BPOSitive : Exchange Online

CRM Online and BPOS integration

Brett Hill — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:33:00 GMT

Ran across this blog post on integrating BPOS with BPOS. Useful info.

http://blogs.msdn.com/dynamicscrmonline/archive/2009/05/19/crm-online-and-bpos-business-productivity-online-suite.aspx

Also, you might be interested to know that the SMTP gateway in CRM has been updated to work with Exchange Online

Q&A on the new Powershell commands for BPOS Migration

Brett Hill — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:55:00 GMT

In the just announced service release, you'll find a mention of the following powershell commands.

Enable-MSOnlineUser
Get-MSOnlineSubscription
Set-MSOnlineUserPassword

Q: What do these do?

These can be used together or sepearlty to help manage a migration or adminster your accounts.

Typically, you would run Get-MSOnlineSubcrtption to return a a GUID associated with the type of liscneses available. This determines what kinds of services can be activated for users, then you use that GUID do Enable-MSOnlineUser. If you assign an Exchange Online lisence the user will have a mailbox assigned. At the same time, one of the parameters allows you to set the password for the user. In addition, you can set the password later for any user with the Set-MSOnlineUserPassword script.

Q: Why are these needed?

When you use directory synch to create users, users need to be activated before they can use mail or other services. This script provides an automated way of activating users and is faster than usin the admin console. Since it's a script, you can add code to intelligently scope the activation.

In addition, when activating uses, you can set the password to a known or generated value and add code to have the user emailed about the activation.

Finally, the set password script allows a BPOS admin to change a users password from powershell rather than having to login to the admin center. Very handy.

Q: When can I use them?

The scripts willl be implemented in a new version of the Migration Tool which is scheduled to be shipped when the deoplyments are completed. This should be by the end of October at the latest.

Q: Where can I get details on the syntax and use

When the migration tool is released, the scripts will have built in help that shows the syntax. We are planning on some demos and the like to be released soon. As a tip, you might want to check the Microsoft Online documentation as that could be udpated any time with details on the scripts.http://www.microsoft.com/resources/Technet/en-us/MSOnline/bpos/html/1843e98e-1c13-409d-8d56-c67f0cb87f5e.htm

Also, I might add that you can expect more powershell fun in the future.

Serivce update: new features and capabilites

Brett Hill — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:42:00 GMT

Upgrades and Enhancements
The following features and capabilities are included in the October Service Update:

Bulk Activation of Users
PowerShell commandlets will be added to streamline the activation process, enabling administrators to easily automate the activation of a set of users. Most commonly, these commandlets will be used to activate a set of users that have been migrated from an Active Directory forest to Microsoft Online Services via the Directory Synchronization Tool. Previously, administrators were required to activate users one-by-one with the User Administration tools in the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center.
Commandlets added in this Service Update are:

Enable-MSOnlineUser
Get-MSOnlineSubscription
Set-MSOnlineUserPassword

A new version of the Microsoft Online Services Transporter Tool supporting these commandlets will be available for download at the Microsoft Download Center upon completion of the deployment of the October Service Update into production data centers for all regions.

POP Mail Clients
Supported e-mail clients for Exchange Online are being expanded to include POP-based clients. Previously, Exchange Online supported only Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 and 2007.

To enable POP e-mail client support for your organization, have your administrator contact Microsoft Online Services Technical Support to open a Service Request.

Please note: Service Requests for POP enablement will be accepted upon completion of the deployment of the October Service Update into production data centers for all regions. Please reference the Microsoft Online Services Team Blog for deployment updates.

Support for 30,000 Users

The Microsoft Online Services Administration Center will support as many as 30,000 users, improving management and administration for larger organizations. Previously, Microsoft Online Services supported up to 10,000 users.

Please note that SharePoint Online will retain previously established limits (e.g., 20 sites per site collection, 50 gigabytes (GB) per site, and 1 terabyte (TB) per company).

Enhanced Support for Mac OS
The October Service Update includes several enhancements that will provide a more efficient communication and collaboration experience for organizations with Mac users.

A new Sign-In Client for the Mac OS provides a single sign-in experience and auto-configuration of Office for Mac applications and the Safari browser for use with Microsoft Online Services.

Other Mac features in this Service Update include:

Support for Entourage 2008 Exchange Web Services (EWS), including Global Address List (GAL), Calendar Free/Busy Lookup, and Out-of-Office notifications
Global Address List support for Entourage 2004 and 2008 when using the Sign-In Client for Mac
SharePoint Online support for Document Connection for Mac to improve the collaboration experience for users
Improved Firefox and Safari support for My Company Portal

The Sign-In Client for Mac will be available for download at the Microsoft Download Center upon completion of the deployment of the October Service Update into production data centers for all regions. Please reference the Microsoft Online Services Team Blog for updates on the availability of the Sign-In Client for Mac.

Timeline
Deployment of the October Service Update into production data centers has started, with deployment to all regions anticipated to be complete by mid-October.

The deployment schedule is subject to change. Updates to the deployment schedule will be announced via the Microsoft Online Services Team Blog as well as the RSS Feed from the Microsoft Online Services Administration Center.

Additional Information
All service upgrades in the October Service Update will be performed on your behalf. These changes are a mandatory upgrade for all users, so it is important that you are aware of them and understand how they may impact you.

If you have additional questions, there are several resources at your disposal. Click here for information about how to contact Microsoft Online Services Support. You can also read the Microsoft Online Services Team Blog for the latest news about the October Service Update, or participate in technical discussions on the Microsoft Online Services TechNet Forums.

Thank you!
Thank you for choosing Microsoft Online Services to host your business productivity applications. We look forward to delivering additional enhancements and capabilities that improve your service experience and help you focus on your core business initiatives.

Sincerely,
Microsoft Online Services

Outlook 2003 Free/Busy Connector for BPOS

Brett Hill — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:18:00 GMT

One of the most interesting aspects of working with services as opposed to a bits on disk product group, is that we update capabilities all the time. That's really different than releasing service packs for features updates. One of the updates we released was adding Outlook 2003 as a client for Exchnage Online. Since Outlook 2003 was released before autodiscover was created, it is missing free/busy capability and GAL lookup when used in the online environment. Well, that just won't do.

There is currently a beta of the Outlook 2003 free/busy connector that you can sign up for. See the link below for details.

http://blogs.technet.com/msonline/archive/2009/09/24/do-you-want-to-use-outlook-2003-with-exchange-online.aspx

Creating restricted distribution lists in BPOS with Dirsynch

Brett Hill — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:05:00 GMT

Discovered today that the directory synchronization tool copies permissions with distribution lists.

DirSync syncs the following AD attributes that control who can and cannot send to a DL:

· AuthOrig (Authorized Originators: Only these Users can send to the DL)

· UnauthOrig (Unauthorized Originators: Anyone BUT these users can send to the DL)

· dLMemRejectPerms (Unauthorized DLs: Anyone but members of these DLs can send to this DL)

· dLMemSubmitPerms (Authorized DLs: No one but members of these DLs can send to this DL)

· msExchRequireAuthToSendTo (Only Authenticated Senders can send to the DL, blocks External senders, doesn’t work for other CCS customers)

You can control this in the Exchange 2007 Message delivery system UI or in AD.

Thanks to Tarkek Dawoud in BPOS engineering for this detail.

-brett

SMTP enabled for BPOS worldwide

Brett Hill — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 22:14:00 GMT

SMTP clients can connect to Microsoft Online SMTP servers and authenticate using a Microsoft Online Services user credentials to send mail. The connection requires Transport Layer Security (TLS). This allows you to use Exchange Online as an SMTP service for mail originating outside of the Exchange Online environment, but routed by Exchange Online.

To connect to the Microsoft Online Services SMTP server, open your SMTP client application and provide the information below.

o The fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the Microsoft Online Services SMTP server. The FQDN will be slightly different depending on which Microsoft Online Services datacenter your company is connected to. The server FQDNs are:

o North America Datacenter: Smtp.mail.microsoftonline.com

o Europe Datacenter: Smtp.mail.emea.microsoftonline.com

o Asia Pacific Datacenter: Smtp.mail.apac.microsoftonline.com

o The user name and password of a Microsoft Online Services user account with an Exchange Online license.

On most client applications, this is under “My outgoing mail server (SMTP) requires authentication” – this should be configured “Yes”, and the corresponding Microsoft Online username and password supplied.

o The SMTP port to use: 587.

On most client applications, this is under “Server Port Numbers for Outgoing Server (SMTP)” – this should be configured to use port 587

o Make sure that Transport Layer Security (TLS) is enabled in your SMTP client.

On most client applications, this is under “My outgoing mail server (SMTP) requires an encrypted connection (SSL)” – this should be configured “Yes”

NOTE: The FROM address must use a SMTP domain of type “Authoritative” – this can be

confirmed in Microsoft Online Administration Console, under the Users - Domains tab.

Important: Remember to update the user Microsoft Online Account password regularly, before it expires or your service will be unable to connect.

Outlook 2003 support is enabled worldwide

Brett Hill — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 01:39:00 GMT

The June update for services has been finished!

This means that you can now use Outlook 2003 with BPOS. There are a couple of considerations relating the oflline address book and free/busy. See the BPOS team blog for details.

Also, attachment size has been bumped to 30MB.

Sweet!

Brett

Partner Migration Series: Interview with Steven Pivnik, Co-CEO Binary Tree

Brett Hill — Thu, 28 May 2009 02:32:00 GMT

Binary Tree has been in the business of developing products and services for cross platform migration since 1993, and they are a migration partner for Microsoft Online Services. As a market leader in Notes migration, it's no surprise they are one of the first to offer Notes to Exchange Online migration services and software. On May 20, I interviewed Steven Pivnik, Co-CEO of Binary Tree, about their solutions for Notes to Exchange Online services migrations.

Q: How did you start making migration tools for Microsoft Online Services? How did you start in the migration business?

A: We started Binary Tree in 1993 primarily as a Lotus Notes service organization doing a lot of Lotus Notes custom application development. We were hired by JP Morgan at that time to build a migration tool to take them from the mail platform they were on to Lotus Notes. We wrote a utility to do it and soon we were asked by another company to write a tool for migrating data from GroupWise to Lotus Notes. We said "Sure!" And then we had another project to migrate data from Netscape. And from those projects, a migration practice mushroomed into 24 different utilities to migrate to Lotus Notes. IBM licensed those tools and shipped them worldwide with the Notes CD, which gave us overnight worldwide notoriety in the Lotus Notes market space.

Click here for the full interview.

TLS on Local Exchange server with BPOS

Brett Hill — Sat, 23 May 2009 05:55:00 GMT

Hi,

Wanted to post a message from Ryan Phillips, BPOS Tech guy extrordinare and all around nice guy working on BPOS at Microsoft.

This is a nice tech summary that you should file under migration and co-existence details.

-brett

----------------------------

Did you know that BPOS-S provides guidance on how to configure an On-Premise Messaging environment to use Transporter Layer Security (TLS) when sending/receiving messages securely. The documentation states that you must install a certificate in your On-Premise Outbound Mail Server however, this is ONLY true if this Messaging Server requires Inbound messages to be securely received. After following the guidance in the document/TechNet article listed above, the On-Premise Mail Server will be able to send/receive secure email via TLS.

Note: To receive TLS messages from EHS or any other Messaging Systems, a certificate must be applied to the On-Premise server that receives Internet email messages, which is defined by the SMTP Domain’s MX record. By installing a publicly verifiable (VeriSign, etc.), the sending server will check the On-Premise Message Server’s certificate to make sure:

1. The name being used to connect to the On-Premise Mail Server matches the certificates Common Name (CN)

2. The certificate is not expired (Certificate Revocation List – CRL)

3. The certificate is trusted by the sending server (Trusted Room Certification Authorities)

Once the above has been completed, the On-Premise environment will Send/Receive messages via TLS. Until an On-Premise certificate is applied, the On-Premise server will only be able to Send TLS.

…and know you know J

Ryan J. Phillips

BPOS-S Service Account Manager

Online Services Release Notes

Brett Hill — Fri, 01 May 2009 03:41:00 GMT

With the recent update of the services, there was also a "release notes"document that I just found out about.

It has some useful tips and information, worth looking at for those of you deploying the services.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/thankyou.aspx?familyId=f297f10c-de9b-4c3e-8aa4-60d7f1baef55&displayLang=en

9.1 Services Released

Brett Hill — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:29:00 GMT

You may have noticed that your sign on client was recently updated. That's because BPOS 9.1 was recently released which includes OCS as a new service the deskless worker sku, and international availability. While these three are the big news items, I wanted to bring your attention to a few other updates that aren't getting the spotlight, but deserve your attention nonetheless.

SharePoint Online now returns search results from ZIP and PDF files
SharePoint Online site collections can be created in multiple langauges. More to come !
SharePoint Online now has a privacy link requirement
The Sign on client can now be installed on Vista Home systems
The Sign on client now exposes a Logging option that can be useful when troubleshooting
The Sign on client also supports a few group policy setting
Mailbox size default is now 5GB

As we move forward, new features and capabilites will be added to the services on a regular basis. These will occur pretty frequently, but not on a specific schedule. We will be adding capabilites such as availability in new languages as they become available. Bigger features such as Wave14 integration into the services or new services coming online will of course be big splash items that you'll hear about well in advance.

Enjoy!

How Do I Videos on BPOS

Brett Hill — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 20:15:00 GMT

Technet is posting a few "how do I" videos on BPOS.

Using the Microsoft Online Services Sign-In Application

Wednesday, November 05, 2008, 6:35:51 PM

This video shows how to install & configure the Single Sign-In application available from the Microsoft Online Services dashboard. This demo shows how to: -Download the Sign-In Application -Configure the Sign-In Application -Access MOS services from the Sign-In Application

winvideo-ITPro-UseSignInApplication.wmv

Exchange Online administration

Tuesday, October 28, 2008, 1:19:18 PM

In this video, Marc Hoppers explains how to use the Exchange Administration features provided in Microsoft Online Services. Topics include, adding and editing users, creating distribution lists, setting ups safe senders and blocked senders.

winvideo-ITPro- ExchangeAdministration.wmv

Sharepoint Online Setup

Tuesday, October 28, 2008, 1:18:40 PM

In this video, Marc Hoppers explains how to configure a SharePoint site collection using Microsoft Online Services. Topics include how to provision a new site collection, how to allocate space to the site collection, and how to add users to the site collection.

winvideo-ITPro-SharePointSetup.wmv

Reference for estimating email bandwidth

Brett Hill — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:11:00 GMT

Partners are asking "how can I estimate how email on Exchange Online will impact bandwidth".

Good question.

Good answers: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc540453.aspx

Also see: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/Technet/en-us/MSOnline/bpos/index.html?page=html%2F3dea7174-a521-4442-a7c5-5d540e09b20d.htm

-brett

Virtual Airlift BPOS Webcasts Posted !

Brett Hill — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 04:09:00 GMT

You want details? How about lectures from the people making the services on the latest version of BPOS hitting the web this weekend! I'm super excited to annoucne tha availability of the Virtual Airlift webcasts on the Technical tab of this site. New features for Exchange, the administration console and other parts of the service are all detailed by the PMs at Microsoft in charge of those features.

You want to know about how secure our data centers are? Check out Mike Ziocks highly rated presentation https://www.discoveronlineservices.com/Documents/Data_Center_Security_And_Reliability_110k.wmv

Interested in SharePoint Online capabilites? See it for yourself https://www.discoveronlineservices.com/Documents/SharePoint_Online_110k.wmv

How about Exchange Online and the new Conference Room features? See Ed Wu in his psychedlic shirt at https://www.discoveronlineservices.com/Documents/Exchange_Online_110k.wmv

Migration and Co-existence details and demo: https://www.discoveronlineservices.com/Documents/Migration_And_Coexistence_110k.wmv

Of course, there's using the Administration Center including how to add a custom domain to BPOS: https://www.discoveronlineservices.com/Documents/Microsoft_Online_Admin_Center_110k.wmv

David Wang presents a demo and details about the single sign on tool. Important details are included about how to deploy and configure. https://www.discoveronlineservices.com/Documents/Accessing_Microsoft_Online_Services_110k.wmv

Check out all the Virtual Airlift content on the Technical Tab!

Also, note there's new Business content too on the Business tab.