Category · 11 posts
office365
Create a Copilot declarative agent that calls an API with authentication
In a previous post, we looked at creating a Copilot declarative agent. The agent had one custom action that called the JSONPlaceholder API. Check that post for an introduction to what these agents can do. Using a dummy, unauthenticated API is not much fun so let’s take a look at doing the same for a…
aiSo you want a chat bot to talk to your SharePoint data?
It’s a common request we hear from clients: “We want a chatbot that can interact with our data in SharePoint!” The idea is compelling – instead of relying on traditional search methods or sifting through hundreds of pages and documents, users could simply ask the bot a question and receive an instant, accurate answer. It promises to be a much more efficient and user-friendly experience. The appeal is clear: Improved user experience Time savings Increased productivity But…
aiAzure SQL, Azure Active Directory and Seamless SSO: An Overview
Instead of pure lift-and-shift migrations to the cloud, we often encounter lift-shift-tinker migrations. In such a migration, you modify some of the application components to take advantage of cloud services. Often, that’s the database but it could also be your web servers (e.g. replaced by Azure Web App). When you replace SQL Server on-premises with…
azureOffice 365 Identity Management with DirSync without Exchange Server On-Premises
This post describes how users, groups and contact are provisioned in Office 365 from the on-premises Active Directory. By using DirSync, these objects are created in and synchronized to Office 365. Without an Exchange Server and Exchange Management tools in place, it is not always obvious how these objects should be created. The following sections…
cloudIssue with meeting invites during Office 365 staged migration
During a recent migration project, we migrated several mailboxes to Office 365 using the staged migration approach. Naturally, during the migration, users that had been migrated still sent meeting invites to on-premises users and meeting rooms. The problem was that meeting invites were actually received as clear text and stripped of the necessary attributes that…
office365Enabling and disabling DirSync in BPOS and Office 365
If you have some experience with BPOS or the Office 365 Beta, you know there’s a tool called DirSync that allows you to synchronize your Active Directory with Microsoft’s Online Services. During a course last week, I was asked if you can use DirSync temporarily to sync users, contacts and groups and, after migration, turn…
bposOffice 365 and Identity
Microsoft has provided more details about Office 365 and the different identity options in a service description document (link at the bottom of this post). There are two types of identities: Cloud Identity: credentials are separate from your corporate credentials Federated Identity: users can sign in with their corporate Active Directory credentials With BPOS, there…
bposOffice 365 SharePoint Online Storage
Microsoft has recently published updated Office 365 Service Descriptions at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=6c6ecc6c-64f5-490a-bca3-8835c9a4a2ea. The SharePoint Online service description contains some interesting information, some of which I did not know yet. We typically receive a lot of questions about SharePoint online and storage. The list below summarizes the storage related features: The storage pool starts at 10GB with…
bposBPOS PowerShell Commands
While I am delivering BPOS courses for Microsoft partners, there’s always a lot of interest in using commands to control directory synchronization, the migration tools, provisioning users and so on. Microsoft actually provides several PowerShell cmdlets with the two main tools that come with BPOS: Directory synchronization cmdlets become available when you install the directory…
bposEnabling Forefront Administration and Quarantine in BPOS
Exchange Online, standalone or as part of BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite), always comes with antivirus and anti-spam protection delivered by Forefront Online Protection for Exchange or FOPE. Mails are always scanned for viruses and, depending on your settings, checked for spam. As a BPOS administrator you can control the anti-spam checking behavior by configuring…
bposInviting external users to Office 365 SharePoint Sites
A question I often get while delivering the BPOS courses for partners in Belgium and Luxemburg is how to collaborate with external users on SharePoint sites. In BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite), you can only grant access to users that have an account in the customer’s BPOS subscription and those users consume a license. Although…
office365