Saving Office 365 Login Credentials with PowerShell

I need to log into lots and lots of different Office 365 tenants all the time. Having an easier way to do this and prevent fat fingering the wrong information is a big time saver for me. This is even more the case when I use PowerShell.

I therefore decided that it would be easier to have the ability to save tenant credentials to a local file and then recall these as needed. To save the credentials to an XML file use the command:

Get-Credential | Export-CliXml -Path c:\downloads\tenant.xml

This will prompt you for a login and password as normal but then save the results into an XML in the location you specified.

If you look at the XML file created, you can see the username as expected but you’ll notice that the password has been saved securely rather than in plain text.

It is important to note here that this file now contains the access details to the tenant. You need to ensure that the file remains secure because if someone else manages to get it they maybe able to login to the tenant! Beware!

To extract the details from the file and save them into a variable you can use in PowerShell use the following command:

$credential=import-clixml -path c:\downloads\tenant.xml

now you can connect to Office 365 services as normal using:

connect-msolservice –credential $credential

and you you won’t be prompted for the login details.

Hopefully, I’ve covered all the steps in the video above, so you can see it all in action from end to end.

An Introduction to Azure for partners

Introduction to Azure for SMB partners from Robert Crane

Here’s a recent presentation I gave providing an overview of Azure aimed at IT resellers and professionals. The slides are also available for download here:

https://www.slideshare.net/directorcia/introduction-to-azure-for-smb-partners

The OneDrive for Business Administration Console

This quick lesson will show you how to access and use the OneDrive for Business admin console in your Office 365 tenant. You’ll also see the control you have as an administrator to manage individual users OneDrive for Business.

Making changes to existing Site Collections

Here’s a quick summary video on how to make changes to a traditional SharePoint Site Collection. This will only work with pure SharePoint Teams Sites, not those created with Microsoft Teams and Office 365 Groups. That will become available in the new SharePoint Admin Center coming soon. Till then, this video will show you how to access the settings as well as how to interact with the most common configurations.

Basic Calendaring in SharePoint Online

Here’s a short video tutorial on the basics of using a calendar in a SharePoint Team Site. You’ll see how to add a calendar to a Site as well as add it to the navigation and create events.

Introduction to Microsoft 365 Enterprise

Introduction to Microsoft 365 Enterprise from Robert Crane

The second family of Microsoft 365 subscriptions you can obtain are those from the Enterprise family. These give you a range of additional features and power when it comes to managing an securing your environment.

This material will give you an overview of what Microsoft 365 Enterprise is and the major differences to the Business offering.