As you will probably know, a few years ago Microsoft changed MCSE so that the qualifications would no longer have a version number in the name but instead they required a recertification every three years. This was good on one hand since it avoided you needing to change your CV, however it did mean enforced […]
Office 365 Tenant to Tenant Migration
Last weekend I undertook a Migration from one Office 365 tenant to another – manually. Whilst we normally work in the enterprise space migrating thousands of users, this was a special case project undertaken deliberately as a manual process end to end. It wasn’t without issue and hiccups, made more worrying because it was for […]
Autodiscover exposed
for Exchange & O365 Autodiscover is a fundamental technology in Exchange and Office 365. When Outlook first starts the ‘out of the box experience’ is that it will first of all figure out if it can find an email address for you on the account you’re logged in with and then takes you through a […]
O365 Groups, Teams, Distribution Lists or Yammer
In Office 365 there are now many similar options available for collaboration. You now have the traditional Distribution Lists (aka Distribution Groups), Office 365 Groups, Yammer and more recently Teams, and of course there is also SharePoint, OneDrive and Skype for Business. So with all this choice… how do you choose? What is available Microsoft’s […]
Tenant Isolation in Microsoft Office 365
I have often wondered how Microsoft have architected their cloud solutions to ensure that there is no cross-talk between tenants (be that accidental or malicious) and hey presto a document from Microsoft has surfaced which outlines exactly that. In summary it talks about Azure AD being stored in partitions and these partitions being replicated in […]
Office 365 Persistent Chat (Microsoft Teams)
A common complaint from people who are used to using Skype and who are moving to Skype for Business is where is persistent chat? I mean in Skype I can be part of a group conversation and even if I’m not actively logged into Skype the next time I log in I can see the […]
UC and Cloud Day Summary
Birmingham hosts UC and Cloud Day Neil and myself travelled to Birmingham to attend the UC and Cloud Day. It was a first for us, but had been recommended to us by James from Binary Tree who has been a couple of times. We had some logistical hiccups with thinking is was at the NEC […]
Wrapping up Ignite 2016
Ignite 2016 is once again behind us, farewell Atlanta! Our team again travelled to Ignite to try to see as many sessions as possible, meet as many people as possible and have a good time while doing so. This year Ignite was held in Atlanta and we arrived a day or two early to get […]
Enabling Remote Administrators for O365
By Carl Baumann, CEO 4ward North America, and Twan van Beers, Nero Blanco The administration tasks for an Office 365 deployment are really designed around a centralized management model. Within the free admin toolset provided by Microsoft there is no way to setup regional management rights for administrators who ONLY want to take care of […]
Azure network error 1233, error 53 path not found
If you have an Azure VM that is suddenly getting errors including Error 53: The network path was not found Error 1233: The network location cannot be reached Server can’t be pinged but can ping out After ensuring that the firewall settings are ok (or if you know 100% this was working and now after […]
Exchange Online, On Premise for Small, Midsized Businesses – The Costs
Exchange Online is of course part of Office 365 and people are migrating to it in droves. The attractions from a feature perspective are obvious, for a mere £8 a month small businesses (under 300 users) can get all of the following Exchange Online SharePoint Online OneDrive Skype for Business Exchange Online Protection Office 2016 […]
How can I reduce SPAM for my domains?
As any mail administrator will know SPAM is rampant on the Internet. I’ve work in organizations where over 95% of all mail received at the perimeter is dropped as SPAM mail… In previous blogs we have looked at the Sender Protection Framework (SPF) and DomainKey Identified Mail (DKIM). Now it is time to look at […]