MessageOps Microsoft Online Blog

Introducing 365 Command

Posted on May 7, 2012 by admin

We are very excited to announce our newest and biggest project to date, 365 Command.  365 Command is web based administration, reporting, and monitoring portal for Office 365.

At this stage we have focused our efforts on developing features which would otherwise require Administrators use PowerShell to get the information they are looking for or make the modifications needed.

The initial type of information you can gather from the reporting aspects include:

  • Mailbox Sizes
  • Archive Sizes
  • Quota Usage
  • Mobile Devices
  • Item Counts
  • Mailbox Permissions

The administration features currently allow you to do things like:

  • Reset Passwords (with options for never expire)
  • Set Mailbox Permissions (Send As, Full Mailbox Access)
  • Set Mailbox Folder Permissions (Reviewer, Editor, Owner, etc)
  • Set Forwarders on Mailboxes
  • Create Shared Mailboxes

In the coming months we’ll be adding more reports, more administration capabilities and  integrating our monitoring capabilities into the site.

Right now we really need your help and feedback to make this product as useful as possible.  If you are interested in trying the product, and hopefully making your day to day administration tasks easier, please complete the form below and we’ll send you the details.  We are looking to take on Beta testers gradually, so if we don’t get back to you immediately, please be patient and we’ll get back to you as soon as space opens up.

365 Command Beta Access Request

Please fill out the information below to be included the 365 Command Beta.
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New Version of SharePoint Migrator Available

Posted on April 26, 2012 by admin

We have just released a new version of the SharePoint Migrator for download.  The big highlight is the fact that you can now migrate from a local file server to SharePoint Online.  It also contains miscellaneous bug fixes and a few new options.

  • You can connect to a local shared folder or server and push it to SharePoint.  The previous version was site to site only.
  • Added a queuing feature where you can select how many parallel jobs you want to run.
  • Added illegal character handling options in the settings portion.  It forces change to invalid characters and makes it _ and you can add further rules as well.
  • Added support for Wiki page migrations from MOSS 2007.

We are still working on updating the documentation to reflect the new changes, but they are in the application now.

Office 365 SharePoint Migrator

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Important Notice

Posted on April 6, 2012 by admin

Hello Everyone, Chad Mosman here.  I would like to share with you a recent development and quite frankly some devastating news.  I have been diagnosed with a stage IV glimoa (brain tumor).  While we remain positive and hopeful of what the future may hold, effective immediately MessageOps will be unable to take on any new services based work.   Support for our existing clients and our software business will remain in place and intact.

I am fortunate to be backed by a strong support and development team who remain committed to our business.  They can be reached at info@messageops.com.  Please reach out to them with any questions you might have.

On a more personal note, I am going to beat this and have never backed down to life’s challenges.  We have some exciting and innovative products in our development pipeline and I fully expect to see them released in the coming months ahead, so stay tuned.

Thank you for your business and support,

Chad

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SMTP Relay with Office 365

Posted on March 17, 2012 by admin

SMTP Relay with Office 365 is one of the more common questions we get at MessageOps.  It seems there is some confusion about what actually constitutes a relay, so let’s start off with trying to determine if you actually need to relay with Office 365 and then we’ll get into the options.  The question you must ask yourself to determine if you really need a relay is:

  • Do my applications, scanners, etc need to send ONLY to people in my domain?

If the answer is Yes, then you don’t need a relay server.  You can configure those applications/devices to send mail directly to your MX record in Office 365.  No authentication is necessary, no special ports are necessary.  When the mail comes into Office 365 in this scenario, it will be accepted like other messages from the Internet.  Granted it will look a little strange to Forefront that mail is coming from the Internet with a source address of @yourdomain.com, but by adding the IP address(es) of the on premise devices sending mail to the safe senders list, you should be able to avoid those messages going to junk or getting quarantined.

If the answer to the question above is No, your application or device needs to send mail to both people on the Internet and in your domain, then you need to relay mail.  The question then becomes how to do it.

Continue reading

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One More Way to Deploy Office 365 Updates

Posted on March 9, 2012 by admin

We’ve got a lot of feedback lately that people want a simple way to deploy the Office 365 updates to workstations that aren’t a member of a domain, and therefore can’t be reached by Group Policy.  We’ve gone ahead and created a standalone installer, which can be copied to a desktop and manually run.  When executed it installs the recommended updates for Office 365.  It does not install Lync.  It’s available as a free download on the Office 365 Client Updater page.

If your organization needs a customized version that does something different, like install Lync, let us know and we’ll see what we can do.

MessageOps Office 365 Client Updater

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Manually Updating Office 365 Clients

Posted on March 8, 2012 by admin

We’ve just released an update to our Office 365 Client updater which gives you the option to install Lync along with the required updates for Office 365.  This is probably most useful for new Office 365 clients.  BPOS clients getting ready to transition should be aware that installing Lync will replace Communicator.

This application is free for everyone to download and use.

MessageOps Office 365 Client Updater

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MessageOps Large Message Exporter now Available

Posted on March 3, 2012 by admin

One of the challenges you can encounter when moving to Office 365 is dealing with large messages in mailboxes.  Most migration tools either skip the messages that are too large for Office 365 or just fail the migration.  Using PFDAVAdmin or Exfolders can identify the messages, but then deleting the messages is still very much a manual process….until now.

MessageOps Large Message Exporter allows you to quickly identify large messages in your on premise Exchange environment.  Once found, the utility can backup those messages to a PST file, and delete them from the on premise mailbox allowing you to migrate the mailbox to Office 365.

MessageOps Large Message Exporter is free for everyone to download and use.

Download MessageOps Large Message Exporter

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Setting the AD UPN value to Match Office 365 SMTP Address

Posted on February 26, 2012 by admin

One of the new requirements for Directory Synchronization in Office 365 is listed in the BPOS to Office 365 Transition guide:

Office 365 requires the User Principal Name (UPN) configured in your directory to precisely match at least one SMTP address configured for that user.  If this is not the case, your transition may be delayed until your directory meets this and the other above requirements.

If your organization is transitioning from BPOS, you know that wasn’t the case in BPOS, so may need to update the UPN values on your accounts so Directory Synchronization will work post transition.  This script simply sets the UPN value to be equal to the mail attribute on the account.

The first thing you should do is add your Email domains as UPN suffixes in your AD forest, by following this article:

HOW TO: Add UPN Suffixes to a Forest

Next, download this VBScript and copy it to your domain controller:

http://www.messageops.com/downloads/o365/SetUPN.zip

By default when you run the script, it will not make any changes, it will just generate a report of what it would change when you take it out of report mode.  After you have reviewed the output and are ready to have the script make changes, change ReportMode=0 in the script.

 

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Office 365 Active Directory Addin Beta

Posted on February 25, 2012 by admin

If you are using Directory Synchronization with Office 365 you know it can be difficult to update attributes of user and group objects synchronized from your local Active Directory. With MessageOps Office 365 Active Directory Addin, you can easily update the attributes that control delivery restrictions, email addresses, visibility in the the Address book, and even the user’s photo directly through Active Directory Users and Computers.

Once installed, custom tabs will appear in Active Directory Users and Computers.

image

The Addin is currently in Beta and available to everyone as a free download.

Download MessageOps Active Directory Addin Beta

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New Version of the Office 365 Client Updater Available

Posted on February 25, 2012 by admin

Microsoft has recently made changes to the updates that are required when manually updating desktops for Office 365.  As a result we’ve updated our Office 365 Client Updater to meet these new requirements.

For the new list of requirements, visit:

http://community.office365.com/en-us/w/administration/manually-install-office-365-desktop-updates.aspx

Download MessageOps Office 365 Client Updater

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