[Today's post comes to us courtesy of Justin Crosby from Commercial Technical Support]
A couple weeks we published an article on how to add an additional email address to an O365 account. When you receive email for a user with multiple email addresses, the To line will always display the primary email. For Example, let’s say you have a user named Don and his email is Don@contoso.com. He also has a secondary email address of Sales@contoso.com. When Don looks at his email in Outlook, mail sent to Sales@contoso.com will appear to have been sent to Don@contoso.com.
In some cases people want to know exactly what address an email was sent to. You could always look at the headers, but this is cumbersome. A better way to handle this is to create an Outlook rule.
To do this in Outlook 2010:
Now when you receive email sent to the secondary address(es) this rule will run and apply your custom action to it.
[Today’s post comes to us courtesy of Benny Peter from Commercial Technical Support]
After your client computer is connected to the SBS 2011 Essentials server, you’ll also have a new application added to your desktop, the Launchpad shown below. This application gives you quick access to your backups for this computer, as well as any Shared Folders that have been provisioned for the SBS network. The Remote Web Access link will attempt to connect to the SBS 2011 Essentials version of Remote Web Access.
This connector configures the client computer backup settings and also installs a Launchpad application on the client computer.
The following links are available on the SBS 2011 Launchpad:
You can click Backup on the Launchpad to bring up the Backup Properties dialog box as shown in the below figure. From here, you can view previous backups, start a new backup, and change the Power Management settings.
The Remote Web Access enables you to access the network resources and connect to other computers from office or any remote location. We will talk more about Remote Web Access in the SBS 2011 Essentials in the forthcoming blog.
To learn more about Remote Web Access in the SBS 2011 Standard, please see the following link: Introduction to SBS 2011 Standard Remote Web Access (RWA).
Clicking on the Shared Folders link will open the Windows Explorer to the location of shared folders on the server. You can also create additional folders as needed. You can upload or download files to any of the shared folders that are listed by dragging and dropping files between the local computer and the shared folders.
From the Launchpad, you can also connect to the Dashboard for the SBS 2011 Essentials server. Click Dashboard on the Launchpad to open the Dashboard window. From the Dashboard, you can configure your SBS 2011 Essentials server without having to have a keyboard, mouse, or monitor connected to it. We will talk more about Dashboard in a forthcoming blog.
Launchpad provides a quick health status of the computer. The notification area displays health alerts. Clicking on the alert provides a possible resolution. The most severe alerts appear first in the list. Less severe alerts appear later in the list.
Launchpad.log file can be found on the client machine at C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Server\Logs. Note: ProgramData folder is hidden, to view the folder follow the steps in the link below: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-IN/windows7/Show-hidden-files.
[Today's post comes to us courtesy of John Bay from Commercial Technical Support]
The Small Business Server 2011 Essentials server is designed to seamlessly integrate into an existing network infrastructure. The network card on the server is configured to acquire an IP address from a DHCP server. Typically, the DHCP server will be the router. The server is an Active Directory domain controller and as such it functions as a DNS server. In order for the clients to properly locate the Active Directory, the network card on the client is typically configured to point to the IP address of the SBS 2011 Essentials server. Since the Essentials server is a DHCP client itself, the IP address of the server may change. In Essentials, we had to develop a method to ensure that the client is always pointing to the right IP address for DNS. When the client is joined to the Essentials domain using http://server/connect, a service named Windows Server LAN Configuration is installed on the client. This service is responsible for determining the IP address of the SBS Essentials server and properly configuring the DNS settings on the client machine.
The Windows Server LAN Configuration service will monitor the client IP address. If the client IP address has changed, the service will configure the primary DNS address to be automatic assigned from DHCP and it will send a Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) network call to look for the SBS Essentials server. If the SBS Essentials server is found, a quick DNS test is performed. If the server responds to the DNS request, the primary DNS server on the client will be set to static assigned with the IP address of the SBS 2011 Essentials server that was found on the network via the UPnP call. If the client is a laptop, and changes locations so that they receive a new IP from DHCP either via their home network/wi-fi hotspot or other, the service will send out the UPNP request and in this case no server will be found and the primary DNS address will be set to automatic (via DHCP).
The SBS 2011 Essentials server itself is using a dynamic IP, so the client must make sure that it is updated with the latest IP address for the server. The LAN Configuration Service on the client will contact the server every 30 seconds, and the server will respond with its IP address. If the IP address has changed the client will then update its primary DNS address accordingly. If the server does not respond, the client will switch the DNS address back to automatic assigned from DHCP. So if the SBS Essentials server is down for maintenance, the clients will automatically change the DNS address to DHCP assigned and they will still have Internet access.
[Today's post comes to us courtesy of Damian Leibaschoff and Justin Crosby from Commercial Technical Support]
One of the most requested features for the SBS Monitoring component of Windows SBS 2008 and Windows SBS 2011 Standard is the ability to control and filter unwanted errors from the event logs section of the reports.
There are a number of known events that can be safely ignored. Also depending on the particular environment you might have your own list of events you want to ignore. You cannot accomplish this with the built-in, out-of-box, functionality.
This, as-is solution, was built by engineers from the SBS support team and is aimed at improving the functionality and effectiveness of the SBS Monitoring reports.
The relevant portion of a detailed report from SBS 2011 standard before installing the new functionality:
The same report with the feature installed using the default exclusions:
Notice how the critical event count went from 12 to 5, and unimportant DCOM and WinRM events have been hidden.
This solution configures a database table with a number of source:event combinations (known as exclusions) that need not be collected from the event logs, for example: DCOM 10016. Upon installing the solution a default set of exclusions are added depending on the version of SBS and the existing instances that have already been collected are removed. The same is true when a new exclusion is added manually, existing source:events instances will be deleted.
Upon removing an exclusion or uninstalling the solution, the process of collecting all events will resume and only after the event is experienced again it will then be collected and will appear on the report.
You will see “Changed database context to ‘SBSMonitoring’
.\SBSAlertsCleanup.ps1 –Action ListExclusions
ID Event Source -- ----- ------ 1 129 WinRM 2 142 WinRM 3 4107 Microsoft-Windows-CAPI2 4 10016 DCOM 5 10009 DCOM 6 5586 SharePoint Foundation 7 6772 SharePoint Foundation 8 6398 SharePoint Foundation 9 8 MSExchange CmdletLogs 10 6 MSExchange CmdletLogs
This is a 2 part process, first you have to list the current exclusions, and then we can pick which one to remove.
.\SBSAlertsCleanup.ps1 –Action RemoveExclusion –ID 1 Removing Exclusion for Source: WinRM, EventID: 129
To confirm:
ID Event Source -- ----- ------ 2 142 WinRM 3 4107 Microsoft-Windows-CAPI2 4 10016 DCOM 5 10009 DCOM 6 5586 SharePoint Foundation 7 6772 SharePoint Foundation 8 6398 SharePoint Foundation 9 8 MSExchange CmdletLogs 10 6 MSExchange CmdletLogs
This is a 2 part process, first you have to list the available instances of events that have already been collected, and then we can pick which one to exclude.
.\SBSAlertsCleanup.ps1 –Action ListEvents
ID Event Source -- ----- ------ 346141 11 Disk 349778 13 Server Infrastructure Licensing 349779 14 Server Infrastructure Licensing 349781 15 Server Infrastructure Licensing 349552 25 WindowsUpdateClient 349832 54 MSExchange OWA 349827 135 WinRM 349795 502 Windows Small Business Server 2011 Standard 349809 1000 Application Error 343153 1016 DhcpServer 342822 2002 ESENT 348341 2007 ESE 342823 2007 ESENT
Let’s say that the administrator was been receiving several events for WindowsUpdateClient 25 on a regular basis. The admin has investigated this event and determined that it is not cause for concern on their network and they would no longer like to be notified about this event. The admin can do the following to exclude this event from the report:
.\SBSAlertsCleanup.ps1 –Action AddExclusion –ID 349552
Adding Exclusion for Source: WindowsUpdateClient, EventID: 25
ID Event Source -- ----- ------ 2 142 WinRM 3 4107 Microsoft-Windows-CAPI2 4 10016 DCOM 5 10009 DCOM 6 5586 SharePoint Foundation 7 6772 SharePoint Foundation 8 6398 SharePoint Foundation 9 8 MSExchange CmdletLogs 10 6 MSExchange CmdletLogs 11 25 WindowsUpdateClient
Upon removing an exclusion or uninstalling the product, the process of collecting all events will resume and only after the event is experienced again it will then be collected and will appear on the report.
.\SBSAlertsCleanup.ps1 –Action Uninstall
We install a set of common exclusions for known events that are generally considered as ignorable. This may not be the case for each and every server so you might have to tweak the list of exclusions, removing and adding as needed as to make your reports show relevant errors that could be of interest for someone administering the health of the server.
SBS 2008
SBS 2011 Standard
Hopefully, this simple enhancement can help you regain control of the reports and fine tune them to your needs.
Sometimes you will want one user to receive email at multiple email addresses. This blog post will show you have to add additional email addresses to one of your existing Office 365 user accounts. Please note that even though a user may have multiple email addresses, there email will always appear to be from the address listed as Primary.
[Todays post comes to us courtesy of Enrico Toro, Product Manager of Server and Cloud Platform Marketing]
It is our pleasure to announce that starting today the Office 365 Integration Module for Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials (OIM) is freely available for download in the Microsoft Download Center. We would like to thank all the partners and customers who have participated in the beta program to help us to make it even better.
The OIM allows customers using Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials to run the core technology services they need on-premise and easily integrate with Office 365 for email and collaboration—without increasing management costs or complexity.
The OIM helps centralize user and server management, enabling small businesses to manage their users’ access to services offered both locally and in the cloud from one single place, thus saving time and money. For example, a small business with SBS 2011 Essentials that already has a number of local users and has just subscribed to Office 365 can provision them all into the cloud with a very simple wizard.
Together with the Windows 7 Professional Pack Add-in for SBS Essentials and the Windows Phone Connector, the release of the Office 365 Integration Module confirms Microsoft’s commitment to all Small Businesses to provide them with the best IT solutions for all their needs, mobility, client computing, IT infrastructure and email and collaboration.
To learn more about SBS Essentials, Office 365 and how the two together can provide a great solution for any small business, please visit http://www.myfirstserver.com/ to view Tech Essentials with Jane Applegate and try out the Virtual Server Experience.