MessageOps http://www.messageops.com Migrations to Microsoft Online, Free Migration Consulting Services, Free Microsoft Online Tools, BPOS Trial Mon, 07 May 2012 11:56:44 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Introducing 365 Command http://www.messageops.com/introducing-365-command http://www.messageops.com/introducing-365-command#comments Mon, 07 May 2012 11:56:44 +0000 admin http://www.messageops.com/?p=2907 Read More ]]]> 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.

Dashboard Detailed Stats Mailbox Folder Permissions Password Options

365 Command Beta Access Request

Please fill out the information below to be included the 365 Command Beta.
]]> http://www.messageops.com/introducing-365-command/feed 0 New Version of SharePoint Migrator Available http://www.messageops.com/new-version-of-sharepoint-migrator-available http://www.messageops.com/new-version-of-sharepoint-migrator-available#comments Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:34:55 +0000 admin http://www.messageops.com/?p=2896 Read More ]]]> 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

]]> http://www.messageops.com/new-version-of-sharepoint-migrator-available/feed 0 Important Notice http://www.messageops.com/important-notice http://www.messageops.com/important-notice#comments Fri, 06 Apr 2012 12:07:33 +0000 admin http://www.messageops.com/?p=2890 Read More ]]]> 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

]]> http://www.messageops.com/important-notice/feed 0 SMTP Relay with Office 365 http://www.messageops.com/smtp-relay-with-office-365 http://www.messageops.com/smtp-relay-with-office-365#comments Sat, 17 Mar 2012 21:30:02 +0000 admin http://www.messageops.com/?p=2875 Read More ]]]> 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.

Requirements for Relay with Office 365

  1. The sending application must connect to the Office 365 servers on port 587
  2. The sending application must support TLS
  3. The sending application must authenticate with Office 365
  4. The account you authenticate to the relay server with must be the same account as the from address on the messages you send through the relay.

And if those requirements aren’t strict enough, an account is limited to sending 1500 messages per day.  So it’s pretty clear that Microsoft does not want you sending mass mailings using Office 365.

So let’s walk through a couple scenarios.  Let’s say all your applications / devices meet those requirements.  That would then mean that you need to create an Office 365 account for each of those devices (if you wanted the From address on the message to be unique) or you could create a single account, with a generic name, which each application could then use to authenticate and send mail as.  In the shared account scenario you would just need to make sure the volume of mail per day does not exceed 1500 messages.

What we have found is that in most cases the existing applications don’t meet all those criteria or you need to send a higher volume of mail per day, so you then have to look at a couple other options.

  1. Install a local IIS SMTP relay server
  2. Use STunnel to allow a device or application which doesn’t support #1 and #2 in the requirements list above (Connect on Port 587 with TLS) , to connect to an on premise server over port 25.  STunnel acts as bridge for applications that don’t support TLS and/or connecting on port 587.

Installing a Local IIS SMTP Relay Server

If you install a local IIS SMTP Relay Server, it will be able to route mail to Office 365 or other destinations, such as hotmail.com, microsoft.com, etc.  Mail to domains not hosted on Office 365 will be delivered directly from the IIS SMTP server to the final destination, it will not pass through the Office 365 SMTP servers.  Once installed you’ll be able to configure all your applications, scanners, etc to use this server without authenticating.

You can install the SMTP Service on Windows 2008 by opening Server Manager.  The SMTP Service is a Feature which can be added.  Once the IIS SMTP service is installed, you’ll need to modify a few default settings.  The SMTP Service is administered by opening the Internet Information Services 6.0 Manager application in the Administrative Tools.

Configuring the Local IIS SMTP Server

First you’ll need to open the Properties of the Default Virtual Server. From there go to the Access tab, and click the Relay button.

You’ll need to enter the IP addresses of the hosts that you want to relay.

Next click on the Messages tab and review the maximum message size, the default of 2 MB might be too small.

The final setting you’ll likely want to review is the Advanced Delivery options, which can be found on the Delivery Tab, and then clicking the Advanced button.

Here you specify the host name that will be advertised when this server connects to the remote hosts. It’s best practice to have the IP address of the mail server resolve to this hostname when a reverse lookup is performed on the IP. You can also configure a smarthost on this page that all outgoing mail will be sent through.

At this point, the IIS server is ready to send mail, but there are a few more things you’ll probably want to do to help ensure that messages sent through the server don’t get flagged as spam.

1. Ensure the IIS server can connect to remote mail servers over port 25. It doesn’t need to accept incoming connections, it just needs to be able to connect to remote hosts on port 25.

2. Ensure the IP address that the IIS server is sending from has a PTR record created in the external DNS. If you are unsure what the external IP of your mail server is, send a test message to an external account and look at the message headers to determine the IP Addresses. Then use nslookup to query the IP to see if there is a reverse record for it. As mentioned earlier, its best practice to have the IP resolve to the name configured in Advanced Delivery Options.

3. Update your SPF record to include the IP address of the new IIS server.

Once you have these settings configured, you should be able to test your new relay server. When sending to remote hosts during your testing, check out the message headers to make sure the SPF record is working properly and your messages aren’t being rejected or marked with a high Spam score.

4. Add the IIS server IP address to the allow list in Office 365.

Using STunnel to Allow Non SSL SMTP Clients to Connect to Office 365

In some cases your applications or devices don’t support the requirements for connecting to Office 365 using SSL or on the non standard SMTP port of 587.  If you have applications which don’t support these requirements, but you would like to use the Office 365 SMTP and POP3 servers, you can use Stunnel to bridge the gap.

Stunnel listens for non-SSL connections and converts them to SSL or TLS connections.  This allows you to configure your applications to connect without using SSL to the stunnel service, and then stunnel builds an encrypted tunnel to the Office 365 POP3 or SMTP services.

You can install stunnel on a server or workstation in your environment and configure your devices which don’t support TLS or POP3 over SSL to connect through that server to Office 365.

Configuring Stunnel for Office 365

Getting stunnel up and running is pretty straight forward.

Step 1 – Install stunnel

You can download the stunnel Windows binaries from http://www.stunnel.org/download/binaries.html

After downloading and installing the exe, you will likely want to configure it to run as a service.  To do that, go to Start->All Programs->stunnel->Service Install.

Step 2 – Configure the stunnel configuration file

You can download a preconfigured configuration file here.

The configuration file looks like:

# Stunnel configuration file for Office 365 SMTP and POP3
# Author: MessageOps, www.messageops.com
# GLOBAL OPTIONS
client = yes
output = stunnel-log.txt
debug=4
taskbar=yes

# SERVICE-LEVEL OPTIONS

[POP3 Incoming]
accept = 110
connect = pod51008.outlook.com:995

[SMTP Outgoing]
protocol = smtp
accept = 25
connect = pod51008.outlook.com:587

What this configuration file does is tells stunnel to listen or ports 110 and 25 and it then redirects connections on those ports to the appropriate SSL ports.

You will need to modify a few settings in the file.

First, you will need to get the server names for your account.  To obtain SMTP settings information, follow these steps:

  1. Sign in to Outlook Web App.
  2. Click Options, and then click See All Options.
  3. Click Account, click My Account, and then in the Account Information area, click Settings for POP, IMAP, and SMTP access.  See image below.

image

Second, you may want to remove the POP3 Section of the file.  If you are only using SMTP, then you don’t need the POP3 section.

Third, if you only want it to listen on a specific IP address, change the accept statement to something like:

accept = 127.0.0.1:25

After the file has been modified, replace the existing stunnel.conf in the Program Files\stunnel directory with the new one.

Finally start the stunnel service.

Step 3 – Verify the stunnel is listening for connections

To verify that stunnel is running, open a command prompt and run:

Netstat –an |more

What you should see is the service listening on port 25 and 110 as shown below.

(Note that in this case it’s listening on all IP addresses, not just 127.0.0.1)

Step 4 – Test your application

The final step is to test your application.  You’ll see that in this example we are configuring Outlook to connect via POP3.  So Outlook is configured to connect to POP3 on localhost on port 110 and port 25 is used to send mail.  When Outlook connects, stunnel establishes the connection with Office 365 over the encrypted channel.

The one thing to keep in mind with sending via SMTP is you still have to authenticate if you want to use the Office 365 servers.  It seems most applications and devices support SMTP authentication, the part they typically don’t support is TLS.  Using this you can use devices that don’t support TLS with Office 365.

As always, if you have any questions or would like assistance, contact us at support@messageops.com.

]]> http://www.messageops.com/smtp-relay-with-office-365/feed 0 One More Way to Deploy Office 365 Updates http://www.messageops.com/one-more-way-to-deploy-office-365-updates http://www.messageops.com/one-more-way-to-deploy-office-365-updates#comments Fri, 09 Mar 2012 12:23:58 +0000 admin http://www.messageops.com/?p=2854 Read More ]]]> 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

]]> http://www.messageops.com/one-more-way-to-deploy-office-365-updates/feed 0 Manually Updating Office 365 Clients http://www.messageops.com/manually-updating-office-365-clients http://www.messageops.com/manually-updating-office-365-clients#comments Thu, 08 Mar 2012 14:57:01 +0000 admin http://www.messageops.com/?p=2849 Read More ]]]> 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

]]> http://www.messageops.com/manually-updating-office-365-clients/feed 0 MessageOps Large Message Exporter now Available http://www.messageops.com/messageops-large-message-exporter-now-available http://www.messageops.com/messageops-large-message-exporter-now-available#comments Sat, 03 Mar 2012 21:33:05 +0000 admin http://www.messageops.com/?p=2838 Read More ]]]> 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

]]> http://www.messageops.com/messageops-large-message-exporter-now-available/feed 0 Setting the AD UPN value to Match Office 365 SMTP Address http://www.messageops.com/setting-the-ad-upn-value-to-match-office-365-smtp-address http://www.messageops.com/setting-the-ad-upn-value-to-match-office-365-smtp-address#comments Sun, 26 Feb 2012 14:14:36 +0000 admin http://www.messageops.com/?p=2797 Read More ]]]> 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.

 

]]> http://www.messageops.com/setting-the-ad-upn-value-to-match-office-365-smtp-address/feed 0 Office 365 Active Directory Addin Beta http://www.messageops.com/office-365-active-directory-addin-beta-available http://www.messageops.com/office-365-active-directory-addin-beta-available#comments Sat, 25 Feb 2012 23:53:16 +0000 admin http://www.messageops.com/?p=2793 Read More ]]]> 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

]]> http://www.messageops.com/office-365-active-directory-addin-beta-available/feed 0 New Version of the Office 365 Client Updater Available http://www.messageops.com/new-version-of-the-office-365-client-updater-available http://www.messageops.com/new-version-of-the-office-365-client-updater-available#comments Sat, 25 Feb 2012 15:51:33 +0000 admin http://www.messageops.com/?p=2778 Read More ]]]> 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

]]> http://www.messageops.com/new-version-of-the-office-365-client-updater-available/feed 0