Category: Exchange

Our New Email Analysis and Education Tools Helps Keep Your Employees Safe

As you know, we take cybersecurity and the protection of your accounts and data very seriously. That’s why we are always striving to provide you with tools and resources to help keep you and your employees safe from cybercrime.

The most common threat we are seeing is phishing messages delivering malware or stealing credentials. Even though your company might be protected with spam filtering, there are instances where these malicious messages could still appear in your employee’s inboxes. And it’s important we both arm them with as much education and resources as possible to understand and identify these phishes.

We have a new tool that we’d love to demonstrate for your or talk more about. It’s called Catch Phish, and it’s an email analysis and training tool. It connects right to your employee’s Outlook as a clickable application on every message. When clicked, the tool quickly, but safely, scans the important details of the message to find potential threats such as suspicious links or attachments, sender details, or message details such as threatening language or deactivation scares.

This tool is included in our cybersecurity training packages and can help provide the much needed cybersecurity education to all levels of staff.

Do you have 30 minutes to talk about reducing your risks with Catch Phish and our other cybersecurity awareness training tools, then contact us for assistance.

Find and remove Office 365 Public Folder Calendar

Here is a quick bit of Powershell that helped me to track down a “shared calendar” in a Co-Managed IT / Tier3 client’s Office 365 tenant. After looking in Shared Mailboxes and Resources for the calendar with no luck, we tried to get into the Exchange Management Console (EMC). The loading circle of death went on for an eternity, so switched to good old Powershell. Found the commands as follows after connecting to Exchange Online in Powershell:

get-publicfolder -Recurse

Remove-PublicFolder -Identity \[PublicFolderName]\[calendarname]\

If your company is looking for local management of your Office 365 tenant or need advanced support for your IT team, then contact us to find out how much you can save with us.

Quick Tip: Outlook Crashing?

Many of our customers have been experiencing some of their users having Outlook crashing immediately after opening. We even had other tech companies call to find out how we were fixing it, so we investigated and found the following known issue from Microsoft:

Users experiencing Outlook connection issues and crashes
EX218604, Exchange Online, Last updated: July 15, 2020 10:12 AM
Start time: July 15, 2020 9:18 AM
User impact:
Users may experience crashes or may be unable to access Exchange Online via Outlook.
Current status:
Our initial review of the available data indicates that recently deployed updates are the likely source of the problem. We’re performing an analysis of all recent service updates to isolate the underlying cause of the problem and to determine the most expedient means to restore service.

We will be keeping our monthly clients up to date on this issue.

Is Email Down Again?

While troubleshooting an email encryption issue after a WHM / cPanel web server migration, my thoughts turned to email down time and what it is worth to a small business. This is the core concept behind business continuity – “Business continuity encompasses planning and preparation to ensure that an organization can continue to operate in case of serious incidents or disasters and is able to recover to an operational state within a reasonably short period.” (Wikipedia) The best way to recover from a disaster is to have planned in advance for the eventuality and have systems in place that provide redundancy when the incident occurs. When it comes to business email continuity only one name comes to mind:

Microsoft Office 365

Guaranteed Uptime – Microsoft provides a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that financially backs their services based on a guaranteed amount of uptime per month. If service is down for more than 45 minutes (99.9% uptime) in a month then a 25% credit will be given, if service is down for more than 7 hours (99% uptime) in a month then a 50% credit will be given, and if for some reason they are down for more than 36 hours (95% uptime) in a month then a 100% credit will be given. Considering the literal billions of users of their products, having to give away credits for downtime would seriously cost Microsoft so it is in their favor to keep the services flowing.

Geographic Redundancy – Microsoft has Office 365 data copied to servers in no less than 8 datacenters around the United States including one nearby in Washington. This means that a hardware failure or lost data in one center will not effect the other 7 datacenters – email will continue to be routed through the others until services can be restored to the one. With redundancy like that there should be no worries about downtime or data loss.

Unparalleled Support – Office 365 email is running on Microsoft Exchange being administered and supported by the people who created it. There is nothing like going to the creator of something to talk to them when there is a problem. They have the breadth of experience that comes from using their own products for the past 20 years. This level of knowledge is unparalleled in the industry and it shows in the quality of service and support that is received.

If your company needs the best in class reliability and service that comes from switching to Office 365, then contact us for assistance.

Configure cPanel Email Distribution Group

The local volunteer fire department wanted to have a feature typically only seen in Microsoft Exchange called Mail-Enabled Distribution Groups, the only problem is that they used cPanel for their cloud email provider instead. So I was tasked with determining if it were possible to create a cPanel email distribution group with similar functionality. To my surprise this is an option and works quite well.

Create a cPanel Email Distribution Group

This tutorial is based on the Go Daddy Pro version of cPanel which is just a skinned version of the standard cPanel control panel.

Login to the cPanel Main Page
Scroll down to the “Email” section and click on “Forwarders”
Click on the “Add Forwarder” button
Here is where decisions have to be made like the vanity name of the cPanel email distribution group can be something like AllStaff or Techs which would go in the “Address to Forward” box. This does not have to be an existing email box as it will be treated as an alias.
In the “Destination” section in the “Forward to Email Address” box type in a list of existing email addresses seperated by commas with no leading or trailing spaces. Click on the “Add Forwarder” to complete the creation process.

It will be easy to see now that the comma seperated list actually was used to create individual rules for each of the existing email addresses. This is a huge time saver in comparison to manually creating each one. This has been tested and verified to work. If your company is using cPanel as your cloud email hosting platform or need help setting up a cPanel email distribution group, then contact us for assistance.

Issues After Office 365 Migration

Keep running into this issue at client sites where an on-premise Microsoft Exchange Server (especially from Microsoft SBS Server) to Office 365 migration has taken place. Client workstations are unable to connect to Office 365 servers via Autodiscover for their migrated email accounts. During Outlook first run it would pre-populate their email correctly but then try to connect to the old email server instead. If the DNS settings for the workstation were changed to non-domain external DNS servers then the email would not pre-populate but the setup would complete successfully. Checked the Autodiscover URL using NSLOOKUP to the Microsoft servers from local domain DNS servers successfully, so felt a little stumpled. Research pointed to the Service Connection Point (SCP) object in Active Directory which can be either deleted from the server or excluded on a per workstation basis, so both will be shown here. Starting with the server first:

Deleting SCP from Server after Office 365 Migration

Login to a server with Active Directory Domain Services installed as administrator
Launch ADSIedit from the Start Menu
Right click on the root of the console and choose “Connect to…”
Under “Select a well know Naming Context” choose Configuration
Navigate down through the tree as follows (these are always listed from the bottom up on other tech sites for some reason):

CN=Autodiscover,CN=Protocols,CN=,CN=Servers,CN=Exchange Administrative Group,CN=Administrative Groups,CN=First Organization,CN=Microsoft Exchange,CN=Services
Delete the entire CN=Autodiscover object if you no longer have any on-premise Exchange Servers
Reboot the workstation to clear the DNS / AD cache and try to connect to Office 365 servers again

Deleting SCP from Workstation after Office 365 Migration

Lauch Regedit from the Start Menu
Navigate to the following key based on your version (16.0 for Office 2016):

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\x.0\Outlook\AutoDiscover
Add a 32-bit DWORD called ExcludeScpLookup with the value of 1 to enable
Next navigate to the following key based on your version (16.0 for Office 2016):

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\x.0\Outlook\AutoDiscover
Add a 32-bit DWORD called ExcludeScpLookup with the value of 1 to enable
Reboot the workstation to effect the Registry changes and try to connect to Office 365 servers again

If your organization needs any help with troubleshooting issues with Office 365 or with migrating from on-premise Microsoft Exchange Server, then don’t hesitate to contact us for support.

Office 365 Meeting Rooms

Shared calendars for the use of shared meeting space reservation is becoming a thing of the past. Office 365 has a better type of calendar specifically made for rooms. This guide will show you how to set up these Office 365 Meeting Rooms in Microsoft’s Office 365 admin portal. Login to the Office 365 Portal with an administrator account and do the following:

Setup Office 365 Meeting Rooms

Click on the Meeting Rooms tab on the left of the Office 365 admin center.
Click on the + symbol to begin the creation of the meeting room object.
Fill in the needed information (Name, Email Address and Room Capacity) then click Create.
Now users can access these meeting rooms when creating a new Meeting in Outlook by clicking on the Rooms button and selecting them.
Once selected that room for that date at that time will be marked off on the associated calendar. There are also color coated indicators as to the availability of the meeting rooms on the selected date in the calendar.

The meeting room will also now appear in their Calendar tab of Outlook and can be used similarly to other calendars. If you have any issues setting things up for your site, please feel free to contact our Office 365 experts to guide you through the process.

Missing Active Directory Attribute Editor Tab

Ran into this issue a couple times now while migrating Small Business Server (SBS) clients from on-premis Exchange to Office365. After setting up the DirSync tool on the server, to add an email alias to a user’s Office 365 account it needs to be setup in the Active Directory Attribute Editor tab under the proxyAddresses attribute. The easiest way to do this is add a record as follows:

Add the Active Directory Attribute Editor Tab in Small Business Server

smtp:[useralias@yourcompany.com]

into the proxyAddresses section of the Attributes tab:

Active Directory Attribute Tab

This is normally easy to do and then run a manual DirSync to add the alias to the user’s Office 365 account, but what if the Attributes tab is missing? It is time to break out the ADSIedit tool again to make the needed changes to the way these pages are displayed. Here are the steps to get it done:

open ADSIedit.msc
Right click on ADSIedit and choose “connect to”
Under connection point select “select a well known Naming context” and in that window choose “Configuration”
Under computer leave as “Default (Domain or server that you logged into)” then click OK
Expand CN=configuration, DC=[your domain], DC=local
Expand CD=DisplaySpecifiers
Click on CN=your language. (The language # can be found on http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324097 for example US English is 409, so CN=409)
In the right hand window locate CN=User-Display right click and choose properties
Locate AdminPropertyPages, highlight it and click “edit” and add the line

11,{c7436f12-a27f-4cab-aaca-2bd27ed1b773}

In the right hand window locate CN=Computer-Display right click and choose properties
ocate AdminPropertyPages, highlight it and click “edit” and add the line

12,{c7436f12-a27f-4cab-aaca-2bd27ed1b773}

In the right hand window locate CN= Default-Display right click and choose properties
Locate AdminPropertyPages, highlight it and click “edit” and add the line

4,{c7436f12-a27f-4cab-aaca-2bd27ed1b773}

Make sure to click on the View menu in Active Directory Users and Computers to choose the Advanced Features option if not already selected to see these newly added Active Director Attribute Editor Tab in the display.

Create Office 365 Shared Calendars

Often when migrating a client from on-premise Exchange server to the Office 365 platform, the company will have an Exchange pubic folder shared calendar or two that are used for various reasons. Here is the steps for creating the new kind of Office 365 shared calendars:

Creating a Public Folder Mailbox

1. Open the Office 365 portal with an administrative user
2. Open the Admin panel
3. Open the Exchange Admin panel
4. Click on Public Folders, then on the Public Folder Mailboxes
5. Click on the + symbol then give the new Public Folder Mailbox a name and click Save

Creating the Root Public Folder

1. Still in the Public Folders section click on Public Folders at the top
2. Click on the + symbol then give the new Public Folder Mailbox a name and click Save
3. Click on the new Public Folder then on the right hand side click on Manage under Folder permissions
4. Add all administrator users to the Folder Permissions

Creating the Shared Calendar Public Folder

1. Open Outlook on administrative users workstation who will be the "Owner" of the folder
2. Click on Folders at the bottom and expand into the new root Public Folder
3. Right click on the root and choose Add New Folder
4. Give it a name and choose Calendar Items under folder contains then click OK
5. Right click on the new Public Calendar click on Properties then on Permissions tab
6. Add all users who will be accessing the calendar and appropriate permissions for them

Adding the Calendar folder to Outlook

1. Open Outlook on each users workstation
2. Click on Folders at the bottom and expand into the new Public Calendar
3. Right click on the Public Calendar and choose Add to Favorites which then makes it listed under their calendar tab.

If your company is migrating from on-premise Exchange to Office 365 or are in need of an Office 365 Shared Calendars setup, then contact us for assistance.

Exchange User Calendar Adding Permissions

Had a request to allow all users access to the new hires Exchange user calendar and some researched determined that this was not a job for the Exchange Managememt Console GUI. Instead it required a bit of PowerShell scripting to get the job done. It is best to run Get-MailboxDatabase before editing the script to retrieve the [Database Name] and [Username]. Here is the final product for accomplishing this task:

Add Exchange User Calendar Permissions via Powershell

$mailboxes = Get-Mailbox -Database “[Database Name]”
$AccessRights = “Reviewer”
$newusername = “[Username]”

foreach ($mailbox in $mailboxes) {

$calendar = (($mailbox.SamAccountName)+ “:\” + (Get-MailboxFolderStatistics -Identity $mailbox.SamAccountName -FolderScope Calendar | Select-Object -First 1).Name)

Write-Host “Updating calendar permission for $mailbox…” -ForegroundColor Yellow

add-MailboxFolderPermission -User $newusername -AccessRights $AccessRights -Identity $calendar

}

If your company is using on-premise Microsoft Exchange User Calendar or needs any help migrating to Office 365, then contact us for assistance.