Just can't get enough of IT

Wouldn't it be nice if you could stay in Microsoft Teams even when working with your emails? Microsoft Teams is getting even more mature by providing an App for integrating Outlook into the Microsoft Teams client.

At least it seems that this is the case. or was it?

The Outlook App (Preview)

Last week a new App, still in preview, showed up in the Teams Admin Center (TAC) of some demo tenants. I filtered the list of available apps using Outlook as a search term.

When selecting the app, the details showed that the app was still in preview (v0.41).

As long as the app is enabled within Teams, you can add the app to a Teams Setup Policy and make it available for users.

Your users can then access the Outlook App using the Teams app bar.

You can simply click on Outlook in the app bar and, voilá, you have your Outlook inbox in Microsoft Teams. Due to the architecture of Microsoft Teams, you have access to your Outlook on the Web version of your inbox.

Links

• Learn more about Microsoft Teams 
• Teams App Setup Policy
• Learn more about today

Enjoy Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Outlook. - And remember today's date.

This year's MCT Summit Middle East took place on 19-20 March, with two full days of content about Microsoft technologies. Four session tracks plus a workshop track offered possibilities to learn and share knowledge, not only with the MCT community. 

The session recording will be made available on the event website.

I enjoyed talking about Exchange Hybrid, what it is, why you need it and how you implement it using the Hybrid Configuration Wizard.

My PowerPoint presentation is available on Slideshare. 

I look forward to next years' event. 

Links

• MCT Summit Middle East
• My PowerPoint slide deck on SlideShare 

Services of third-party software solutions often interfere with installing a new Exchange Server cumulative update, because these services have a file lock active. 

To avoid any issues when installing a CU, or having the prerequisites check fail due to open files, you simply stop the Windows services and ensure that those services do not restart automatically. Especially monitoring solutions that use some kind of watchdog service are a candidate that you must disable for installing an Exchange Server CU.

The following two PowerShell examples help you to prepare the Windows services for installing an Exchange Server CU.

Prepare for CU installation

In preparation for the installation of an Exchange Server cumulative update, you can use the following PowerShell commands.

# Disable and stop services or just stop services
# Add other services as needed

# Set SMEX service to manual and stop services
Get-Service -Name 'ScanMail*' | Set-Service -StartupType Manual
Get-Service -Name 'ScanMail*' | ?{$_.Status -eq 'Running'} | Stop-Service -Force

# Stop SMEX SQL Express instance
Get-Service -Name 'MSSQL*' | ?{$_.Status -eq 'Running'} | Stop-Service -Force

# Disable and stop ENow monitoring services
Get-Service 'ENow*' | Set-Service -StartupType Disabled
Get-Service 'ENow*' | ?{$_.Status -eq 'Running'} | Stop-Service -Force

# Stop NetBackup service
Get-Service -Name 'NetBackup*' | ?{$_.Status -eq 'Running'} | Stop-Service -Force

Post CU installation

After installing the Exchange Server cumulative update you should restart your computer. I recommend initiating a check for additional Windows Updates for the CU. This helps to ensure that you do not only have the latest CU installed, but required security updates as well.

# Enabling and starting services
# Adjust the list of services as needed

# Enable and start SMEX services
Get-Service -Name 'ScanMail*' | Set-Service -StartupType Automatic
Get-Service -Name 'ScanMail*' | Start-Service

# Enable and start ENow Monitoring services
Get-Service -Name 'ENow*' | Set-Service -StartupType Automatic
Get-Service -Name 'ENow*' | Start-Service

Enjoy Exchange Server.

You sometimes need some (or even many) test user objects in Active Directory.

This script helps you create any number of test users in your Active Directory domain, which you can easily enable for on-premises or remote mailboxes afterward.

The Script

# Number of user accounts to create
$UserCount = 5
$RandomPassword = $true
$DefaultPassword = 'Pa55w.rd'

# User name prefix
# New user object will be named TestUser1, TestUser2, ...
$TestUserPrefix = 'TestUser'

# User object properties
$GivenName = 'Test'
$Surname = 'User'
$Company = 'Varunagroup'
$JobTitle = @('Junior Consultant','Senior Consultant','Technical Consultant','Business Consultant')
$PreferredLanguage = 'de-DE'

# Name of the new organizational unit for test user object
$TestOU = 'Test User'

# Target OU path where the script creates the new OU 
$TargetOU = 'OU=IT,dc=varunagroup,dc=de'

# Import Active Directory PowerShell Module
Import-Module -Name ActiveDirectory 

# Build OU Path
$UserOUPath = ("OU={0},{1}" -f $TestOU, $TargetOU)

# Check if OU exists
$OUExists = $false

try {
   $OUExists = [adsi]::Exists("LDAP://$UserOUPath")
}
catch {
   $OUExists =$true   
}

if(-not $OUExists) { 
   # Create new organizational unit for test users
   New-ADOrganizationalUnit -Name $TestOU -Path $TargetOU -ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion:$false -Confirm:$false
}
else {
   Write-Warning ('OU {0} exists please delete the OU and user objects manually, before running this script.' -f $UserOUPath)
   Exit
}

Write-Output ("Creating {0} user object in {1}" -f $UserCount, $UserOUPath)

# Create new user objects
1..$UserCount | ForEach-Object {

   # Get a random number for selecting a job title
   $random = Get-Random -Minimum 0 -Maximum (($JobTitle | Measure-Object). Count - 1)

   # Set user password
   if($RandomPassword) {
      # Create a random password
      $UserPassword = ConvertTo-SecureString -String (-join ((33..93) + (97..125) | Get-Random -Count 25 | % {[char]$_})) -AsPlainText -Force
   }
   else {
      # Use a fixed password
      $UserPassword = ConvertTo-SecureString -String $DefaultPassword -AsPlainText -Force
   }

   # Create a new user object
   # Adjust user name template and other attributes as needed
   New-ADUser -Name ("{0}{1}" -f $TestUserPrefix, $_) `
   -DisplayName ("{0} {1}" -f $TestUserPrefix, $_) `
   -GivenName $GivenName `
   -Surname ("$Surname{0}" -f $_) `
   -OtherAttributes @{title=$JobTitle[$random];company=$Company;preferredLanguage=$PreferredLanguage} `
   -Path $UserOUPath `
   -AccountPassword $UserPassword `
   -Enabled:$True `
   -Confirm:$false
}

Enable mailboxes

Use your on-premises Exchange Management Shell to enable all test users with an on-premises mailbox.

$UserOU = 'OU=Test User,OU=IT,dc=varunagroup,dc=de'
Get-User -OrganizationalUnit $UserOU | Enable-Mailbox -Confirm:$false

Use your on-premises Exchange Management Shell to enable all test users with a new remote mailbox in Exchange Online. Do not forget to change the tenant name of the remote routing address.

Get-User -OrganizationalUnit 'OU=Test User,OU=IT,dc=varunagroup,dc=de' | %{Enable-RemoteMailbox
 -Identity $_ -Confirm:$false -RemoteRoutingAddress "$($_.SamAccountName)@TENANT.mail.onmicrosoft.com"}

You find the most recent version of the script at GitHub.

Links

• GitHub: https://github.com/Apoc70/New-TestUser

Enjoy.

I am honored to be a speaker at the Virtual Scottish Summit 2021 conference, taking place on Saturday, 27. February.

The Scottish Summit is a truly European event. You can choose from 365 sessions covering mostly any about Microsoft 365 workloads in seven languages:

• Englisch
• Spanish
• German
• French
• Italian
• Portuguese
• Polish

Attend my session when you are interested in the challenges of implementing Exchange Server Hybrid, and the requirements to make it work with Microsoft Teams and on-premises mailboxes.

My session at Scottish Summit 2021:

• Exchange Hybrid - What, Why, and How
• Session schedule details
  • 13:00h (UK) 

Links

• Scottish Summit 2021 Website
• Register for Scottish Summit
• Scottish Summit Sessions
• Scottish Summit 2020 YouTube Channel

See you online for the Virtual Scottish Summit.