Brian Reid – Microsoft MVP and Microsoft Certified Master

  • Installing Azure Multi-Factor Authentication and ADFS

    I have a requirement to ensure that Office 365 users external to the network of one of my clients need a second factor of authentication when accessing Office 365 resources from outside the corporate network. The free Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) feature of Office 365 will not distinguish between network location so we need to enable…

  • ADFS Adapter Issues With Upgrading MFA 6.3.1 to Version 7

    Upgrading the ADFS Adapter is not straight forward, though the readme notes for the upgrade make no mention of issues! To upgrade MFA Server 6.3.1 to 7 (so you can remove .NET 2 as a requirement, as that goes out of support soon) then you need to download the MFA installer to each MFA server…

  • Configuring ExpressRoute With NRP Errors

    I had a scenario where when I ran Get-AzureRmExpressRouteServiceProvider in a new Azure tenant I would get the following error in PowerShell. Get-AzureRmExpressRouteServiceProvider : Subscription a4ca03ea-42e4-4a18-a50f-79bcc53907e4 is not registered with NRP.At line:1 char:1+ Get-AzureRmExpressRouteServiceProvider+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~    + CategoryInfo          : CloseError: (:) [Get-AzureRmExpressRouteServiceProvider], CloudException    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.Azure.Commands.Network.GetAzureExpressRouteServiceProviderCommand This is one of the required cmdlets in configuring…

  • Exchange Online Archive–Counting Archives

    If you are using Exchange Online Archive and what to get a count of the number of users with an archive, or a list of the users with an archive, then the following PowerShell scripts will give you this info: List all users with an Exchange Online Archive: Get-MailUser -ResultSize Unlimited | where {$_.ArchiveName -ilike…

  • ADFS Service Login Failures and a Simple Fix

    If you find on restarting your ADFS server that you get the following event IDs in System event log, 7038, 7034 and 7000 that read as the following: The adfssrv service was unable to log on as DOMAIN\adfssvc$ with the currently configured password due to the following error: The user name or password is incorrect.…

  • Bulk Enabling PSTN Conferencing

    Once you have trialled and configured PSTN Conferencing with a few users you may roll it out much wider. This blog post contains the steps to do that using PowerShell so you can licence and enable your users for Skype for Business Online PSTN Conferencing very quickly. Generate a User List Create in Excel a…

  • Skype for Business Online PSTN Conferencing and Office 365 Business Subscriptions

    At the time of writing, it is not possible to add a PSTN Conferencing licence to Office 365 Business subscriptions – or at least that is what the portal shows: Here you can see that PSTN Conferencing is not an available add-on. But it is possible to add these licences if you know the URL…

  • Checking for Login Issues with AD FS and Office 365

    This post will look at how you can view login errors in AD FS, trace them back to the Event Viewer on your AD FS server(s) and then help the user login correctly. Unlike earlier versions of ADFS it is not required to enabled config files and registry keys to turn on additional logging. All…

  • Unable To Remove Office 365 Domain Error

    If you need to remove a domain from Office 365 it needs to not be in use. This includes the services that use that domain, for example an Accepted Domain in Exchange Online. If though you have an expired, maybe test, Office 365 tenant and you want to remove a domain from it you may…

  • Installing Office 365 ProPlus Click To Run Via Group Policy

    Note: Article updated October 2018 to remove references to “Office 2016” and replace it with “Office 365 ProPlus” as the rollover to the 2019 release is seamless and does not change this products name. Note: Article updated April 2018 Mid 2020 to support the new Channel names and XML updates and the new name for…

  • Exchange Server and Missing Root Certificates

    I came across an issue with a clients Exchange Server deployment today that is not well documented – or rather it is, but you need to know where to look. So I thought I would document the troubleshooting steps and the fix here. We specifically came across this error when testing Free/Busy for an Office…

  • Exchange 2013 Partner Applications and Error 2008

    When Exchange Server 2013 is configured to connect to Lync / Skype for Business Server one of the steps is to create a partner application. When this is first run the partner application stores the certificate presented by Lync Server in the Active Directory configuration partition. If the certificate changes on the Lync Server then…

  • Qualifications in Exchange Signatures

    In a recent project I was working with iQ.Suite from GBS and specifically the component of this software that add signatures to emails. The client are an international organization with users in different geographies and we needed to accommodate the users qualifications in their email signature. The problem with this is that in Germany qualifications…

  • DSC for Exchange Server

    At DevConnections 2015 and at UCDay I delivered talks on DSC for Exchange Server 2013. The sample files are available from my OneDrive 

  • Password Writeback Errors

    I had been struggling with password writeback testing and was coming across the following set of errors, and found that searching for them uncovered nothing online. So I wrote this blog to remind me and help you solve these issues. These errors are all visible in the Application log of the Event Viewer. User Restrictions…

  • Configuring Sync and Writeback Permissions in Active Directory for Azure Active Directory Sync

    [Last updated 9th November 2022 – note that Microsoft now include this functionality in their own product as written at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/hybrid/reference-connect-adsyncconfig#set-adsyncexchangehybridpermissions] [Last updated 11th November 2019 – added support for Exchange Server automapping support, which was announced during Microsoft Ignite 2019 and will be supported in the first half of calendar year 2020. This is…

  • Office 365 MDM (Mobile Device Management) From A Users Perspective

    The following list of steps and screenshots are taken during the enrolment process to add an iPhone and an Android phone to Office 365 once the free MDM solution that comes with Office 365 is enabled for the user. Step Details Image from iPhone Image from Android 1. Once your IT Administrator enables MDM for…

  • Unable To Send Exchange Quota Message

    In Exchange 2013 you can sometimes see the following event log error (MSExchange Store Driver Submission, ID 1012): The store driver failed to submit event <id> mailbox <guid> MDB <database guid> and couldn’t generate an NDR due to exception Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxTransport.StoreDriverCommon.InvalidSenderException   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxTransport.Shared.SubmissionItem.SubmissionItemUtils.CopySenderTo(SubmissionItemBase submissionItem, TransportMailItem message)   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxTransport.Submission.StoreDriverSubmission.MailItemSubmitter.GenerateNdrMailItem()   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxTransport.Submission.StoreDriverSubmission.MailItemSubmitter.<>c__DisplayClass1.<FailedSubmissionNdrWorker>b__0()   at Microsoft.Exchange.MailboxTransport.StoreDriverCommon.StorageExceptionHandler.RunUnderTableBasedExceptionHandler(IMessageConverter converter, StoreDriverDelegate workerFunction). And…

  • Advanced Threat Protection via PowerShell

    I discussed the newly released Advanced Threat Protection product in Office 365 on my blog, and in this article I want to outline the cmdlets that can be used to set this product up from Remote PowerShell to Office 365. To connect to Office 365 via PowerShell take a search on your favourite search engine…

  • Getting Started with Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection

    Announced a few months ago, Advanced Threat Protection became generally available on 1st June. I have been involved with trialling this product during the beta and so I thought I would note down a few thoughts on setting this up and what to expect now that it is publicly available. Advanced Threat Protection is an…

  • Using Office 365 PST Ingestion Service

    [Updated 10th Nov 2015 with tips on managing bad items in PST files]Its been in private preview for a while, and recently entered a free preview for any Office 365 subscriber to try. So I gave it a go and have the following tips and guidance. Preparing to upload PST files You can upload PST…