Just can't get enough of IT

This is a quick post on how to obtain the license key for your on-premises Exchange Hybrid Server.

Even though that there is no such role like a Hybrid Server, you can get a dedicated license key to license your Exchange server used for Office 365 hybrid connectivity.

While using your Office 365 Global Administrator login, you can access your hybrid product key using the follow link:

• http://aka.ms/hybridkey

The web site will check if your Office 365 tenant is eligible for an hybrid key first. Then you have to select the approriate Exchange Server version.

Links

• Exchange Server Hybrid Deployments, https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj200581(v=exchg.150).aspx
• Exchange Hybrid Key, http://aka.ms/hybridkey

Enjoy your Exchange hybrid setup wth Office 365.

This blog post is about creating an Twitter Bot to tweet messages using Azure Automation. The steps and the script itself are based on Trevor Sullivan's TechNet Gallery post. His post assumes that you are familiar with some Azure Automation steps. So I am going to describe the required steps in more detail.

Requirements

You'll need the following components to setup your personal Twitter Bot.

• Local install of the PoshTwit PowerShell module
• A Twitter account
• An Azure subscription
• Trevor Sullivan's PowerShell Twitter Bot script or an updated version which is available here.

Step 1: Create a Twitter Application

First you'll need to create a Twitter application to reference your Azure Automation bot. The authentication information of your Twitter application will be needed in step 2.

The information required are

• ConsumerKey
• ConsumerSecret
• AccessToken
• AccessSecret (AccessTokenSecret)

You need to create a new Twitter application by accesssing the following link: https://apps.twitter.com/ 

Ensure that you've added your mobile phone number to your Twitter account before creating a new Twitter application. This is a requirement for creating Twitter applications.

Log on to Twitter using the Twitter account you want your Twitter Bot to post as.You'll see something similar as this:

Just click Create New App.

Enter the information as needed. The application name must be a globally unique name. So it might be tricky to find a suitable application name.  Click Create your Twitter application to finally create the application.

Select Keys and Access Tokens and copy the Consumer Key (API Key) and the Consumer Secret (API Secret) value into a text editor of your choice.

Further down on the same web page you'll find the Your Access Token section.

Click Create my access token.

After you've created the access token, copy the Access Token and the Access Token Secret to your text editor document. You'll need all four values in just a moment.

Step 2: Install PoshTwit locally

The Azure automation component will require application credentials for posting Tweets on your behalf. These required credentials are stored in a JSON file. Yo do not need top worry about the JSON data format.

The PoshTwit PowerShell module helps you to create the required JSON file. 

The simpliest way to get the PoshTwit module is by installing the module directly from the PowerShell Gallery using an Administrative PowerShell session.

Install-Module PoshTwit

If you cannot use the Install-Module cmdlet, use the link provided in the Links section. 

Remember that this step is only needed to create the JSON file containing the required credential information for Azure Automation.

After you've successfully installed the PoshTwit module, call the Set-PoshTwitToken cmdlet using all four Twitter app credential information to create the authentication JSON file.

Set-PoshTwitToken -ConsumerKey [YourConsumerKey] -ConsumerSecret [YourConsumerSecret] -AccessToken [YourAccessToken] -AccessSecret [AccessSecret]

The JSON file wil be created in the PowerShell module installtion folder. Which is by default:

C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\PoshTwit\0.1.6

The version number might differ depending on the version you've installed.

Open the token.json file and copy the content to your text editor. The content of the token.json file will be the password for the Azure Automation credential object. The content will look like this:

{"ConsumerKey":"9FX***********","ConsumerSecret":"4kIxa***********","AccessToken":"24540854***********","AccessSecret":"OSYP***********"}

You should see your Twitter application authentication information. You will nedd to copy & paste this string including the curly brackets as account credentials at a later step.

Step 3: Setup Azure Automation

Log on to the Azure Portal and create a new Azure Automation account. The Azure Automation will host your automation runbooks, variables and other settings. You can have multiple Azure Automation accounts. This is especially usefull when you want to delegate access and control of Automation accounts to different members of staff.

Click '+', enter Auto as search text and select Automation.

Click Create on the next blade.

Configure your new Azure Automation account by using a unique name, select the appropriate Azure subscription, create a new Resource Group or use an existing, select the Azure location, leave Yes as the default option for creating an Azure Run As account, select the checkbox to pin the Azure Automation account to your Azure dashboard, and click Create.

After you've been redirected to the Azure Dashboard wait for the Azure Automation Account to be created. If you are not redirected to the Azure Automation blade automatically, select the Automation Account tile on the Azure dashboard.

Select Process Automation - Runbooks. You'll notice two tutorials and two tutorial scripts which are automatically provisioned for you. 

Click Add a runbook to create the Twitter Bot runbook.

The next step requires that you've download the Tweet-PowerShellTips.ps1 script. If you haven't, download it now.

Select Import an exisiting runbook and browse for the downloaded PowerShell script on the next blade. After selecting the PowerShell file the fiel will be uploaded and validated automatically. The Runbook type and Runbook name properties will be set automatically for you. Just enter a short description for your runbook. Click Create.

The uploaded PowerShell script utilizes the PoshTwit PowerShell module. This PowerShell module needs to be available within the Azure Automation account as well. Additonal PowerShell modules are configured within the Shared Resources section of your Azure Automation account. The PoshTwit module is added from the PowerShell Gallery.

Select Modules Gallery, enter PoshTwit as search text and press Enter, click the PoshTwit search result tile.

Click Import to import the PowerShell module to thre shared ressources of your Azure Automation account. Click OK on the following blade. Close the PoshTwit module blade.

Now you'll add the required Twitter application credentials to the Shared Resources of the Azure Automation account.

Select Shared Resources - Credentials and click Add a credential.

Use TwitterCredential as Name and User name. The variable is accessed by the PowerShell script using the cmdlet 

Get-AutomationPSCredential -Name TwitterCredential

Now copy and paste the full JSON file content as Password and Password confirmation. Click Create to save the new credential information.

Select the new runbook from the list of runbooks to edit the runbook properties.

Click Edit to edit the PowerShell code to adjust the tweets to match your needs (at least). YOu are able to edit the PowerShell code directly from the browser window.

Ensure to click Save, after you've edited the PowerShell code.

Each time you've edited an Azure Runbook, you need to publish the new version of the runbook. Click Publish and confirm the publishing with Yes.

You can test your runbook using the Test pane. The script itself will not write any output to the output windows, as the script does not use any Write-Output cmdlets. 

You can add the following PowerShell code to the script to output the Tweet Id and Tweet text.

Write-Output "Publish Tweet $($TweetId) | $($TweetList[$TweetId])"

As a last step you need to create a schedule to post random tweets automatically. Automation schedules are created as shared resources again.

Select Shared Resources - Schedules and click Add a schedule.

Configure a schedule name, the start date, the schedule time zone, and the recurring interval. Click Create.

Select your runbook to link the just created schedule.

Select Schedules and click Add a schedule.

Click Link a schedule to your runbook, select the schedule and click OK.

The runbook schedules overview will show an information when the next run will be initiated. 

That's it. Your Azure Automation Twitter Bot is up and running.

Now you can simply edit the runbook, add new tweets to the string array, save the changes and publish the changed runbook for production use. As long as the changes are not published, Azure Automation will use the last published version of the runbook. 

Links

• PoshTwit PowerShell Module, https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/PoshTwit
• Azure Portal, https://portal.azure.com
• Trevor Sullivan's PowerShell Twitter Bot script, https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/PowerShell-Twitter-Bot-9e9b8603
• Download updated PowerShell runbook script

Enjoy Azure.

Updated PowerShell Script

This is the source code of the updated PowerShell script.

# Array of tweets
# Ensure that the length of each tweet does not exceed 140 characters
# Ensure to have at least 2 entries
$TweetList = @(
	'Find more #PowerShell #scripts at http://scripts.granikos.eu ',
	'More #Office365 and #MSFTExchange tips at http://JustCantGetEnough.granikos.eu '
)

# Get a tweet text by random 
$TweetId = Get-Random -Minimum 0 -Maximum ($TweetList.Count - 1);

# Fetch automation credentials
$TwitterCredential = Get-AutomationPSCredential -Name TwitterCredential;
$TwitterCredential = ConvertFrom-Json -InputObject $TwitterCredential.GetNetworkCredential().Password;

# Provision the tweet
$Tweet = @{
    ConsumerKey = $TwitterCredential.ConsumerKey;
    ConsumerSecret = $TwitterCredential.ConsumerSecret;
    AccessToken = $TwitterCredential.AccessToken;
    AccessSecret = $TwitterCredential.AccessSecret;
    Tweet = $TweetList[$TweetId];
    };

# Publish the tweet
Publish-Tweet @Tweet;

Last Updated: 2018-07-06

Description

This scripts creates a new room mailbox and security two groups for full mailbox access and and for send-as delegation. The security groups are created using a configurable naming convention. If required by your Active Directory team, you can add group prefixes or department abbreviations as well.

The script uses a Xml configuration file to simplify changes for variables unique for your environment.

High level steps executes by the script:

1. Create a new room mailbox
2. Create a new mail enabled security group for full access delegation
3. Assign full access security group for full access to the room mailbox
4. Create a new mail enabled security group for send-as delegation
5. Assign send-as permissions to send-as security group
6. Create a new mail enabled security group for allowed user to book the new room mailbox
7. Set calendar processing to AutoAccept, if required
8. Set resource capacity, if rewuired

Examples

Xml settings file

Note

The calendar booking security group feature is currently not available. But will be available in an upcoming release.

The following example creates a room mailbox for an Conference Room with empty security groups.

.\New-RoomMailbox.ps1 
  -RoomMailboxName "MB - Conference Room" 
  -RoomMailboxDisplayName "Board Conference Room" 
  -RoomMailboxAlias "MB-ConferenceRoom" 
  -RoomMailboxSmtpAddress "ConferenceRoom@mcsmemail.de" 
  -DepartmentPrefix "C"

You can simplify the use of the script by using a paramterized helper script named Run-NewRoomMailbox.ps1.

The following Run-NewRoomMailbox.ps1 script simplifies the process of creating a team mailbox even more.

$roomMailboxName = 'MB-Conference Room'
$roomMailboxDisplayName = 'Board Conference Room'
$roomMailboxAlias = 'MB-ConferenceRoom'
$roomMailboxSmtpAddress = 'ConferenceRoom@mcsmemail.de'
$departmentPrefix = 'C'
$groupFullAccessMembers = @('JohnDoe','JaneDoe')  # Empty = @()
$groupSendAsMembers = @()
$groupCalendarBookingMembers = @()
$RoomCapacity = 0
$RoomList = 'AllRoomsHQ'
$Language = 'en-GB'


.\New-RoomMailbox.ps1 
  -RoomMailboxName $roomMailboxName 
  -RoomMailboxDisplayName $roomMailboxDisplayName 
  -RoomMailboxAlias $roomMailboxAlias 
  -RoomMailboxSmtpAddress $roomMailboxSmtpAddress 
  -DepartmentPrefix $departmentPrefix 
  -GroupFullAccessMembers $groupFullAccessMembers 
  -GroupSendAsMembers $groupSendAsMembers
  -RoomCapacity $RoomCapacity 
  -AutoAccept 
  -RoomList $RoomList
  -Language $Language

Version History

• 1.0, Initial community release
• 1.1, Some PowerShell hygiene, issue #2 closed
• 1.2, CalenderBooking, Language added

Links

• Download and follow at Github: https://github.com/Apoc70/New-RoomMailbox​
• Download and like at TechNet Gallery: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Create-a-new-Room-Mailbox-99a4e477

Follow

• Twitter @stensitzki
• LinkedIn
• Xing

There are quite a lot of good step-by-step manuals available describing how to enable Kerberos authentication for Exchange Server 2013/2016.

The following issue has been seen in an Exchange 2013 infrastructure (8 server DAG) where Outlook clients use OutlookAnyhwere to connect to Exchange Server. MAPI over Http is disabled on an organizational level due to a compatibility issue with another client software.

Problem

Even if you follow the detailed descriptions you might end up in a situation where your Outlook clients still won't connect to Exchange Server using Kerberos. The Outlook connection status overview (Ctrl + Right Click on the Outlook icon in System Tray) still shows Ntlm as the used authentication provider:

Reason

You are supposed to use the following PowerShell cmdlets to configure OutlookAnywhere to use Kerberos:

Get-OutlookAnywhere -Server CASSERVER | Set-OutlookAnywhere -InternalClientAuthenticationMethod  Negotiate

All eight Exchange 2013 servers where still not offering Nego as an authentication provider even after some period of time. Verifying the OutlookAnywhere configurations using PowerShell showed the correct configuration values. So what to do?

A quick check at the IIS authentication settings of the \Rpc virtual directory of the Front End web site (Default Web Site) showed that this virtual directory was still configured to use Ntlm only.

Solution

Use the IIS management consolte to add the Negotiate authentication provider to the list of available providers and reorder the list to use Nego first.

Now Outlook clients will pick up the configuration change an will connect to OutlookAnywhere using Kerberos.

Note

You should not use the IIS management console to change any settings of the Exchange Server virtual directories during normal operations. Using the IIS management console should only be used for troubleshooting fancy situations that you encounter in your Exchange Server infrastructure. 

The preferred method to change Exchange Server vDir settings is PowerShell.

Links

• Configuring Kerberos authentication for load-balanced Client Access services (Exchange 2016), https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff808312(v=exchg.160).aspx
• Configuring Kerberos authentication for load-balanced Client Access servers (Exchange 2013), https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff808312(v=exchg.150).aspx

Enjoy Exchange Server

This blog post focusses on an issue where your Exchange Online users are not able to send emails to other Exchange Online recipients outside of your organization when using a 3rd Party Centralized Email Flow Setup. The term 3rd Party Centralized Email Flow Setup describes a solution where you not follow the preferred hybrid architecture proposed by the Exchange product group, but use a 3rd party software as a centralized email gateway.

Problem

You have followed the recommendation to secure the Exchange Online inbound connector for your on-premises email servers by using a certificate name or the remote IP address of your on-premises email gateway.

Assumption

The on-premises email security gateway utilizes a self-signed certificate to secure TLS connections. The gateway is configured to use two different send connector setups:

• Internet Connector
  Use receipients domain MX records
  Use self-signed certificate
  Target address space: *
   
• Office 365 Connector
  Use tenant.mail.protection.outlook.com to route internal email messages
  Use self-signed certificate
  Target address space: tenant.mail.onmicrosoft.com

In this case Exchange Online Protection (EOP) will not be able to differentiate between tenant internal inbound mail flow and mail flow targeted to other tenants. Therefore, email messages sent from your Exchange Online users to recipients located in other Exchange Online tenants will be discarded.

Interestingly enough, this will happen silently. Your gateway solution will log a successful delivery to Exchange Online Protection. The tenant administrator of the recipient domain will not find an any information in the Exchange Online message tracking logs.

The following diagram illustrates the setup.

Solution

The solution for this problem is pretty simple. Just use dedicated certificates for each connector targetting Exchange Online.

Change the Internet Connector to fully trusted 3rd party certificate. In this case you are not required to modify the existing Exchange Online inbound connector setup.

The new connector configurations are:

• Internet Connector
  Use receipients domain MX records
  Use 3rd party certificate
  Target address space: *
   
• Office 365 Connector
  Use tenant.mail.protection.outlook.com to route internal email messages
  Use self-signed certificate
  Target address space: tenant.mail.onmicrosoft.com

The following diagram illustrates the new setup:

Links

• Important notice for Office 365 email customers who have configured connectors, https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/exchange/2016/03/29/important-notice-for-office-365-email-customers-who-have-configured-connectors/
• Mail flow best practices for Exchange Online and Office 365 (overview), https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj937232(v=exchg.150).aspx

Enjoy!