where the customer already has an on-premise Exchange and is now using Exchange Online, or even for peer-to-peer networks with no central password management.
What the users end up with is two passwords – one for their PC (local or AD authentication), another for BPOS.
Something new customers and partners moving to and using BPOS may not be aware of is the fact that the Directory Synchronization tool does not actually synchronize passwords – just users and groups.
So what are our options? Sure you can get everyone’s current password and match this in BPOS – however there is a default password expiration of 90 days. Very quickly you can see how this would be an inconvenience to users, and quite confusing the first time around.
Another option is to log a support case and request to disable password expiration – however this is not recommended due as it weakens your security.

Something we as a business (Paradyne) have found useful is the MessageOps Password Synchronization tool.
It is free and easy to use, and will run on your domain controller to keep passwords synchronized for your users.
This allows your BPOS environment to adhere to your existing password security policy, keep your organization & data more secure, and overall keep you users happy.

While Office 365 will support Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) – you will require significant on-premise infrastructure to support this, so it is more relevant for large businesses and enterprises.
The MessageOps tool will still be the way to go with smaller organisations that cannot support the ADFS requirements or large businesses and enterprises that can’t or don’t plan to utilise ADFS.

Happy password synchronizing!

Spotlight on Simplicity: moving file systems to SharePoint Online

One of the challenges that we as a business (Paradyne) encountered early on with BPOS was moving customers file systems over to SharePoint Online.
In a traditional on-premise SharePoint scenario there are many 3rd party tools to migrate files structures over to the SharePoint environment, however these generally require extensions to be installed on the target server.
As this is not possible with SharePoint Online we started to look at another way. One simple approach is to simply open up a SharePoint library with Windows Explorer and just drag your files over, however this can run into a couple of fairly sizeable roadblocks:
- a character in the filename that is not allowed in SharePoint
- file transfer fails due to timeout, network conditions, or is interrupted by an inaccessible file or an illegal character in the file name

So what are our choices?
Doing a lot of research, we came across a BPOS partner in the UK that had written a tool to address exactly this challenge.
Enter Files to Go from Thinkscape!
Files to Go is so simple to use that even our non-technical customers have been able to follow the instructions and successfully migrate their files over to SharePoint Online.
It effectively creates a queue of files to be migrated and performs any illegal character changes on the fly, then simply processes the list and copies your files across.
You can either migrate your files into a single library, or run several migrations into different libraries. The folder structure of your file system is kept intact during the migration so that when you open the library in SharePoint Online you are seeing a replica of your file system.
Files to Go also creates its own site within SharePoint Online where you can track the status & progress of the migration as well as view any errors that have occurred.

Overall it is an extremely simple product to use, from the instructions through to the interface. Support is also an email away!
Files to Go currently works with SharePoint Online (under BPOS) and will also be supporting Office 365 upon its release.

Happy migrating!

Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer

Just because you’ve moved to Exchange Online doesn’t mean you no longer have access to run tests on your (or your customers) Exchange environment.
In case you haven’t seen it – Microsoft have a free online testing service called the Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer (https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com).
If you’re encountering problems with connecting from any device (ie. Outlook on PC, Outlook on Mac, mobile devices, etc.) or simply having difficulties with mail flow – this is the tool for you.
Simply select the test you want to run, type in the relevant details (ie. email address, username, password, etc.) and away it goes.
Apart from testing if services work, it will provide you with a heap of deep level configuration information in the event of a failure.

A great site to keep in your monitoring & testing arsenal.

P.S. Also works with on-premise Exchange servers! (remember those?)

New PowerShell cmdlets available for BPOS

The 4 new PowerShell cmdlets are finally available. They allow you to:
- enable/disable POP3 for an Exchange Online user
- set/remove alternate recipients on an Exchange Online user

Our list of available PowerShell commands has now been updated to include the links for these commands.
In order to get access to the updated cmdlets you will need to download the latest copy of the Microsoft Online Services Migration Tools.

New PowerShell commands for POP access and email forwarding

Something we have to do quite frequently is either enable POP access to Exchange Online mailboxes, or configure a mailbox to forward to another recipient (either local or remote to Exchange Online).

In the past these requests had to be actioned through a Service Request via the BPOS support team – however by the end of January customers and partners will be able to do this themselves using PowerShell scripts as a result of the new features being rolled out to BPOS this month.

The commandlets that give you the control are:

Set-MSOnlineAlternateRecipient
Clear-MSOnlineAlternateRecipient
Enable-MSOnlinePOPAccess
Disable-MSOnlinePOPAccess

The documentation on these will be available via the MOAC interface as the service update is rolled out. Once we get our hands on this we will update our own PowerShell commandlet reference page.

Public Folder message data in SharePoint Online

The team over at MessageOps have released a great script that takes data from your public folders and replicates it to SharePoint Online as part of your migration away from an on-premise Exchange environment.

You can read more about it here: http://www.messageops.com/public-folder-message-data-and-sharepoint-online

Automatic signatures in Exchange Online

One of the things we get asked from time to time is how to set up automated signatures in Exchange Online.
While with an on-premise Exchange solution you can utilise 3rd party solutions such as Exclaimer – this isn’t possible in Exchange Online due to the shared environment.
However – you can still utilise the Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE) to automatically append either a text or HTML footer to the bottom of each message.
If you don’t already have access FOPE – put a service request to be granted access.
Once in, head to your domain service settings and add what you like – as shown below.
Bear in mind that embedded images aren’t possible as you would normally have with Outlook – however you can link to the image.