Joe Palarchio

One of the Office 365 concepts that gets glossed over a bit is “single sign-on”, in particular when it comes to Outlook. Many will provide the statement that if you implement AD FS, then you have single sign-on. While it is true that AD FS provides single sign-on for some workloads, I’ve often argued that […]

Azure AD Connect is the synchronization tool formerly known as “Azure AD Sync” which was formerly known as “DirSync”. Regardless of what you call it, Azure AD Connect is the tool you’ll use to synchronize your on-premises Active Directory with Azure AD. With each name change, new features have been added to the product. Below […]

Just a quick but helpful script today for generating mailbox test data. While there are other scripts available that can send test emails to populate a mailbox, in some instances you need those emails to be spread out over a span of time. If you want to test out archiving, retention policies, OST caching or […]

While a good percentage of my mail migrations are part of an Exchange Hybrid environment, I don’t always have that luxury. We still work with plenty of migrations to Office 365 from non-Hybrid environments, each with different migration toolsets. When you get to a migration that is something like Google, Zimbra or even an Office […]

On September 22nd, Microsoft announced the release of Office 2016. The latest version of the Office suite, as you can imagine, brings with it a number of new features. In addition to the new features, Office 2016 will be deployed to users with a new deployment strategy for those using the “click-to-run” installations. New Version! […]

When it comes to security “best practices” there are some that are debatable and others that are fairly well accepted. One that is difficult to argue against is that administrators should maintain an account with elevated access that is separate from their day-to-day user account (see note at the bottom for a possible argument against […]

I’ve had a few clients recently that have asked about using OWA instead of Outlook as their primary mail client. It’s a valid question given that users are very familiar with web-based email and likely use a similar interface with their personal email. If OWA meets all of your users’ needs, using OWA can help […]

Just a quick FYI in this post… Exchange Online allows for a fair amount of customization however there are still a few items here and there that can be done in on-premises Exchange but not in the cloud. Recently, I’ve had a couple clients interested in blocking their users from using Outlook or a specific […]

Office ProPlus has done a great job of getting many organizations in a position where they’re running a fully patched and current version of Microsoft Office. It’s a component of Office 365 that really brings great value to organizations that previously didn’t have a solid deployment or patching process for Office. Quick Aside: If you’re […]

If you’re an administrator for Office 365, you’re likely very familiar with the fact that while some tasks can be performed in the portal, many need to be done via PowerShell. If you’ve managed to get this far in your IT life without using PowerShell, Office 365 is going to force you to learn it. […]

A topic that seems to be surrounded with much confusion in Exchange Online is the concept of “Retention Policies”. While the feature itself is not new to Exchange, for many organizations it seems that establishing their first email retention strategy is coupled with their migration to the cloud. Even for organizations that have a well […]

On Wednesday, Microsoft announced a new Office 365 mobile app called “Send“. The idea behind the app is to be able to send quick and simple messages to other users via email. The first question that came to mind was, “What problem is this app trying to solve?” My phone can already send emails, IMs […]