Little Tricks

PowerShell Connection

To connect by PowerShell to Exchange Online, first store the credentials in a variable:

$user = Get-Credential

Now open a session in PowerShell by saving the session data in a variable and then starting the session with that variable:

$session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -Connection Urihttps://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/ -Credential $user -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection

If no error message appears, you can import the session with the saved data into PowerShell or PowerShell Core,

Import PSSession $session

which imports the Exchange Online management cmdlets into the current session and lets you manage Exchange Online in the session. Microsoft customizes the login for Exchange Online with the new Exchange Online PowerShell V2 module. Further information can be found online [2].

Managing with OneDrive Admin Center

The OneDrive Admin Center lets you manage various settings centrally for all users of a subscription for OneDrive for Business. You can reach the OneDrive Admin Center from https://admin.onedrive.com>. The Sharing and Sync options are important. You decide whether users are allowed to synchronize and share data from OneDrive, and you can also configure sharing. Microsoft also provides group policy extensions [3], which can be used to control OneDrive for Business by group policies. The download includes ADMX and ADML files.

Once you have copied the group policy files for OneDrive, they will be available in User Configuration | Administrative Templates | OneDrive and User Configuration | Administrative Templates | OneDrive . In the Group Policy Management Console, settings can also be found in Computer Configuration | Administrative Templates | Windows Components | OneDrive . The setting Prevent the usage of OneDrive for data storage is interesting. The option Prevent OneDrive files from syncing over metered connections lets you stipulate that locally stored data are not synchronized with OneDrive if the computer is on an external network or a slow WLAN.

Message Tracing in Office 365

In the Office 365 Security & Compliance Center at https://protection.office.com under Mail flow , you will find the dashboard and message expiration tracking sections. Under Dashboard you can view general information about the messages of the users in the subscription. From the Message trace item you can create your own queries. If the default reports are not enough, you can also create custom reports. The reports can be exported by Export results and saved as a CSV file. If you create your own report, you can run it in real time or save it for later use.