Office 365 Analytics, Reporting and Operations with 4WARD365

So, you have been doing lot of successful Office 365 migration from On-Premises Exchange, Lync, and SharePoint Servers etc. and I am sure all of them end up in successful migration and you client is happy too.

I have been doing lot of Office 365 migration since few years and its fun (especially when it’s Hybrid). Every time you migrate On-Premises users to Office 365 there will be request from the client for some kind of report on existing usage of Office 365, how many users are moved to Office 365, what time of users are they, delegations, what type of licenses users have been assigned etc. These questions are expected questions as you already know and you would have prepared yourself for these questions along with PowerShell Scripts.

Here are some of the scripts you prepared in advance as these will come as a question from the client.
  1. Report on License Per User.
  2. Report on License as per location.
  3. Report on License as which user is Using just Exchange Online and SharePoint.
  4. Report on Users using Office Online Pro and One Drive and Yammer.
  5. Report on Users Using Intune based on location.
The list can go on and on and on, now your customers wants these report to be emailed to the Admin and their managers too. Well which can be done just adding few lines in PowerShell.

But…

What if there a tool, a web based tool available which can do all of these and more, more as not just reporting but management of your Office 365 environment and takes care of your everyday operations too.


4WARD365 does exactly the same and it has almost all the stack covered which runs in Office 365, Azure and CRM Online.
I have been exploring this tool and I found it way more useful and super easy to use than any other tool available in the market.
Reporting:
























Reporting can be done at the granular level as granular as single license and user. 4WARD365 can report on every aspect of Office 365 features your organization is using. Here are some of the reports.
Mail Traffic Reports:













Yammer Reports:












Reports:













Management:
In terms of management I can’t write everything here as what all you can manage. Check out the screenshot.












Audit:
Audit can be done for Azure AD, Exchange, One Drive and SharePoint. Skype of Business is coming VERY SOON! Operation on Audit can be performed at numerous levels. Some of the examples below.














There are lot of other features are going to be added at the end of 2nd Q, those new features will be free and you don’t have to pay anything extra depending upon the subscription you are using.
4WARD365 can also be used to report and manage On Premises Active Directory and Exchange Servers.

Note: 4WARD365 supports SSO.

Cheers,
Gulab Prasad

Active Directory Discovery Scripts

Active Directory Discovery Scripts will get you the report from your existing environment.
These scripts include list of below application/technologies.


























Requirements:
Windows PowerShell 2.0
Administrator Rights
Execution Policy Requirement: Remote Signed, run it from Windows Server 2008 for best result. 


Download from here

Courtesy: Bill Sawyer, Scott Link and Burris Walker

Cheers,
Gulab Prasad

Lync Server 2010 and 2013 Migration to Skype for Business 2015

Lync Server 2010 and 2013 Migration to Skype for Business 2015. Download the Deployment and Upgrading to Skype for Business Server 2015 from here

Cheers,
-Gulab Prasad

Deploy and Configure Active Directory RMS 2012 for Exchange 2013 Part-1

Deploy Active Directory Rights Management Services 2012 R2

Installing Active Directory Right Management Services 2012 has some prerequisites like creating Service Account, Security Groups and DNS record.

Service Account: ADRMSSVC
Security Group: ADRMS_SuperUsers and Executives
DNS A record: adrms.exchangeranger.net

Open Active Directory Users and Computers and create Service Accounts "adrmssvc" and Host A record in DNS.














































Create Security Groups ADRMS_SuperUsers and Executives



























Create Host A record in DNS.




















Note: This host A record will point to certificate and url name as https://adrms.exchangeranger.net and IP address 192.168.1.109 is of adrms01 server.

Start the installation of Active Directory Right Management Services Role.



































Now click on Post deployment-configuration in Server Manager.




 Note: I am using Windows Internal Database for this article.






































Select Connection Type as SSL and before you click on next you will have to request and the certificate from Active Directory RMS server and complete the request. Open IIS Manager and select click on adrms server and click on Server Certificates under feature view. Click on Create Domain Certificate in the action pan.
































If you get the above error message than go to your Certificate Authority Server and restart the Certificate Service. After restarting the service click on finish and the request will complete.
Now click on next on Cluster Address window and continue the process.







Click on close and open Server Manager and click on Tools and click on Active Directory Rights Management Services.

































While opening the console if you get the below warning message that means you will have to install the certificate on adrms01 server.



















After you click on Yes it will give you the below error message. Reason for this message is because name (adrms) on the certificate is different as what the name of the server (adrms01).















You will have create 2 DWORDS on the server under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Lsa and create DWORD DisableLoopbackCheck and value 1. Second DWORD HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters create DWORD "DisableStrickNameChecking" and value 1. After making the changes restart the server and after that console will open without any error.





















This completes deployment of Active Directory Rights Management Services, in next part we will see how to configure ADRMS for Exchange Server 2013.

Cheers,
Gulab Prasad

EXCHANGE RANGER