Back with Blogger

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I and a lot of people where having problems posting from Windows Live Writer to Blogger.

After successfully post my mega-article on AD Sync Services I am happy to report that everything is back up and running as it was. For that I’d like to thank both Microsoft and Google engineers who sorted the issue out. You have made a lot of people very, very happy.

My only concern now is what is the roadmap for Blogger and Windows Live Writer? Is this just a temporary fix or will we face the same issue down the track? Unsure whether we’ll get an answer there so something to keep in mind going forward.

Again, those who listened and resolved the issue, a HUGE amount of thanks.

Azure AD Sync Services tool–the basics

The most popular post on my blog is currently:

Windows Azure Active Directory Sync tool (DIRSYNC) – the basics

The currently recommended tool for syncing your on premises AD to Office 365 is now is not DIRSYNC but:

Azure AD Sync Services

There is a further updated version that is currently in preview called:

Azure AD Connect

and you can read more about that preview here:

Azure AD Connect Preview 2 is available

I’ll do a blog post on that very soon, but for now let’s concentrate on what is generally available.

You can read more about Azure Active Directory Sync here:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn790204.aspx

Firstly, download the tool from the link above. In this case I am installing on clean AD and I’m also going to install the tool onto a domain controller, which is supported but not best practice. I am also using a new demo empty Office 365 E3 tenant.

After you have made sure your on premises AD is in good health, and before installing the sync tool on your network, you should login to your Office 365 tenant as a global administrator and navigate to the Admin portal.

You then need to select the Active Users option from beneath the Users menu item from the option on the left of the Office 365 Admin portal.

Note: that I have no users apart from the Global Administrator in my new Office 365 tenant initially.

At the top of the Active Users dashboard you will see an option called Active Directory synchronization as shown above. Select the Set up hyperlink to the right.

This will then present you with a number of steps. You should complete Steps 1 and 2, which I have already completed.

Then select the Activate button under option 3.

You’ll then be prompted to confirm you do want to proceed with synchronization. Note the warnings and select the Activate button to proceed.

You should now see that option 3 displays Active Directory synchronization is activated as shown above.

Return to your on premises sync server and double click on the package you downloaded. It will be extracted.

Double click the icon it places on the desktop to commence the configuration process.

You are prompted for the location to install the software. The default location is:

c:\program files\microsoft azure ad sync

You can however change this if desired.

When you have entered in the appropriate installation directory and checked the I agree to the license terms box, you can select the Install button in the lower right hand corner.

You will now see the program install the files to the installation directory as shown above.

You will then see Microsoft SQL Express being installed. Having SQL on a domain controller is generally not best practice but is supported now. However, beware that they sync tool will install and use SQL Express by default.

You will then see it installing the actual Sync Service on your machine.

Amongst a few other Azure services installed on your machine you’ll now find the Microsoft Azure AD Sync service as shown above.

You’ll then be prompted to enter you details for Azure AD as shown above.

Remember, Office 365 is built on Azure AD and uses it to manage identity. Thus, here you now enter your Office 365 global administrator credentials.

Best practice is to use a dedicated global administration account that has not been assigned any licenses. That is, create a new user and make then a global administrator but don’t assign them a license in your Office 365. Then only use this user to synchronise your local AD to Office 365.

Here, I am am just going to use the default tenant administrator to keep it simple but importantly, the user you enter here MUST have the Office 365 Global Administration role.

When you have completed the required details here press the Next button to proceed.

The provided login will then be authenticated.

If you have not as yet enabled directory synchronization in your Office 365 tenant, as detailed previously, you will see the above error message.

You will be prompted to enable this before you can proceed further.

You’ll then be prompted for a local forest (domain) and domain administrator as shown above.

If you look at your local Active Directory Users and Computers you will normally find the forest name at the top of the tree. In this case it is kumoalliance.org.

Note, that you need to have users assigned to routable domain locally as their primary UPN, not something like .local or .lan. if they are, then you will need to change this prior to synchronisation or otherwise users won’t end up correctly in Office 365.

Take a look at this article:

How to synchronize a .local domain

on how to perform update your users if you only have a .local domain.

Also note here that I have four users in my local domain also shown above.

When the correct local domain administration credentials have been entered select the Add Forest button.

If that is successful you should see you domain listed below teh entry fields now as shown above.

Select the Next button to proceed.

You should now see the connector from your local AD to Azure being created and configured as shown above.

You are now given the options to match local users to Azure AD users if they exist. This will basically match on premise AD objects to those already in Azure AD.

Because there are currently no users in my Office 365 tenant there are none that require matching so best practice is to leave the default options configured and select the Next button to continue but as you can see, you can match users between your local AD and the cloud via a variety of options.

Remember again, that my Office 365 tenant is empty except for the default admin account as shown above.

You are now presented with the Optional features page. You can learn more about the options here at:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn757602.aspx#BKMK_ConfigureSynchronizationOptions

Where many get confused is the difference between Password write-back and Password synchronization. Password write-back is an Azure Active Directory Premium feature. For more information on how to configure this, see:

Password writeback: how to configure Azure AD to amange on-premises passwords

and

http://blogs.technet.com/b/ad/archive/2014/04/29/deep-dive-password-reset-with-on-premise-sync-in-azure-ad-premium.aspx

Office 365 currently doesn’t include Azure AD Premium so the only option available is Password synchronization which you should select. More information on password synchronization can be found here:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/dn835016.aspx

Remember, Azure AD sync allows the connection of more than just Office 365 to your local AD, that’s why there are more options here.

The new sync tool, Azure AD Connect, that is in preview, will support password writeback as the above blog post highlights towards the end of the post. As I said, I will also do a post on this soon.

So, in summary here, select Password synchronization and then the Next button to continue.

You can now review the information and when ready select the Configure button to continue.

The tool will now complete the configuration and enable the options you select. You see it connecting as shown above.

You will then see it enable the options you selected with any issues or errors highlighted.

When the process is complete you’ll have the option to Synchronize now, which you can uncheck if desired. Remember, this first sync may be quite large and take some time depending on how many objects are being copied to Office 365.

However, in most cases, you’ll leave this option checked and select the Finish button.

In a very short period of time you should see your users appear in the Office 365 console as shown above.

However, importantly, they will not have a license assigned to them so they won’t have things like a mailbox yet.

Why is that? Remember you can have many different types of licenses in Office 365 and you can allocate them to different users as you please. The sync client doesn’t know which licenses you want applied to which user so they need to be applied manually.

If all the users are going to get the same license simply select all the users in bulk as shown above, then select the Activate synced users hyperlink in the lower right hand side.

Then assign the location and license you want to apply to these users and select the Activate button at the bottom of the screen.

The process is now complete. Your local AD users are now synced to Office 365 using Azure Azure Sync Services. If they change their password on premises it is also synced using password hashing to Office 365.

Points to remember with Azure AD Sync (and DIRSYNC for that matter):

– By default, passwords changed in the cloud are overwritten when the next sync from on premises AD occurs.

– Information is copied from local AD to Office 365 not back. That is, the way it was installed above, it is a one way sync from on premises to Office 365.

– Owners of an on-premises distribution group that’s synced to Office 365 can’t manage the distribution group in Exchange Online

– Azure AD Sync services allow the configuration of object filtering

– Changes are synchronized based on a three hours interval (this is the same interval that is also used by DirSync). There is a scheduled task running as the service account which will run the cycle. If you unselected “synchronize changes now” during installation then the task is installed as “disabled”. You can force synchronization using a PowerShell command if required as well as running the following file:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Azure AD Sync\Bin\directorysyncclientcmd.exe

– You can upgrade from DIRSYNC to Azure AD Sync Services

– The new Azure AD Connect tool is due soon with more features (blog post on that coming soon)

You’ll also find some tools installed on your sync machine to help manage and troubleshoot the sync process.

Like the Synchronization Service Manager show above that give you a low level insight into what the sync is actually doing. More on that again in an upcoming post.

Blogger we still have a problem

The issue with Windows Live Writer and Blogger continues. If you are experiencing the issues check these threads:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/blogger/-49FC2_0l-g/SMflGo-3NwYJ

and

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/forum/writer-program/windows-live-writer-wont-connect-to-blogger/f3ae8ae5-f013-477b-b262-399430d29e28?tab=question&status=AllReplies&page=4

The good news is that Microsoft and Google appear to be working together on a solution.

https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/604131498220986369

Please. Soon!

Blogger we have a problem

It would seem that desktop tool that publish to Blogger are now not working! Google knows about the issue and is apparently looking to fix it but it’s now been three days and no resolution!

Here’s the post if want to see that status of the issue:

error “notfound: not found” posting from windows livewriter

I had a mega post on Azure AD sync lined up but until this is fixed not much I can really do.

Tally Ho Google. Please fix asap!

Karl’s on line conference

We are less than a month away from Karl Palachuk’s online conference at which I have been lucky enough to be given a speaking opportunity. You can find out more about the conference and sign up at:

http://www.smbonlineconference.com/

My presentation topic is:

You Need a New Business Model for Success in the Cloud

and I’ll warn you that I’m going to rather brutal in what I present here. My focus is on looking forward not back and looking for a business model that will be sustainable now and into the foreseeable future.

That, no doubt, will challenge a lot of conventional thinking but I really believe that is what is called for in the SMB technology reseller space these days. The game has changed which brings both threats and opportunities and understanding both is key.

If you want to get both barrels from my no holds bared presentation as well as some great insight for a score of other really smart and talented presenters then sign up for Karl’s conference today.

Switching on to PowerBI

One of the most powerful applications just about every business has at their fingertips is Excel. What this product can do is truly amazing when you explore it fully. The downside is that most people use less than ten percentage of the product capabilities.

Some of the more advanced features of Excel are Pivot tables. In essence, these allow you to create basic data cubes to easily slice and dice your raw data to create information that has value and provide insight. Sadly again, few people even know what Pivot tables are, let alone even used them.

The growing demand in our increasing data driven world is having a method of producing meaningful information from a vast array of raw data input sources. Microsoft is providing such a solution in the form of PowerBI.

The latest version of PowerBI from Microsoft is now available in preview for free. You can sign up at:

http://www.powerbi.com

When you do you’ll be presented with some sample Retail Analysis data that look like this:

As interesting as that is it is a little abstract. Where you begin to appreciate the role that PowerBI can play for you is when you select the option to Get Data.

Here you’ll now see a variety of sources that PowerBi can report on. One of the options you’ll see from the above screen shot is Google Analytics web data.

When you connect up your Google Analytics you’ll get a new dashboard, as you see above, with all of the information about your web site. In this case, I’m look at data from my www.anzacsinfrance.com web site.

At the top of the dashboard you’ll see a box into which you can type a free form query. So if I type “total hits” the dashboard automatically shows me the result as you see above.

If I now extend that query to “total hits last month” the result is immediately updated and displayed as shown above.

If I extend that further to “total hits last month in turkey” I see a result of 6 website views from Turkey in the last month.

If I extend that once more to “total hits last month in turkey compared to france” i now get a graph as shown above.

Hopefully, you can see the possibilities and the depth of reporting that is possible. And of course you can pin these queries to your dashboard so they display upon your return.

Apart from the adhoc dashboard you can create multi page reports. The above is an example from my web site data. Again, you can customise these easily in the web browser or download the PowerBI Designer for your desktop.

As you saw earlier, one of the data sources I can use is a plain old Excel file, uploaded from your desktop or saved in OneDrive consumer or OneDrive for Business.

Once the spreadsheet is available to PowerBI, now you can start creating reports based on the Excel Pivot tables I alluded to earlier. You do this by simply dragging and dropping the desired column heading into the appropriate locations (axis, vales, etc). The difference here is that I am doing this in a browser in a way that I can pin the result to a dashboard and report.

I can also now quickly and easily change the style of graph that is display, change the data I report on, create more results on the page or create additional pages effortlessly.

I can also easily share my dashboards with others when they are complete.

Microsoft is announcing more and more options for data sources with PowerBI. One of the upcoming options will be analytics from Office 365 with the soon to be released Office 365 content pack for PowerBI.

Whats new in Office 365 Administration from Microsoft Ignite 2

Which should allow you to produce report from Office 365 like you see in the above screen shot taken from the announcement blog post.

At the core of PowerBi is the concept of data sets. Raw data sets are ordered by Excel style Pivot tables with the results being surfaced through PowerBI. Thus, to get meaningful results you need to understand Excel Pivot tables. If you don’t now might be the time to fire up that version of Excel and start learning!

Hopefully, giving you this small inkling of what is possible with PowerBI will inspire you to dive into the product and learn what it can offer. I know I am and am amazed everyday with what is possible and will be detailing more in upcoming posts. Given that it is also in preview and free to access is an even better reason not to hesitate but to dive in now and power up with PowerBI.

Troubleshooting OneDrive for Business links

Still working through all the recent Microsoft Ignite content but here are some handy links for troubleshooting OneDrive for Business that I’ll share.

Use the OneDrive for Business Sync Guide for initial setup – http://aka.ms/SetupOD4B

Make sure that the OneDrive for Business sync app is kept up-to-date – http://aka.ms/UpdateOD4B

Use valid file and folder names, and stay within file size, item count, and file path length limits – http://aka.ms/OD4BLimits

Resolve issues by following these best practices

First, try repairing the OneDrive for Business sync connection – http://aka.ms/RepairOD4B

Next, stop syncing and then restart syncing – http://aka.ms/StopOD4B and http://aka.ms/SyncOD4B

Next, try the OD4B Troubleshooter – http://aka.ms/TShootOD4B

Remember, the next gen sync client is due soon! See my previous post on the topic:

https://blog.ciaops.com/2015/05/more-onedrive-information-from-ignite.html

Office First Release filtering

A while back I posted how I had jumped the gun on wanting the First Release option of Office 365 being restricted to certain users inside an IOffice 365 tenant (mainly to restrict the potential use of Office 2016 Preview).

The good news is as you can see from the above it has arrived in my tenant. To access it you login to Office 365 as an administrator and then select Service Settings, Updates from the admin portal. You will now see the option to be on the Standard release (slower) or First release (faster) when it comes to new Office 365 features. You’ll also see the option, if you select First release, to select those people in your organisation who will receive First release features, leaving the remainder on the standard release path.

This allows you to elect a subset of users within your Office 365 tenant who can access the new features without them becoming available to everyone immediately.

Office 365 release options