Microsoft Teams Direct Routing with Azure Audiocodes SBC

Microsoft Teams Direct Routing with Azure Audiocodes SBC

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Microsoft Teams Direct Routing is the latest in connecting your SIP trunk provider but how about leveraging the Microsoft cloud and deploy your Session Boarder Controller (SBC) into Azure.

Audiocodes are one of many SBC providers using Azure to provide an additional options with your approach to moving to Microsoft Teams.  If your a consultant deploying AudioCodes Mediant VE SBC for Microsoft Azure, this process couldnt be any easier with using Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates which can be developed to adapt to any customer requirements.

If you have a bit of Azure knowledge in deploying new resources the below image will not be to difficult understand.

But if this is the first time you’ve looked deploying a resource in Azure, I highly recommend looking at creating a template and use Visual Studio. This will allow you to make modification in the code and learn how ARM templates work.

How much does the Audiocodes Virtual Machine cost?

The below tables is based on today costing as of 12 November 2018 and these prices may change.

VM Size Offering Family VCPU RAM Data Disk Max IOSP Temporay Storage SIP Sessions Price
D2_v2 Standard General Purpose 2 7 8 8×500 100GB 20 £75.41
D2_v3 Standard General Purpose 2 8 4 4×500 50GB 500 £66.54
D3_v2 Standard General Purpose 4 14 16 16×500 200GB 900 £150.83

Microsoft Teams Direct Routing will only get bigger as time goes on and you can expect the number of supported SIP sessions to increase. It is also worth noting that Audiocodes also offer a mulit tenant SBC so if you are a service provider, you can house multi customers on a single SBC appliance.

Regards

Author – Blogabout.Cloud

Dynamic groups in Microsoft Teams

Dynamic groups in Microsoft Teams

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Microsoft Teams now supports dynamic groups but what does this mean? Dynamic groups are an Azure AD Premium (P1) feature that allows group membership to be automatically tied to AD attributes (i.e. users with a location of ‘London, New York or Seattle’) that will continuously sync as the membership changes over time. Dynamic group membership reduces the administrative overhead of adding and removing users.

Which is great for IT Administrator across the group.

How to create a dynamic group

Please follow the steps from here

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/users-groups-roles/groups-create-rule

Once you have created the group, every assigned member will receive an email stating they have joined the defined group

We already have a group (Office or Security) and would like to change its membership type to “Dynamic”

Of course you can do this from the Azure AD admin center. Please follow the steps from here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/users-groups-roles/groups-change-type

How do create a Microsoft Team with a Dynamic Group

Launch Microsoft Teams and click “Join or create a team”

Click “Create a team from an existing Office 365 Group”

Select the dynamic group you are an owner of and the group name will become the Team name.

Command Questions

Does this support syncing Security Groups (SGs)?

No, dynamic membership groups are different from SG/DL

How long does the dynamic group changes take to reflect in Teams?

This can take up to 2 hours after membership changes are reflected in Azure portal.

Regards,

Author – Blogabout.Cloud

Collect Skype for Business Online call data with ease – Powershell

Collect Skype for Business Online call data with ease – Powershell

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Collecting Skype for Business Online call data has now got a little bit more easier with Get-SFBOCallData.ps1. This script is designed to leverage the cxdcalldata module created by Jason Slane at Microsoft, for information about the please visit the below link.

https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/CxdCallData/1.2.4.2

The script

Check if cxdcalldata module exists on the client machine

  • Install module, if it doesnt exist
  • If exist, update with latest version located online

Specify report Start and End date

  • Specify Start Date

Specify report Start and End date

  • Specify Start Date

MFA or Not MFA that is the question

If option 2 is selected, there are less steps

  • Prompt for Skype for Business Online Admin details
  • Report is generated and placed on Desktop

If option 1 is selected, there are a lot more steps due to MFA being enabled.

  • Check Skype for Business Online Connector is installed
    • If not, Connector will be downloaded and installed
  • Prompt for User Principal Name of Skype for Business Online Admin Account
  • Provide your password details

  • Authenticate to MFA
    • This will create the MFA session to Skype for Business Online

  • New-CsOnlineSession will be created and all cmdlets will be imported

  • You will be prompted for your Skype for Business Admin Account again, this is a requirement of the powershell module.

  • Reports will now be generated and placed on your desktop

This concludes the process to require the following reports

  1. All Audio Calls
  2. Client Versions
  3. Federated Communications
  4. Federated Communications Summary
  5. User Devices
  6. User Summary

Download Script

Get-SfBOCallData (12 downloads)

Regards,

The Author – Blogabout.Cloud

Bulk Enable Exchange Online Archiving – PowerShell Script

Bulk Enable Exchange Online Archiving – PowerShell Script

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This script enables the Online Archiving Mailbox for users in Exchange Online. The script will generate the log and error outputs by checking if the users exists in Exchange Online based on the information provided in the csv file.

The script needs to be run from the On-prem Exchange environment.

Example of script block, this demonstrates the actions taken within the script to check the csv file row by row and output if sucessful or not.

Foreach ($row in $csv)
{
if (get-remotemailbox -identity $row.mailboxemail)
{
get-remotemailbox -identity $row.mailboxemail | enable-remotemailbox -archive
Add-Content -Path $logfilepath -Value ('{0} SUCCESS: Mailbox {1} enabled for Archive' -f (Get-Date), $row.mailboxemail)
}
else {
$outputfiles |%{ Add-Content -Path $_ -Value ('{0} ERROR: Mailbox {1} not enabled for Archive {2}' -f (Get-Date), $row.mailboxemail, $_.exception.message)}
}
}

Example of csv file used; please note the heading mailboxemail is very important as the script checks for this heading.

To view if an Online archive has been activated in the Mailbox, run the following cmdlets.

It is very easy to enable Online Archiving and verify afterwards if it has been enabled.

Download this script

Enable-RemoteMailbox -Archive (57 downloads)

Regards

Author – Blogabout.Cloud

Office ProPlus Deployment Tool Developments 16.0.10810.33603

Office ProPlus Deployment Tool Developments 16.0.10810.33603

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With Office Pro Plus being a subject and technology close to my heart, there have been a number of developments which I would like to point out.

Download and installation of Office 2019 products

At Microsoft Ignite is has been announced that Office 2019 is now available for commercial volume licensed (trusted) customers and then will be available to all customers, consumer and commercial over next far weeks.

Better logic using /Download switch

Microsoft have now built in better logic when using the download switch. The Office Deployment Tool will now only download the missing files when pointing to an existing source path.

AcceptEULA Issue

Microsoft identified an issue in the previous Office Deployment Tool where the AcceptEULA was not properly applied to all users when running as a system account. This will require product version 16.0.9126.2116 or higher, 2116 was released on 27th March 2018 into Monthly Channel.

ExcludeApp Issue

Microsoft identified an issue in the previous Office Deployment Tool where the ExcludeApp was not being honored during second install. This will require ODT product version 16.0.10225.36926 or higher

Existing ODT Version Level 16.0.10810.33603

Regards

The Author – Blogabout.Cloud

Configuring Microsoft Intune – Apps within your company portal

Configuring Microsoft Intune – Apps within your company portal

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Do you have one of the following licencing sets and you are not utilising Microsoft Intune? It would be criminal.

  • Intune
  • Enterprise Mobility + Security E3
  • Enterprise Mobility + Security E5
  • Microsoft 365 E3
  • Microsoft 365 E5
  • Microsoft 365 F1
  • Microsoft 365 Business
  • Microsoft 365 Education A1
  • Microsoft 365 Education A3
  • Microsoft 365 Education A5

Its time roll out the company portal and manage your corporate data across all mobile device.

Microsoft Intune is not available for the following licence sets and you need need to purchase one of the valid sets above.

  • Office 365 F1
  • Office 365 Business Premium
  • Azure Active Directory Free, Basic, Premium P1, Premium P2 None

Launch Microsoft Azure Portal

(https://portal.azure.com)

Open Intune either by using the Search resources, services, and docs or from your favourites. Select Client apps, Apps.

As you can see, there are no applications found currently within Client apps. In this section are able to define a number of different applications types with can be used whole Microsoft Intune platform.

For the purposes of this blog post we are only focusing on Other –> Built-In applications which have been optimised by Microsoft to ensure that all corporate data and general applications are secure.

Built-In applications target most of the Microsoft applications that are used day to day by all corporate enterprises. We will be selecting Adobe Acrobat Reader for Intune as an example of how to configure and publish applications into the company portal.

Click on your chosen app, press “Select” and press “Add”

Select Properties, App information – configure

Within this section you will need we will need configure the app information with the following

  • Category – This is not key but allows you group business, productivity, etc.. applications together
  • Display this as a feature app in the Compant Portal – Yes 
  • Logo – Give the application a logo which will appear in the company portal

Save the changes

Select Assignments, Add group

Under Assignment type, I have selected Available for enrolled devices.

Select Include Groups, Select Yes, Press OK x2 and Save

This will now make this application available within the company portal and you can repeat this process for other built-in applications.

 

This concludes this post

Regards

The Author – Blogabout.Cloud

Big news in the world of the modern desktop: Office 2016 supported extended

Big news in the world of the modern desktop: Office 2016 supported extended

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Microsoft announced in April 2017 that they be ceasing support for legacy Office clients into Office 365 services, however this stance has now changed based on customer feedback to Microsoft

  • Office 2013 and below will cease as expected on 13th October 2020
  • Office 2016 will now be extended until October 2023

 

With this announcement it also includes a number of changes to the supported operating system versions of Windows.

Office 365 ProPlus delivers cloud-connected and always up-to-date versions of the Office desktop apps. To support customers already on Office 365 ProPlus through their operating system transitions, we are updating the Windows system requirements for Office 365 ProPlus and revising some announcements that were made in February. We are pleased to announce the following updates to our Office 365 ProPlus system requirements:

  • Office 365 ProPlus will continue to be supported on Windows 8.1 through January 2023, which is the end of support date for Windows 8.1.
  • Office 365 ProPlus will also continue to be supported on Windows Server 2016 until October 2025.
  • Office 365 Pro Plus will also continue to be supported on Windows 7 (ESU) Extended Security Updates through Janaury 2023. Windows 7 ESU will only be available for Windows 7 Pro/Enterprise customers with Volume Licensing.

Other big news is four changes Microsoft have also announced (Longer support windows for Windows 10):

  • All currently supported feature updates of Windows 10 Enterprise and Education editions (versions 1607, 1703, 1709, and 1803) will be supported for 30 months from their original release date. This will give customers on those versions more time for change management as they move to a faster update cycle.
  • All future feature updates of Windows 10 Enterprise and Education editions with a targeted release month of September (starting with 1809) will be supported for 30 months from their release date. This will give customers with longer deployment cycles the time they need to plan, test, and deploy.
  • All future feature updates of Windows 10 Enterprise and Education editions with a targeted release month of March (starting with 1903) will continue to be supported for 18 months from their release date. This maintains the semi-annual update cadence as our north star and retains the option for customers that want to update twice a year.
  • All feature releases of Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Pro, and Office 365 ProPlus will continue to be supported for 18 months (this applies to feature updates targeting both March and September).

In summary, our new modern desktop support policies—starting in September 2018—are:

Populate your Exchange Mailbox with dummy data before migrating to Exchange Online or Vice Versa

Populate your Exchange Mailbox with dummy data before migrating to Exchange Online or Vice Versa

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Have you ever had a requirement where you need to populate an Exchange or Office 365 Mailbox with data? This is general a common ask when looking to migrate to/from Exchange Online and can be time consuming if your manually sending emails. The following script has been modified to provide an easy way of sending data using the Send-MailMessage PowerShell cmdlet and also capture better error logging.

I would like to thank Andreas Hähnel for his efforts in creating the original script.

This modified script using Try and Catch variables to ensure the specified File location contains documents which can be used and also provide Help on each parameter. Add-MailboxData.zip (125 downloads)

Add-MailboxData.zip (125 downloads)

Check out the video demonstration below

Detect, Remove, Destroy and Upgrade your Microsoft Teams Module`

Detect, Remove, Destroy and Upgrade your Microsoft Teams Module`

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The following script has been designed to detected, remove and upgrade your Microsoft Team PowerShell Module.

How does it work?

The script will initial check if you are running a PowerShell window with evaluated privileges as this is a prerequisites to running this script. Once Administrative privileges have been detected it will compare the installed version of the Microsoft Teams module against the online version located the PSGallery. If the online is greater than the installed version, the script will use the uninstall-module cmdlet to remove the previous version and install the latest version from the PSGallery.

If your installed version matches the online version no actions will be taken.

This script also includes an output of the installed client version of Microsoft Teams with its Ring and Environment information as shown below

Download this script today

Detect-MicrosoftTeams-Version (490 downloads)

Regards

The Author – Blogabout.Cloud