Tag Archives: Office 365

Office365

User cannot logon to Office 365 after moving user account in Active Directory

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When you have implemented Directory Synchronization between your on-premises Active Directory and Office 365, and you move a user in Active Directory out of the DirSync scope (for example to an Organizational Unit that’s not synchronized) the user is removed from Office 365.

However, when you move the user back to an Organizational Unit that’s synchronized (i.e. in-scope) the password is no longer synchronized. So, when this user tries to logon to Office 365 services, the logon attempt fails. Only when you change the password in Active Directory, the new password is synchronized to Office 365, and the user is able to logon again to the service.

Very similar to this, when a disabled user in the on-premises Active Directory is enabled, the password is not synchronized to Office 365.

This is a known issue with DirSync or Azure AD Connect (up to November 2015). On November 4, 2015 Microsoft released a new version of Azure AD Connect that fixes this particular issue (together with a number of other fixes of course).

You can find more information regarding the updated version of Azure AD Connect on Sander Berkouwer’s blog A new version of Azure AD Connect was released today. You can download the new version of Azure AD Connect on the Microsoft Download Site.

Exchange, Office365

Autodiscover in a hybrid scenario

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In the previous articles I showed you how to implement DirSync, create an Exchange hybrid environment with a migration endpoint and how to migrate Mailboxes from Exchange on-premises to Exchange Online. Not a single word on autodiscover though, and even when autodiscover is pointing to your on-premises Exchange environment, it continues to work for Mailboxes that have been migrated to Exchange Online. This is one of the advantages of an Exchange hybrid scenario.

This is what happens: when you move a Mailbox from Exchange on-premises to Exchange Online, the Mailbox on-premises is converted to a Mail-Enabled User (Remote Mailbox) and a target address is set to Exchange Online (i.e. user@tenantname.mail.onmicrosoft.com).

When an Outlook client does an Autodiscover request to the Exchange environment it detects the user is a Mail-Enabled User, and that a target address is set. Based on this target address a new Autodiscover request is initiated. So, Outlook does a request for a user called kim@exchangelabs.nl, Autodiscover returns a Mail-Enabled User with target address kima@exchangelabsnl.mail.onmicrosoft.com. Next, Outlook wil try an Autodiscover request for this SMTP address.

Continue reading Autodiscover in a hybrid scenario →

Exchange, Office365

Moving Mailboxes in a Hybrid Configuration – Part II

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Before you start moving mailboxes you have to make sure that all accepted domains used by mailboxes on-premises are configured in Office 365. This can be tricky, you wouldn’t be the first admin that experience failed migration because of a domain.local email address on an on-premises Mailbox J

Now, when you want to move a mailbox from Exchange on-premises to Exchange Online, navigate again to the Exchange Admin Center, and under recipients select migration. Click the + icon and select migrate to Exchange Online to start the new migration batch wizard.

For the migration type, select Remote move migration which is supported by Exchange 2010 or later.

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Click Next to continue. Select the mailboxes you want to migrate to Exchange Online, you can use the people picker feature (click the + icon under Select the users that you want to move) for this, or you can use a CSV file to select the mailboxes you want to move.

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Continue reading Moving Mailboxes in a Hybrid Configuration – Part II →

Exchange

Exchange 2016 – What’s new?

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Now that Microsoft has Exchange Server 2016 it’s time to have a closer look at what’s new in the product. It might not be a surprise that it looks a lot like Exchange Online. Not surprisingly since Microsoft is developing Exchange for the cloud, and Exchange on-premises is just a spin-off of Exchange Online, released on a quarterly basis.

It might be blunt to say, but Exchange 2016 is nothing more than Exchange 2013 Service Pack 2, if you look at the version numbering with PowerShell (Get-ExchangeServer | Select Name,AdminDisplayVersion) you’ll see that it’s actually a minor upgrade from 15.0 (Exchange 2013) to 15.1 (Exchange 2016).

The question can be raised why a new version? It’s all about the support lifecycle, and get rid of support for Exchange Server 2007. Customers need a new version, from a support point of view or from a license point of view (software assurance).

But, back to Exchange 2016… it is a new version, and with a new version also new features are introduced and other features are deprecated or removed.
Continue reading Exchange 2016 – What’s new? →

Exchange

Exchange 2013 CU10

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Microsoft silently released Exchange 2013 CU10 on September 15th 2015, right on track with their quarterly cadence, and as expected. There are no new features in this Cumulative Update, but besides a lot of hotfixes there’s also a change to RBAC which require changes to the Configuration Partition in Active Directory.

So, no changes to the Active Directory Schema, but you have to run Setup.exe /PrepareAD /IAcceptExchangeServerLicenseTerms before you start the actual setup. Please note that you have to do this, even if you run the GUI version of setup. If you omit this step the changes won’t be applied to Active Directory. As a result, the RBAC changes might not be available after your upgrade. A similar issue happened with CU9 as written down in this blog post MessageCopyForSentAsEnabled and MessageCopyForSendOnBehalfEnabled not available in CU9.

Before installing Exchange 2013 CU10 in your production environment I recommend testing it thoroughly in a lab environment. The last couple of CU’s have been pretty successful without too many issues, but there might be specific issues in your own organization that Microsoft is unaware of.

When upgrading DAG members please remember you disable all the Exchange server components as explained in my blog about deploying Exchange 2013 CU9.

You can download CU10 here, and the CU10 Language packs here. A complete list of issues resolved can be found in Knowledge Base Article KB3078678.

At the same time Microsoft released released Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 3 Update Rollup 11 (KB3078674).

When Exchange 2016 is released in the (near) future, you will need Exchange 2013 CU10 or Exchange Server 2010 SP3 Update Rollup 11 for coexistence. This will be hardcoded in the product, so if you’re planning to deploy Exchange 2016 in the future you have to install these version.

Also, when you’re running an Exchange 2013 Hybrid scenario with Office 365 you have to use the latest version, so in this case Exchange 2013 CU10 is mandatory.