Office for Mac 2016 activation problem

PowerShell language allows you to work and build complicated objects. There are multiple ways to save them, such as XML or JSON, but sometimes using them is impossible or inadequate. Sometimes you want to use HTML or CSV or any other single dimension output.

Last few weeks I’m responsible for migrating from Office 365 to Office 365. Part of this migration process is to set up new Exchange 2016 server that will work as relay instead of using IIS server. I’ve setup hybrid, added accepted domains, prepared connectors, but there’s one thing missing. Any time an email is sent via relay to a user that exists on Office 365 and at the same time exists in Active Directory email never gets there.

Christmas time is upon us, and I’ve decided that my PSTeams module needs some love. I wrote it in late 2018 and updated it a few times at the beginning of 2019. This release hopefully is worth of having 1.0 version number. I don’t do that often and usually go for build numbers changes only, but Microsoft Teams message cards have their limits on functionality. Therefore, there are not many things that can be added unless Microsoft opens up and gives us all the cool features of Adaptive Cards. PSTeams module uses Webconnector to send messages to Teams. That method only supports Message Cards, which even Microsoft calls Legacy. But legacy doesn’t mean fully functional with some cool features of their own. If you’re new to PSTeams you may want to read those 2 posts below to get information how to set it up.

Working with Office 365 is my bread and butter in the last few months. I’m a System Architect and I am dropped in multiple projects, both new and old, to fix certain aspect and get out before anyone sees me. One of the common tasks I get is to provide some data about users stored in Office 365.

Hey there! Today, I wanted to introduce you to one of the small but excellent module I’ve created called the O365Synchronizer. This module focuses on synchronizing contacts and users. If you’ve ever been tasked with synchronizing Global Address Lists (GAL) across different Office 365 tenants or just wanted to sync GAL with user mailboxes so they can access contacts directly on their phones, this tool is for you.

Sending emails in Microsoft Exchange world using an alias for an account has always been a pain. It required working with workarounds such as setting up Shared Mailbox or Distribution Groups and using SendAs permissions. For years admins around the world were asking Microsoft to change this, and finally, in April 2021, they did! It’s a new feature of Office 365, and it requires action from Office 365 Administrator.

As you may have seen in my other post, there’s a simple, PowerShell way to get Office 365 Health Service data for you to use any way you like it. But before you can use that, you need to register granular permissions on your Office  365 tenant so that that data is provided to you. Here’s a step by step way to do it.

Being a Microsoft MVP has quite a few benefits. You get to be part of unique offers that help you enhance your knowledge even further. Microsoft Learning team decided to provide free training on Microsoft Fundamentals for MVPs and the Microsoft community, so I’m sharing this with you! Starting next week, Microsoft will run each activity from 9 AM to 5 PM Eastern Standard Time (EST) or 15:00 to 23:00 in Europe (CET).

Office 365 is a huge beast. It has so many services that it’s hard to track all of them. It’s even harder if you want to manage Office 365 using PowerShell. Microsoft makes many different PowerShell modules available for you, such as AzureAD, AzureADPreview, ExchangeOnline, MicrosoftTeams, and recently, Microsoft.Graph. But even with so many different modules, there are still tasks that Microsoft won’t let you do from PowerShell. But it doesn’t mean that it’s not possible to do it. I’ve spent some time tracking how Microsoft does things while you click thru the interface and created an O365Essentials PowerShell module that can do it in an automated way.

When you’re using Office 365 and want to send an email, you have two choices SMTP or Microsoft Graph API, which is a “new” kid on the block. For some time, I’ve used Microsoft Graph exclusively to send emails in favor of SMTP as it’s much easier to manage and generally works over HTTPS. If you type in google “Send email graph API PowerShell,” you will get lots of hits as bloggers, and Microsoft has already covered this topic. It’s even more critical than ever because Basic Authentication is deprecated in Office 365. To help out with the transition, Microsoft even released its PowerShell module. With Send-MgUserMail proposed as a way to send emails via Graph API, you will notice it’s far from being easy & user-friendly. Over two years ago, I released a PowerShell module called Mailozaurr (some people may not like my modules’ naming – but that’s how I roll!). In a blog post, Mailozaurr – New mail toolkit (SMTP, IMAP, POP3) with support for oAuth 2.0 and GraphApi for PowerShell, I’ve shown a basic functionality on how to send emails using SMTP OAuth 2.0 or Graph API, which aims to be drag & drop replacement over Send-MailMessage and is supposed to be as simple as possible to send an email with a low effort and high readability. You can also read on sending emails using Graph API by Tony Redmond in his blog post Moving on from Send-MailMessage: Sending Email from PowerShell using the Graph API.