Office 365 E5 Launch Webinar

New Office 365 E5  offering went live recently with lot of new features added to the service and to know what's new with this offering, get yourself registered to the upcoming Microsoft webcast Event "Office 365 E5 Launch" this Friday, 11 Dec 2015, 10.00 AM PT or the next 18 Dec 2015.

During this Office 365 E5 launch webcast, a Microsoft TS2 expert will provide you with an overview on the new offering and discuss the best options available to build your successful Office 365 E5 practice.

In this webcast you will: 

• Gain an overview on Office 365 E5 plan features that include – advanced security, analytics for eDiscovery with secure attachments/URLs with advanced threat protection and access control using Power BI Pro and Delve analytics, machine learning.
• Understand how cloud PBX and PSTN conferencing will work as part of this new solution.
• Learn the fundamentals of building a profitable Office 365 E5 practice.
• Study the Office 365 E3 pricing and licensing models.
• Understand your target customers and learn about partner incentives designed to help you close deals.
• Learn about different customers’ scenarios.

Register here: Office 365 E5 Launch

*If you miss any of these events you can register to view them On demand from the Events webpage.

This is the best place to begin your E5 learning and explore the new features.

Directory of Azure Cloud Services

Microsoft Azure is empowering today's IT world by offering various Cloud Services and continue to expand rapidly with new innovations.

Access the list of available Services here: Directory of Azure Cloud Services

You can navigate to the Pricing Overview page to choose the services available under each category for your requirement.

Access here; Detailed Pricing information

Office 365 E5 is All Set to Go Live!!!

Office 365 E5 plan was announced earlier this July 2015, As stated in the Official announcement Microsoft planned to release E5 by the end if this calendar year, as stated in this ZDNET post today is the day "December 1, 2015" for its general availability to global customers. Now you can buy E5 from your Office 365 portal and enjoy the latest innovations from Microsoft and add more value to your Enterprise.

Once you Navigate to your existing Subscription page in Office 365 portal and select to add additional subscription, you can see the new "Office 365 Enterprise E5 without PSTN Conferencing" plan now available, You can choose to pay per month or Annually. 

As stated in the below referenced Official blog post PSTN Conferencing is available only in US and will be available later to other regions.

Each License costs $35 per user/month and you can assign few licenses to your tenant to explore the new features and switch plans for appropriate users in the mere future as needed.

Access the Office.com E5 plan and pricing page for more details here: Office 365 E5 Plan and Pricing 

Microsoft team started to introduce new features available in E5 one after the other in the recent past and made significant announcements through Office blogs post and yesterday blog post was more significant and concludes these announcements and puts things in action.

Review the Blog post here: Office 365 brings significant new value to business customers worldwide

Additionally read the yesterday's ZDNET post below on this topic from Mary Jo Foley 

Microsoft prices high-end Office 365 E5 at $420 per user per year

Stay tuned for more updates...

Microsoft PowerApps

Microsoft launched the new PowerApps, an enterprise service for innovators everywhere to connect, create and share business apps with your team on any device in minutes. And PowerApps helps anyone in your organization unlock new business agility.

Access PowerApps here: https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/

Get to know more on the Official Microsoft Blog : Introducing Microsoft PowerApps

This is a great news for Developers and IT Pros to utilize latest innovation from Microsoft that address today's Business needs and improve IT Agility.

Office 365 Groups Overview, Administration and Roadmap in a NutShell

After the launch of Office 365 Groups most Organizations started their transition from traditional Distribution Groups to new Office 365 Groups. Microsoft team started to introduce new innovations to Office 365 Groups on the move and extended their Roadmap, Office 365 Groups has evolved from it initial stages and now have tighter integration capabilities with multiple Microsoft product line providing more enhanced features than ever before. Administrating Office 365 groups is now simplified with rich set of granular controls for management.

To know things in a nutshell, review the new Microsoft Ignite Australia 2015 session by Christophe Fiessinger MSFT.

View here: Office 365 Groups Overview, Administration and Roadmap

Update:

Your One stop resource with Support Articles to to create and manage Office 365 Groups

Access here: Office 365 Groups

Update:

New Support Articles published on Office 365 Groups

Multi-domain support for Office 365 Groups - Admin help

Make Office 365 groups public or private

Update:

Check out the latest innovations for Office 365 Groups.

Office 365 Groups now supports eDiscovery, litigation hold, dynamic membership and more!

Update:

Access Microsoft Ignite 2016 session below to know more on Office 365 Groups

Watch here: Explore the ultimate field guide to Microsoft Office 365 Groups

Update:

Latest updates to Office 365 Groups Administration

What’s new in Office 365 Groups administration—June 2016 update

Update:

Office 365 Groups Guest access is coming to all customers starting September 2016, Access the essential Admin help below

Guest access to Office 365 groups - Admin Help

Also review another great announcement related to Office 365 Groups below

New capabilities in SharePoint Online team sites including integration with Office 365 Groups

Update: 

Recently Microsoft came up with the plan of Automatic creation of Direct reports groups in outlook, and due to feedback received from Customers around the world, instead of making this update to roll-out globally, now this update applies to Customers that have received either message center post MC94808 or message center post MC98024.

Access the Related Support Articles below,

Automatic creation of Direct Reports groups in Outlook

Manage automatic creation of direct reports group - Admin help

Access this below Office Blogs post to know the recent significant enhancements made for Office 365 Groups

What’s new in Office 365 Groups for April 2017

Update:

Introducing Groups in Outlook for Mac, iOS and Android

Update:

Review the below documentation to know how you can configure Office 365 Groups settings using Azure AD cmdlets.

Azure Active Directory cmdlets for configuring group settings

Update:

New Feature Announcement: PowerShell support of Allow/Block guest access based on Domain list

Update:

Long waited Automated Expiration for Office 365 Groups is now available in public preview. With this new feature you can set an expiration timeframe for any Office 365 group you choose. Once that timeframe is set, owners of any groups set to expire will be asked to renew them if they still need them. Groups that aren’t renewed will be deleted. And using the “Soft-delete of groups” feature, any group that was not meant to be deleted can be restored within 30 days by the group owners.

Note: The Office 365 groups expiration feature is available in public preview for Azure AD Premium customers. This feature will require Azure AD Premium License when it GAs.

Access the Official blog post here to know more: Azure AD Automated Expiration for Office 365 Groups is now in Public Preview

Support Article here: Office 365 Group Expiration Policy

Update: 

Azure AD Expiration Policy for Office 365 Groups is now Generally Available.
Office 365 groups expiration can be configured from the Azure Active Directory portal, as well as programmatically via Azure Active Directory PowerShell.

Access the Support Article here: Configure the expiration policy for Office 365 groups

Read the Official Announcement post to know more: Azure AD Expiration Policy for Office 365 Groups is Generally Available.

Stay tuned for more updates...

Microsoft Ignite Australia Sessions On demand

Microsoft Ignite Australia 2015 conference, completed earlier this Month and now the session videos are available on demand in Channel 9.  Lot of great stuff from Microsoft on their latest innovations sparking towards the future of IT.

Access Sessions here : Ignite Australia 2015

Office 365 Customer Security Considerations Workbook now Available

Microsoft team recently released the new Customer Security Considerations (CSC) workbook as an addition to the rich set of available resources for Information Security and Compliance.  The CSC workbook is designed to provide you with information on key security and compliance features to consider when adopting, deploying and managing Office 365.

You can access the Office 365 Service Trust Portal and Select Trust Documents and download the workbook and the usage guide.

Review the Official Blog here: Announcing Office 365 customer security considerations preview

If you are new to Service Trust Portal, review the below Support article to get started.

Review here: Get started with the Service Trust Portal for Office 365 for business, Azure, and Dynamics CRM Online subscriptions

Troubleshooting Azure AD Application Proxy Guide now Available!!!

Microsoft Azure AD Application Proxy team recently published a Whitepaper, for troubleshooting Azure AD application proxy. This acts as a complete guide and provides full overview of all the capabilities around Application Proxy troubleshooting

Download here: The complete guide for troubleshooting Azure AD Application Proxy

Additionally read through the values and benefits of using Azure AD Application proxy through the eyes of an EMS Blackbelt.

Update:

Now read the new guidance from Microsoft on Security considerations when using Azure AD application proxy

Access here: Security considerations when using Azure AD application proxy

Update:

Get to know more on Azure AD Application proxy through the Azure AD Mailbag series

Azure AD Mailbag: Azure AD App Proxy

AzureAD Mailbag: Azure AD App Proxy, Round 2

Update:

New enhancements or Azure AD Application proxy in 2017

We’ve made the Azure AD App Proxy even better!

Stay tuned for more updates...

Top 5 Announcements for Office 365 !!!

Last week was quite a great week for Office 365, Microsoft team made various new significant announcements for Office 365 and also few more on other related platforms like Azure, Enterprise Mobility, SharePoint and Skype for Business.

This post is written to list out the Top 5 announcements made last week for Office 365

Office 2013 modern authentication public preview program got renamed to the Office 365 modern authentication public preview. Also now Modern authentication for Office 2013/2016 Windows client are now GA.

• Read the Official Announcement post for more details: Updated Office 365 modern authentication public preview

Archiving of Third Party data like facebook, twitter etc. in Office 365 was announced earlier this year and now available in Preview

• Review the announcement here: Archiving third-party data in Office 365 now available in Preview

Microsoft Team announced new Security and Compliance capabilities to Office 365, including Advanced Threat Protection, Customer Lockbox and Advanced eDiscovery, which integrates Equivio. Customer Lockbox and Advanced eDiscovery will be available for customers to purchase starting December 1, 2015.

• Read the Official Announcement post for more details: Office 365 innovations in enterprise security and compliance

Microsoft Graph (formerly “Office 365 Unified API”) reached GA as announced during last week Microsoft Connect() Developer event.

• Read here: Today at Connect()—introducing the Microsoft Graph

Finally,Enforcing Office 365 identity in Yammer is now available and Administrators can configure federated identity in Office 365 to achieve single sign-on (SSO) capabilities for all services in Office 365, which includes Yammer. Also Microsot team is removing the Yammer SSO and directory synchronization (DSync) tools, starting December 1, 2016.

• Review here to know more: Enforcing Office 365 identity in Yammer now available

Raise your Voice in Office 365 UserVoice !!!

Microsoft is making innovations on the fly, day by day, and stay to update with all of these innovations are quite challenging, By accepting consisting feedback from customers and responding to their queries Microsoft team has over come this challenge and enhanced the adoption ratio.

Office 365 is one key area, where these fore said innovations are occurring at a rapid rate and to get feedback from customers "Office 365 User Voice" forum was launched. We could see lot of feedback posts and discussions are now available on various topics and I wrote this post today to bring this to readers attention. If you have not come across this yet, Its time for you to  utilize the same and share your feedback to Microsoft.

Raise your voice here: Customer Feedback for Microsoft Office 365

Vision eBook - Protecting and Empowering Your Connected Organization

Microsoft Enterprise Mobility team published a great e-Book for readers, to know how to Protect Identities, Devices and Company Information in Today’s Device-Centric World.

Register and Access the e-Book here: Vision eBook - Protecting and Empowering Your Connected Organization 

In Today's cloud connected world, its essential to know how to move your workloads to cloud and also allow users to utilize the benefits of latest technology innovations, without compromising security and this e-Book is worth reading to know more on this topic and begin your journey with Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS).

Update:

I recently came across few more vital resources on the topic and referenced below for your reading as an add-on read.

Download: Managing Access and Help Protect Corporate Email Data on Mobile Devices

Download: Deploying Enterprise Solutions for Protecting Email Data on Mobile Devices

EMS Architecture Poster: Enterprise Mobility Poster

Overcome Throttling issues with Office 365 for your PowerShell Scripts

I am writing this post today to point you to the latest Exchange Team blog post, explains how to overcome throttling issues when running PowerShell cmdlets for large numbers of users in Office 365.

Its quite common that we generate reports or apply changes to large number of users in Office 365 as a part of Operations and need to wait for hours to get the results. We all know about the throttling limits that exist with Office 365 and sometime the script breaks and makes us to start from the scratch. Finally, Microsoft team published a blog post to overcome this issue.

By using the the help of Script blocks and Invoke-command cmdlet we can construct PowerShell Scripts that returns the required data without much issues on time and also a great PowerShell script "Start-RobustCloudCommand script" is shared to us that makes our job a lot easier.

More information is available in the below EHLO blog post,

Review here: Running PowerShell cmdlets for large numbers of users in Office 365

I have personally used this script for a recent requirement to disable clutter for a large set of users and it did worked well.

Here is the example,

Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

$cred = Get-Credential

$session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell -Credential $cred -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection

$importresults = Import-PSSession $session 


$Mailboxes = invoke-command -scriptblock {Get-mailbox -resultsize unlimited | select-object -property Displayname,PrimarySMTPAddress,Identity} -session (get-pssession)

$cred = get-Credential

.\Start-RobustCloudCommand.ps1 -Agree -Credential $cred -recipients $Mailboxes -logfile C:\temp\out.log -ScriptBlock {Set-Clutter -identity $input.PrimarySMTPAddress.tostring() -enable:$false} –interactive

This guidance is great and it will reduce some of our support cases related to throttling.

Get ready to Manage and Administer Office 365 better

Office 365 Administration mainly relies on the Admin Center and PowerShell, When Managing Office 365 via the Admin Center its is quite complicated as new features added day by day the Admin Center is now having various options made available in different areas and we need to navigate to multiple locations to manage things related to a single task. Also when it comes to reporting we require some additional innovation from Microsoft which can make the reporting lot easier and effective which  suits our needs and we don't require to invest on 3rd party providers.

To address the above said needs Microsoft team is revamping the Admin Center with new UI and enhancements which makes the Administrative experience a lot more easier and also new reporting capabilities are added including new usage reports across Office 365 workloads. Office 365 Admin Center Preview gets this soon and also upcoming Power BI Content Pack for Office 365 admins is a new add-on that will take the reporting capabilities to next level.

Office 365 Admin app also gets new features added to make administration a lot easier on the go, where ever you are with few clicks on your mobile.

PowerShell is the next reliable Administrative tool to manage Office 365 workloads, Automation relies here to make your management experience a lot easier, Microsoft team is giving additional guidance and resources to this key area along with the above said innovations.

All of this is covered with real time demo in the recent Microsoft Mechanics video series by Lawrence Chiu, Sr.Product Manager, Office 365

Review the Official blog post here: Office 365 admin updates—from portal enhancements to PowerShell

We can expect a lot more enhancements  in the upcoming days. Stay tuned...

MVA Learning: Core Concepts of Skype for Business Server 2015

Skype for Business Server 2015 is gaining momentum and multiple customers started to adopt or migrate to the latest Microsoft communication platform. If you are currently working on a new roll-out or working on a migration project, then this Microsoft Virtual Academy course is an essential resource to your learning road-map and also assisting you in preparing for the latest Microsoft Exam 70-334 ("Core Solutions of Microsoft Skype for Business 2015") 

Below are the topics covered in the series,

1 | Overview of Skype for Business Server 2015

2 | Skype for Business Server 2015 Planning and Design Process

3 | Skype for Business Server 2015 Setup and Management

4 | Skype for Business Server 2015 Client and Device Deployment and Management

5 | Skype for Business Server 2015 Conferencing Concepts

6 | Skype for Business Server 2015 Conferencing Interoperability

7 | Skype for Business Server 2015 External Access

8 | Skype for Business Server 2015 Persistent Chat

9 | Skype for Business Server 2015 Monitoring and Archiving

10 | Skype for Business Server 2015 High Availability

11 | Skype for Business Server 2015 Disaster Recovery

12 | Skype for Business Server 2015 Migration

13 | Skype for Business Server 2015 Hybrid Scenarios

Access the course here: Core Concepts of Skype for Business Server 2015

Active Directory from on-premises to the cloud – Azure AD whitepapers now Available!!!

Identity management is the key for every Organization, Microsoft Azure AD is enhanced in such away that it addresses every need of the customers with advanced set new features and innovations occur rapidly day by day.When you extend your On premises AD infrastructure to the cloud and deploy an Hybrid model you can manage and take advantage of both the AD environment seamlessly.

Microsoft team published the below Whitepapers for ease of understanding of various rich features a available with Azure AD and the benefit you will get when you extend or bridge your On premises to the cloud.

Below are the series of whitepapers available for download

• Active Directory from the on-premises to the cloud.
• An overview of Azure AD.
• An overview of Azure AD B2C.
• Introducing Azure AD B2B collaboration.
• Azure AD & Windows 10: Better together for Work or School.
• Azure AD/Office 365 single sign-on with AD FS in Windows Server 2012 R2.
• Azure AD/Office 365 single sign-on with Shibboleth 2.
• Leverage Multi-Factor Authentication with Azure AD.
• Leverage Multi-Factor Authentication Server on your premises.
• Leverage Azure AD for modern Business Applications.

To know about what each whitepaper contains refer the description or you can review the below excellent presentation from Microsoft using the new Office Sway

View Sway presentation here: Active Directory from on-premises to the cloud – Azure AD whitepapers

Download the whitepapers here: Active Directory from on-premises to the cloud – Azure AD whitepapers