Hear the Best Features of SharePoint Online with New Signature Experts

Our newest episode of the New Signature podcast Office Explorers is live and is focused on all the high-level characteristics that make SharePoint Online great for your modern workplace team. Hosts Kat Memenza and Rob Murray join Oliver Bartholdson to discuss the important aspects of SharePoint and how it integrates with your technological environment as a whole. Learn more about: How SharePoint underpins Office 365 Enhancing productivity Empowering … Read more

How To Validate Ownership of a Large Number of Mail Domains Using Powershell

Organizations exist that have a large number of mail domains in their on-premises Exchange environment set as accepted domains (let’s say 20+). As these organizations move to Office 365 using the Hybrid Config Wizard, they will likely notice a problem with the interface that does not allow them to verify domain ownership in bulk. The … Read more

How to set up a study network in Azure without breaking the bank – Part 1

Some years back, before Microsoft launched Azure cloud services, my study network consisted of three beefy servers living under the kitchen table at home; it was noisy! However, it did allow hands-on study and exploration of recent technologies in a safe environment. Now I have many more Virtual Machines in Azure than I could ever … Read more

How do I become an IT trainer? Part 1

In this post I’ll pass along suggestions and tips based on my own experience that will help you answer the question: “How do I become an IT trainer?” Watch other trainers There are many free webinars available from companies promoting products or services. Watch several of them and note what you find engaging. And if … Read more

How to Escape a Vampire: An Agile Tale by 6 Project Managers

Written by a team of New Signature project managers: Ana Huertas, Kobby Acquah, Louisa Morren, Edward Wong Escape rooms are metaphors for work and life, and contain many lessons that can help in each. For the Applied Innovation PMO team, we approached it as a vivid illustration of the challenges we face in Agile Projects, as well as a great team building experience. Join us on our journey to learn something … Read more

Make way for a successful migration!

“How can I help staff quickly adopt the new technology?” – the short answer is: planning, communication and adoption. Good visuals will help also. Let’s take a quick look at these key areas. Planning We all know the future starts with planning, and when we introduce new technology and systems, we need to plan for … Read more

Office Explorers Exploring Teams

Our New Signature podcast has hit the airwaves, and the second episode of Office Explorers is live. In this episode, hosts Rob Murray and Kat Memenza talk with modern workplace expert Varol Saatcioglu about Microsoft Teams and how it is changing the way companies function. They offer some great productivity tips and lots of other new features within SharePoint and Office … Read more

New Signature Culture: In Prose

We are truly lucky to work for an organization that is driven by values and encourages the unique development of every employee, which translates into the best experiences for our clients. But it’s not as though, here at New Signature, we are so moved by our dynamic culture that we would take the time to … Read more

Office Explorers: Introducing New Signature’s New Podcast

Have you ever found yourself noticing a new feature within Microsoft Office 365 and thought to yourself, “Wow! Where did that come from?” or sit and wonder when your machine runs updates what exactly is happening? The experts at New Signature are here to help you stay up to date and educated on all the newest and more useful … Read more

What’s New in Office 365: For the Artists and Designers

Staying up to date with every new feature that Microsoft rolls out for Office 365 can be time-consuming. New Signature works to keep our customers and curious learners in the know when it comes to neat tips and tricks, as well as important updates to your cloud-based collaborative environment. Recently, Microsoft has implemented some updates … Read more

What’s New in Office 365: Tips and Tricks to Enhance Your Work Style

Every day, developers are working to elevate your Office 365 experience with new features and the enhancement of the existing functionalities. At New Signature, we always have our ear to the ground to watch out for some of the most helpful and impactful developments in the Office 365 world. We are committed to relaying updates … Read more

Q&A with New Signature: Unable to Remove an Archive From a Mailbox

When attempting to remove an archive mailbox, the deletion never occurs. This happens whether the object is cloud-only or synced over via AAD Connect. Additionally, there is no litigation hold or in-place hold. If there is a retention policy set to all mailboxes, the mailbox has been excluded from that policy as well. To correct … Read more

Blockchains, Governance and the Implementation of Trust

Blockchain technology can be used to assist business relationships between two or more parties, without them having to rely on 3rd-party infrastructure to enforce a contract or provide a framework of trust. Such technology could diminish the need for lawyers, realtors and other professionals who provide the connective tissue in business and social relationships. It … Read more

How can I access the OneDrive of a deleted user account?

“How can I access the OneDrive of a deleted user account?” was a question that arose on a recent training course. The question arose from the need to review OneDrive content of a departed member of staff. Office 365 allows you to delegate access to a deleted user’s OneDrive for Business to their manager. For … Read more

How do I Prevent Microsoft Word from Spellchecking Code?

“How do I prevent Word from spellchecking PowerShell code in my training manuals?” is a question I asked myself the other day. I was in the process of reviewing a training guide for managing Azure with PowerShell and here is what my Word document looked like: pages of red error lines: The spellchecker is working … Read more

Removing a Scheduled Report from the Office 365 Security and Compliance center

“Can I remove a scheduled report from the Office 365 Security and Compliance admin center?” was a question that arose on a recent training course. The short answer is, yes, you can, but not using the Security and Compliance center – let’s see why. If you try to delete a schedule using the “Delete Schedule” … Read more

Creating a Modern workplace – Put Your People in the Driver’s Seat

The workforce is changing. We now have a multi-generation workforce, and their expectations are greater than ever. Businesses can no longer rely on training people to work in the ‘ways of the business’ – that simply limits the benefits that the newer generations bring. With increasing reports about personal autonomy and a gig economy, there’s a growing shift towards people having multiple jobs and seeking more autonomy in the way they work. Is your … Read more

Inside Dan’s Crystal Ball – Enterprises Who Embrace DevOps Will Out-perform in 2018

DevOps isn’t a new concept to start-ups, but for larger enterprises, it’s historically been much harder to implement – some might even say a real headache. As a result, many have fallen back on more traditional approaches to getting new capabilities launched. But now with even greater choice of app deployment services becoming available, the … Read more

New Signature Lights Up a Twitter Storm of Holiday Cheer with Interactive Tree Displays

For many, stringing up holiday lights can be a hassle of tangled lights, rickety ladders, and blown bulbs. But at New Signature, we love to take everyday technology and transform it with innovation. Our holiday light extraordinaire, Chris Poplawski, has helped bring a new interactive light display to our Washington, D.C. and Toronto offices. For … Read more

Migrating Your Workloads to Azure

So, you’ve just signed up for a Microsoft Enterprise Azure agreement. Your management team or business partners have told you that you need to reduce your dependency with on-premises datacenters. Your developers have been working on the next generation applications that will change the fortunes of the company, but have requested a large amount of … Read more

Managing Azure Chargeback and Showback

Knowledge is power. As the information technology sector trends more and more towards Software as a Service (Saas), consumption-based billing comes right along with it. The more visibility we gain into that consumption, the more intelligently we can make decisions about our investment. Setting up chargeback or showback is one of the most useful things … Read more

How to Configure Marketo to Use LinkedIn Lead Generation Forms

LinkedIn Lead Generation Forms are a new way to capture leads (People) directly into Marketo without sending them to a form embedded in a Marketo Landing Page or web page with embedded form. … Read more

How many laptops does it take to deliver a Skype webinar?

“How do I give a demonstration of all the Skype for Business Online features, while also using Skype to present the demonstration as a webinar?” This was a question a new trainer asked me last week. The challenge is that you cannot use the same copy of Skype to both deliver the webinar and demonstrate … Read more

Five Steps to Enable Azure Rightsizing

One of the easiest ways to take control of your Azure expenses is to ensure that your resources — most notably VMs and Azure SQL databases — are appropriately sized. The Cloud Management Portal’s rightsizing feature makes this easy for you. The CMP uses the Azure Resource Manager to obtain the utilization and performance data for … Read more

Do retention policies conflict with a legal hold?

“What happens if you place an Exchange mailbox on legal hold that also has a retention policy applied to it – does the retention policy conflict with the legal hold?” this was a question posed to me on a recent training course. To answer this, we’ll look at the function of each technology and also … Read more

Are there limits to scheduling Skype for Business Online meetings?

In a recent training session, an attendee posed the following question: Can you schedule recurring Skype for Business Online meetings for more than a year in advance? And if so, can this be limited by policy? The brief answer is: if you book the Skype for Business Online meeting in your Exchange mailbox calendar, then … Read more

S is for Sync – Marketo vs Dynamics 365 Lead Entity Differences

From a purely technical and procedural standpoint connecting instances of Marketo and Dynamics CRM (DCRM) is straightforward, you follow Marketo’s perfectly acceptable documentation and install the solution in your DCRM instance, create the Marketo Sync user, select your fields to sync, and connect the two platforms. This is not to say that there isn’t some … Read more

I is for IoT

What is the Internet of Things? The Internet of Things, or IoT, is an umbrella term for the idea of connecting new types of devices to the Internet – devices that have not been Internet-connected in the past. For a home user, this might be their heating or lighting systems, whereas for a business, it … Read more

Controlling the creation of Skype meeting broadcasts

The following question arose at a recent Office 365 administration course: “If we enable Skype meeting broadcast for our organization, can we restrict who can create new broadcast meetings?” Skype meeting broadcast is a new feature that enables your organization to move past the scale limits of regular Skype for Business Online meetings, potentially broadcasting … Read more

Recovering deleted user accounts

What is the best way to recover an Office 365 user account that has been deleted? This was a question that came up in discussion during a recent training course. My response was that the approach to take depends, in part, on where the user account was first created. Was it created in Office 365 … Read more

Using Automation to Solve Everyday Problems

Having been in the IT industry for over 20 years, I’ve seen a lot of the everyday issues that many other IT professionals are faced with. Over the course of my career, I’ve been tasked with many mundane tasks, as well as some challenging ones. Enter automation. Automation can be used for a number of … Read more

Three Ways to Restore Azure IaaS VMs

In our Cloud-first world, many organizations are starting to explore and use Microsoft Azure as an extension (or maybe even a replacement) of their data centers. Either way, if you’re on this Cloud adventure, you probably have at least a few Virtual Machines running in Azure. If you do, then you need to extend your … Read more

Office 365 for Project Management

Project management requires a high level of organization, and the right technology can help take your projects from chaos to smooth collaboration. Within Office 365 specifically, you have several tools and systems from which to choose. What is the best way to build a solution for managing projects? There isn’t one easy answer – Office … Read more

Q&A with a New Signature Trainer: Calendars, Skype attachments, and email quarantine in Office 365

In a recent training course on the features and productivity benefits of Office 365, a participant asked: “How many calendars could be opened at one time in Outlook 2016 on the desktop, and how many in the web-based interface (Outlook Web Access)?” The answer to the first part is that, by default, you can open … Read more

How to Migrate Exchange Attributes when using only Quest Migration Manager for Active Directory

Quest Migration Manager for Active Directory can migrate limited Exchange attributes with the use of an XML file to assist with Office 365 migrations. Find out more here. … Read more

Should You Use Design Manager for SharePoint Online?

My hopes were high when Microsoft shipped the “Design Manager” with SharePoint 2013. It was touted as a tool for designers to simplify the process of converting HTML and CSS into SharePoint master pages. Unfortunately it never lived up to its expectations. In this post I’ll share three reasons why you should pause before using … Read more

Question & Answer with a New Signature Trainer: Data Deletion and Recovery in Office 365 groups

Question from a student on my training course: When an Office 365 Group is deleted, is data recovery possible? Office 365 groups are great for collaboration and sharing data within a team, but what happens to that data if the group is deleted? Is that data still available?” This was the question posed by a … Read more

Your Cloud Management Portal Questions Answered: Understanding Enterprise Agreements

There is a lot to learn from your Enterprise Agreement (EA) contract from Microsoft, and we can help you make sense of it all. And sometimes, there are key indicators within those reports that may help you to adjust your usage and save money. What are the most important parts to review in my EA … Read more

Your Cloud Management Portal Questions Answered: RightSizing

What is the RightSizing feature? New Signature’s Cloud Management Portal (CMP) has a RightSizing feature that analyzes Virtual Machine (VM) and Azure SQL Database performance and determines which VMs and Databases are over-sized, under-sized, or right-sized. CMP provides a specific SKU recommendation for over-sized and under-sized VMs and databases. Across most of our customers who … Read more

Your Cloud Management Portal Questions Answered: Chargeback and Showback

One of the benefits of New Signature’s Cloud Management Portal (CMP) is the ability to reduce costs and rein in your Azure usage expenditures. Learning the best ways to organize and track your Azure resources is the first step in managing your Azure consumption and spending. What are chargeback and showback, and how does CMP … Read more

New Microsoft EA Pricing

The New Signature Cloud Management Portal (CMP) for Microsoft Azure (https://portal.newsignature.com/) provides financial governance and VM performance/cost optimization for enterprises with a Microsoft Azure Enterprise Agreement (EA). We have a number of enterprises actively using our CMP. Some of these customers have entered into a new EA after their EA had expired. For new EAs … Read more

Build a More Fluent API With Generic Extension Methods

This is the second in a bunch of posts I have in my head around UI automation testing. Go back and read the first for some more background on why I like this topic. I promise this one is a quicker read. Fluent Interfaces are what all the cool kids are doing these days. If … Read more

Your Cloud Management Portal Questions Answered: Assigning User Roles & Organization

One common strategy that may be missed during set-up of the New Signature Cloud Management Portal (CMP) is to determine a governance strategy so that there is control over data access and usage from the start. Users can be configured for access to only specific Azure Accounts and Subscriptions. How do I determine the roles … Read more

New Signature’s Cloud Management Portal Q&A: Data Security

One of our core values at New Signature requires us to “promote trust and credibility”, and as part of that, we take the security and access management of your data as seriously as you do. When you import your data into the Cloud Management Portal (CMP), it’s important to feel secure in the way it … Read more

OMS: An Overview of Log Analytics

Log Analytics is a service in Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) that is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that gives the possibility of data collection and analysis in any on-premises or cloud environments. It provides real-time and historical machine data insight with a simple and powerful search function and custom dashboards that will analyse workloads, logs … Read more

How Microsoft approaches Identity and Access Management

Last year it was reported that more than 160 million customer records were compromised, and that each breach had a cost/business impact of three million dollars. Plus, it’s estimated that on average there was a gap of 229 days between infiltration and detection. That’s more than seven months of undetected compromised information and data exfiltration. … Read more

Q&A with a New Signature Trainer: Security Management

The New Signature blog will play host to a series from a Senior Learning & Adoption Associate. Working as part of our learning team brings with it many questions for business IT-stakeholders and end users just like you. In this series, we will bring forward some of the most commonly asked questions and highlight the … Read more

Don’t Leave Money on the Table

Most of us take pride in getting a good deal for the money we spend and become mavens to pass that wisdom to friends, family and the Internet in general. Armed with mobile devices, we have become expert comparison shoppers; which is impacting the bottom lines of retail giants. When we so aggressively practice the … Read more

AD Photo Synchronization with Windows 10

By default, the Windows 10 (1607 in the example images below) user profile picture shows a blank person picture. This can be changed by having a group policy pull down a picture from Active Directory and set it for the user for each workstation they log into. There are two major steps that this involves: … Read more

How to Prepare for a IBM Notes migration to Office 365

Making a transition to Office 365 should not be viewed as just email and database migrations, but more of an experience to enable productivity and flexibility. The process is overwhelming to many of our clients, especially moving off of a platform that they have experienced for decades. A common question we encounter is “What do we … Read more

Ensure Business Continuity with Managed Cloud Services for Azure Site Recovery

Today’s disaster recovery strategy is not just about getting your IT systems back up and running as fast as possible, it’s about creating the backbone of a comprehensive risk management strategy. Whether a business runs a consumer-facing e-commerce website, processes financial transactions or is part of a B2B supply chain, customers, partners and employees expect … Read more

Synchronizing Profile Pictures Between Exchange Online and SharePoint Online

Have you ever noticed how some people have pictures in Exchange Online (or Outlook/Skype), but not in SharePoint or Delve? It turns out, this is expected! Background Microsoft has some sync functionality to synchronize a user’s profile picture between Exchange (which is where Outlook and Skype pull your picture from) and SharePoint (where Delve pulls … Read more

AppFabric Configuration for SharePoint 2016

Now that SharePoint 2016 is here, you’re probably wondering if Microsoft fixed all the issues with AppFabric. The short answer is “not really”, but there is one change that’s helpful. What’s Better in 2016? With SharePoint 2013, the first activity I would perform after installing SharePoint was to patch AppFabric. In 2013, the version of … Read more

Education Check-In: Azure Site Recovery

If you haven’t had a chance to explore New Signature’s free webinar series around Azure Site Recovery, now is a great time to catch-up before the next installment on Thursday, August 18 at 10 a.m. Eastern Time. Webinar #1: Protecting Your Data and Keeping Your Business Going Disasters don’t have to be disastrous. With Azure … Read more

Education Wrap-Up: Manage Your Identity

On August 10, New Signature’s Events team wrapped up a three-part series around Microsoft Identity Manager (MIM), Microsoft’s most-recent newest Identity Manager program. The series was an introduction to the tool, strategies to deter identity theft, and a vital look at how the product functions as part of a hybrid cloud and on-premises solution. Chapter … Read more

Peeling the Digital Onion Without Crying: Solving With Dynamics 365 & The Common Data Model

For several years now, major vendors have promised a “digital” revolution, as organizations begin to transition away from either analog systems (including paper!) and to systems that, even if they were collecting data, were doing so in a silo, unconnected to the larger business, or in formats that couldn’t be shared with the broader organization. … Read more

The Risks of a Data Breach: Why Identity and Access Management Matters

Data is the lifeblood of every company, regardless of industry, sector or vertical. It is information about your customers, your employees and virtually everything that keeps your business running. So why are so many companies so loose with it? It comes down to management and communication between HR and IT departments, implementing the right technology, … Read more

Why a Hybrid SharePoint 2016 environment might work for you

In my last blog, I discussed some compelling reasons why companies should consider upgrading to SharePoint 2016. But the fact is, not all companies are able to fully move to the cloud. For these types of organizations, a great option is to create a SharePoint hybrid environment, which leverages both a SharePoint Server on premises … Read more

Using Cloud Infrastructure And Managed Services To Accelerate Business Transformation

Cloud computing makes businesses faster, better and more agile. But it doesn’t make IT planning less complex. On the contrary, to truly capitalize on the opportunities of the Cloud and turn IT into a driver for growth and transformation, it requires organizations to be more strategic in their IT approach. Using solutions and infrastructure in … Read more

Enterprise Cloud Experiences Drive Business Transformation

Microsoft is a market leader and innovator in the development of cloud computing for the enterprise. Their sheer velocity of software updates and brand new solutions is impressive: they have shifted from three- to five-year implementation cycles for on-premises software to a cloud delivery model where new releases and updates arrive weekly. Customers are reaping … Read more

Site Recovery to Azure – Best practices for some typical workloads

If you are using or intend to use Microsoft’s Recovery Services to protect your infrastructure from disasters, it is important to understand the workloads Microsoft officially supports and some specific characteristics of each one of them. Before that, a summary of supported workloads (on-prem to Azure): Active Directory Active Directory (AD) is the base for … Read more

Ready, Set, Start! – Starting Universal Apps Properly

As Windows begins to transition to modern, “Universal” applications (that are often designated as such by the acronym UWP for Universal Windows Platform) over legacy Win32 applications, sometimes simple tasks take on added complexity. To wit, a common request I’ve heard is “How do I get a Universal App to startup each time I login?” … Read more

Achieve Business Transformation with the Cloud

Microsoft’s public cloud provides the opportunity to transform the way we work today. Microsoft’s Office 365, Azure, Dynamics 365 and Enterprise Mobility + Security can globally connect us and improve how we collaborate and use data. These cloud platforms offer customers the opportunity to become more agile in operations and create new customer experiences. It has … Read more

How Not To Run a Business

What you’re doing wrong, right now & how to fix it. … Read more

Cloud to Cloud DR – A Recipe

The basics – AWS Scenario In my previous article, I have spoken about the possibilities of leveraging multiple cloud providers at the same time, for the sake of high-availability and disaster recovery. Today I want to take a look at some details on how the technology works. In my scenario, I have two simple virtual … Read more

Does a Lower Price Point Always Equal Value?

When I first came to New Signature, my first week consisted of meeting after meeting with various people within the company, and two messages seemed to carry through as a general theme in nearly all of these discussions. First, New Signature emphasizes great customer service and makes sure that shows through in every aspect of … Read more

Discover your RightSizing with the new Cloud Management Portal feature

The new RightSizing feature for our Cloud Management Portal (CMP) provides an analysis of your Azure VMs and determines if the VMs are sized appropriately based on the historical performance metrics that are collected for the VMs. We support both v1 “classic” Azure Service Manager VMs and newer Azure Resource Manager VMs. This is an … Read more

Password Expiration Nightmare For VPN Users Solved!

As more and more end users work remotely, IT professionals are faced with increasing help desk calls due to passwords expiring. In the following example, users connect to a corporate network through a third party software that does not initiate the VPN connection prior to Windows login. Due to the investment made in the VPN … Read more

Cloud to Cloud Disaster Recovery

The new cloud world gives us a sense of infinite power and capacity. It never sleeps, and never goes down. This is true most of the time. However, every cloud provider has had some time offline in the last few years. Independently of the size, there is always a possibility for catastrophe or human failure. It is … Read more

Do My Permissions Rock My RMS Rights?

If you’re protecting files on your Windows Server with Microsoft Rights Management Services (RMS), then you need to know how the rights assigned by RMS relate to the NTFS permissions already in place on the file. To explore that relationship we will use the example of one Word document that is both protected by RMS and … Read more

Getting Started with the Predictive Azure IoT Suite

The promise of the Internet of Things (IoT) is huge. According to recently published research from IDC, we will see the market grow from $655.8 billion in 2014 to $1.7 trillion in 2020. By the same year, Gartner anticipates that over 20 billion connected “things” will be in use worldwide. Their projections make it clear: … Read more

Mobile App Design – 5 Lessons Learned

Recently I had the opportunity to work on an enhancements project for GSC mobile app. This app is built with Xamarin technology to be multi-device, multi-platform and available in the various App stores. Read more about Green Shield Canada success story. As a new designer/UX consultant coming onto the project team, I had to ramp-up … Read more

Where’s My ConfigMgr In-Console Update?

Let’s say that you’ve upgraded System Center Configuration Manger ConfigMgr 2012 to Configuration Manger 1511, and everything is running smoothly. Now, for the first time, you’re ready to do an in-console upgrade to Configuration Manager 1602 or any future release. Within the Configuration Manager console, you navigate to Administration > Cloud Services > Updates and Servicing node … Read more

CRM in Professional Services: How to Succeed Without Divine Intervention

Client Relationship Management (CRM) software has been available to lawyers, accountants and consultants for over two decades. Many firms purchased and installed CRM software but are still struggling to realize its promised potential. They are drowning in inconsistent, incomplete and incorrect data, while struggling to justify paying maintenance for underutilized software. Looking back, they wish … Read more

The Growth Mindset and Why It Matters…

Last week I had the honor of representing New Signature at the 10th Annual Microsoft Executive Women’s Retreat (http://msftexecwomensretreat.com/) in Philadelphia, PA. Now in its 10th year, this invitation-only event assembled the most dynamic and engaged women from the East Coast and beyond. This year’s theme, Celebrating Growth, was inspired by the growth mindset and … Read more

System Center Gone Wild

Next, in this series about System Center and enterprise monitoring, a subject that is one of the most common reasons companies give up on System Center: Operations Manager is too noisy. That is certainly a fact when you think about the out-of-the-box experience. The first contributing factor is how SCOM was designed. Unlike your typical SNMP/Ping … Read more

The Power of System Center

Imagine Thor or Ironman. Or even Arrow or the Black Widow. Alone, they may be powerful, but together, they’re much more: The Avengers! That’s what I think when I look at the System Center family, which has combined different technologies to create a holistic management solution. System Center 2012 was a milestone in Microsoft’s system … Read more

Improvements in Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics

Microsoft has just released version 1.6 of its Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA) product, with some key improvements over the previous version, including the new ATA Lightweight Gateway role. What is Advanced Threat Analytics? Microsoft ATA is an on-premises security solution that aims to limit the damage that attackers can wreak on your network. The first element of … Read more

A Brief History of System Center

In the last 16 years, Microsoft came a long way developing its management products. The first chapter in this story started with a solution System Management Server (SMS). It was a case of love or hate; very hard to configure and operate. The reason behind SMS being the first [Configuration] management tool seems to be, … Read more

Active Setup & the Windows Shell that Wouldn't Start

Recently I came across an issue that had me losing my hair. During a recent project, I built a corporate Windows 10 image for a customer to be deployed with Configuration Manager. The corporate image had several customization steps to accomplish various tasks such as changing the start menu layout, removing consumer apps and customizing … Read more

Bypassing Multi-Factor Authentication Using an AD FS Claims Rule

What is Multi-Factor Authentication? Multi-factor authentication, or MFA is quickly becoming a widely-adopted option for advanced identity management and security. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a method of authentication that requires the use of more than one verification method and adds a critical second layer of security to user sign-ins and transactions. It works by requiring … Read more

Multi-Farm, Cross-Continent SharePoint Architecture

One of our recent clients had a very interesting problem – they are a multi-national corporation with offices in very remote regions of the world, and they needed a way to connect all employees in these remote regions with a unified SharePoint Intranet and Collaboration experience. Most remote regions are far from large cities and … Read more

Major Mobile Improvements Coming to SharePoint Online

This week marks the beginning of a major transformation of SharePoint Online. On April 6th, Microsoft announced that changes were coming to the SharePoint Online document library experience. For some organizations this change will be welcomed, as it brings the UI more in line with OneDrive for Business and the rest of the Office 365 … Read more

ExpressRoute Series #4 – ExpressRoute Redlines

As a review of my previous blogs, ExpressRoute is a coordinated effort between the client, a Microsoft partner, an ExpressRoute provider and Microsoft. The diagram below depicts the flow of the process of establishing an ExpressRoute solution in Office 365, CRM or Azure. Using a qualified Microsoft partner can streamline the process of enabling an … Read more

SQL 2016: Increase Your Analytics Maturity with Microsoft’s Latest and Greatest Modern Data Platform

Last week New Signature participated in a panel discussion at Microsoft’s Ft. Lauderdale SQL 2016 Roadshow. The topics presented included ways to modernize an organization’s data platform and how to think about big data as it pertains to an organization’s current data architecture. Presenters introduced the new SQL 2016 features, including real time operational analytics, … Read more

ExpressRoute Series #3 – Preparing for a Microsoft ExpressRoute Deployment

My previous blogs discussed what a Microsoft ExpressRoute solution is and a deeper dive in the technology. Once an organization is ready to move to ExpressRoute, they must prepare for it. This blog will discuss some key points on preparing for an ExpressRoute initiative. One of the main decisions to make with ExpressRoute is what … Read more

Windows 10 In-Place Upgrade Using Azure Storage Blob

Companies are looking to upgrade their Windows 7 SP1 or Windows 8.1 devices to Windows 10. There are now many methods to do this beyond the typical wipe and load scenario. Windows 10 offers an in-place upgrade method from Windows 7 SP1 (Pro or Ent) or Windows 8.1 (Pro or Ent) to Windows 10 Enterprise. … Read more

Building your very own Azure AD B2C directory!

Let’s get started! Get started? I don’t even know what Azure AD B2C is!? Well, head on over here and read up. It’s OK, we’ll wait. Now you’re really ready? Assuming you’ve already got an Azure subscription, we can get started right away. If you don’t have one yet, you can create a free trial. OK, now … Read more

Azure Active Directory – B2C

What is it and why do I want to use it? What is Azure Active Directory B2C? Azure Active Directory (Azure AD or AAD) B2C is a cloud-based identity service for consumer-facing applications; B2C stands for “Business-to-Consumer”. It is an identity management service that can use either your customer’s social accounts (currently Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Amazon, or Microsoft Account) or locally managed accounts. Azure AD … Read more

Migrating SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint Online: Part One

If you are considering a move from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint Online or SharePoint 2013, there are a few “gotchas” to consider in addition to the general migration planning activities associated with any SharePoint migration. This post will explain the issues related to the site homepage format. Web Part Pages Each site homepage in SharePoint … Read more

ExpressRoute Series #2 – Digging Deeper

Digging Deeper in ExpressRoute Technology In my first blog, I discussed what Microsoft ExpressRoute is at a high level and the value it can bring to organizations. The best way to explain ExpressRoute is with the Microsoft diagram, below. One key point to understand with ExpressRoute, is that you need to use an ExpressRoute connectivity … Read more

Continuum: A Glimpse at The Future of Computing

As computers have shrunk in size, at each iteration, experts have declared “they are now small enough”. As mainframes shifted to mini-computers, which were in turn displaced by the PC, many partners and vendors were caught unprepared for the next wave of smaller, more personal computing. Today’s landscape is no different: many enterprises are still … Read more

ExpressRoute Series #1 – Introduction to Microsoft ExpressRoute

Meet the New Signature Experts: Mark Pierce, Vice President at New Signature with a specialty in Unified Communications. Mark will be offering insight into Microsoft ExpressRoute through a four part blog series. Stay tuned for the Microsoft ExpressRoute Series. What is Microsoft ExpressRoute? ExpressRoute is a solution that several of our clients have been waiting … Read more

The New AAD Sync Scheduler

AAD Connect 1.1 brings the latest iteration of sync cycle scheduling mechanisms. The old days of .config files, scheduled tasks and sync exe’s are replaced with a more familiar PowerShell experience. —— Quick Tip: Looking to run a cycle manually with the new version? Open PowerShell on the AAD Sync server and run this: Start-ADSyncSyncCycle -PolicyType … Read more

Microsoft Authentication Request: No, We Are NOT Accessing Your Address Book

When a new user registers for the New Signature Cloud Management Portal for Microsoft Azure (CMP), they need to supply a Microsoft Account (previously called a Live ID). They will then be asked to authenticate with this Microsoft Account from https://login.live.com. Once authentication is successful, https://account.live.com/ will ask for authorization of CMP to access your … Read more

Office 365 Groups Accelerate Collaboration

Office 365 Groups are similar to traditional email distribution groups, in which members see messages sent to the group. The difference is that an Office 365 Group supports additional collaboration through access to other parts of the Office 365 service, including a dedicated: Calendar Location for file storage Shared OneNote notebook Each of the above features are specific … Read more

Operations Management Suite – Azure Automation

Cloud Infrastructure – Operations Management Suite – Azure Automation In previous posts I described some basic characteristics of the OMS Suite as well as some specific features of the Log Analytics solution. In this post, we will delve into the IT Automation component. Azure Automation In 2009 Microsoft acquired Opalis as the first foray into … Read more

Oh Where, Oh Where, Did My Azure PowerShell Go?

Have you installed the February 2016 release of Azure PowerShell, and now you can’t find your shortcuts? Adin Ermie, Senior Consultant at New Signature, posted an article called Oh Where, Oh Where, Did My Azure PowerShell Go? about this newly discovered bug! … Read more

Operations Management Suite – The Alerting Feature

Cloud Infrastructure – Operations Management Suite The Alerting feature In my previous post, I gave an overview of the Operations Management Suite and the basic process of setting up the agent. In this post, I will describe the OMS Alerting feature, one of the most requested improvements of the log analytics solution. As one would … Read more

Accessing Yammer Made Easy

Microsoft announced Yammer seamless activation in Office 365, but what does that mean? Starting February 1st and over the next few months, Yammer will be activated and accessible in the Office 365 app-launcher. Wait, what’s Yammer? An Enterprise Social Network that enables employees to share content, collaborate and break traditional silos in an open forum. … Read more

Office 365 Planner Is Coming To A Subscription Near You

Microsoft continues to add value to its Office 365 suite. This time with a project management application for the masses. Office 365 Planner is the latest productivity tool that makes management of team tasks a snap. Office 365 Planner is back ended by file sources in SharePoint or One Drive for Business and organized with … Read more

How To Work From Home Like A Pro During A Blizzard

There’s no doubt that this weekend’s blizzard had a significant impact on businesses along the 95 corridor, with some analysts saying that the economic impact of the storm could total nearly $1B. In order to avoid these types of losses, many companies are investing in technologies that allow their employees to work from home during inclement weather. While telecommuting has its … Read more

Cloud Infrastructure – Introduction to Operations Management Suite

Operations Management Suite Series In this series of posts, I will explore some basic concepts of the Operations Management Suite and its new features as they are made available to the general public. The Problem With the rapid growth of the cloud, there is great need to update strategies, tactics and operations regarding monitoring the … Read more

Office 365 Groups for Administrators

What is an Office 365 Group? In a nutshell, an Office 365 Group is a collaboration accelerator. It is similar to a traditional email distribution group, since all members see messages sent to the group. However, an Office 365 Group supports additional collaboration through access to other parts of the Office 365 service, including dedicated: Calendar Location for file … Read more

Missed Our Intro to Office 365 E5 Webinar? Listen to the Recording Now!

On January 21st, New Signature lead a lively Introduction to Office 365 E5 webinar. New Signature’s Chris Sheridan talked through all the new components of the E5 SKU and answered questions from the crowd. The Office 365 E5 SKU provides a new enterprise-wide licensing option that includes the full Office 365 suite (including Skype for … Read more

OneNote is all you need with Skype for Business

OneNote is the perfect tool for making and sharing notes, and in this post, we’ll see how easy it is to use OneNote within Skype for Business meetings to capture detailed, multimedia notes and share them with your team. Once your Skype for Business meeting has started, click on the blue circle with an image … Read more

Azure AD Application Proxy Overview

Azure AD Application Proxy Overview Included in Azure AD Premium subscriptions Allow users to access internal web-based applications from outside the network without adding internal Web Application Proxy infrastructure Does require a Windows Server 2012 R2 server to run Azure AD Proxy Connector Configuration option that allows all DNS and certificates to be handled by … Read more

Wipe, Wipe, Wipe: how to really remove data from devices and platforms

IT has long had the desire to remotely, securely, discretely, and definitively remove data from a company device, mobile phone, personal machine, or anything else for that matter. This type of functionality has seemed to be within reach in recent years with the advent of numerous Mobile Device Management and remote management solutions. Industry buzz … Read more

DPM 2012 R2 Error VSS Application Writer or VSS Provider in a Bad State

I encountered an error when trying to recover a Hyper-V virtual machine from DPM 2012 R2. The recovery job would recover the complete amount of data for that virtual machine, but then the recovery job would fail right after. The error says “The VSS application writer or the VSS provider is in a bad state. … Read more

Dell RAID Preserved Cache Error Unable to Past POST

When booting a Dell PowerEdge Server with a RAID Controller, I came across an error that I’ve never encountered before. Upon booting the server, during POST, the server says “There are offline or missing virtual drives with preserved cache. Please check the cables to ensure that all drives are present. Press any key to enter … Read more

Validating FIM Exports – Part 1

There are many good mechanisms available to notify, report and authenticate/approve changes made by FIM before they are synchronized (FIM Service, for example.) However, there is no mechanism for doing this in FIM Synchronization natively. Many options discussed online are from the perspective of a ‘classic’ MIIS designer, often contained with compiled DLLs. This method … Read more

How Nintex Has Changed The Way I Work And Interact With Customers

Working in the enterprise IT Solutions Industry for the past 10 years I have been a witness to how the overall industry has evolved. Its interesting to see the evolution of technology from a necessary evil (as a burden on the bottom-line) is to being treated as a strategic partner by the Management team to … Read more

When Accidents Happen; Seeing The Value In Social

I frequently talk to c-level executives across various business lines, and there is often a disconnect between the CIO/CTO/CFO and the CEO/CSO/CMO sides. Put simply: both sides value the idea of “Social” differently. For many individuals on the former side, the word “Social” conjures up three important words: not business related. Whether it is posed … Read more

MIM 2016: Admins! Let Microsoft Identity Manager Work For You (Part 2)

This post is for those in the trenches of Identity and Access Management and it’s a shout out to a great partner, Software IDM. How many of you have looked at the operations logs in Microsoft Identity Manager (MIM) and tried to determine what changes happened to a particular account over the past week? How … Read more

MIM 2016: Let Microsoft Identity Manager Work For You (Part 1)

As organizations move to Office 365, consideration must be given to the governance plan and the associated administrative workloads. Organizations are spending many hours writing scripts and provisioning Office 365 mailboxes. They are subsequently managing Office 365 licenses, email addresses, user locales, litigation / in place-hold settings and out of office replies. Office 365 settings … Read more

"To Market, To Market, To Buy A VM"

Do you remember that nursery rhyme from when you were a child, that went something like “to market, to market, to buy a fat pig”? Well, seeing as we’re in the digital age, and Microsoft Azure is the leader in the Cloud space, this nursery rhyme needs a more modern twist. Adin Ermie, Senior Consultant … Read more

It’s the Season for Giving: Give the Gift of Conditional Access and Spread the Joy of Business Productivity

The race to the cloud has been gaining momentum with every passing year and there is collective awareness of the trans-formative power that Nexus of Forces (Mobile, Social, Cloud and Information) has in the digital business era. Even though more and more companies are embracing the cloud solutions, they are relying on old ways to … Read more

The Price of a Secure Business

Identity and access management is required for all organizations. As long as you have people and data, you have to address Identity and Access Management. It may be a simple solution or perhaps one that requires an investment. Perhaps government and industry regulations are causing a lot of complexity for you. What do I hear … Read more

An Employee Is Gone But What About Their Access?

Originally posted here by Phil Bartholomew, New Signature (formerly InfraScience) The following article puts forth that Healthcare providers are “falling short with Identity and Access Management”. Read Article Within the Healthcare sector, you will often see generic accounts being used by multiple people with no way of knowing who is truly accessing sensitive data. Students and contract … Read more

MIM 2016: Asking the Right Questions

Does Microsoft Identity Manager 2016 include a Management Agent for my applications? When discussing Microsoft Identity Manager (MIM) 2016 with clients, one of the top questions I get has to do with whether or not MIM includes a connector (Management Agent) for a particular application. I understand the question, but the answer lies with the … Read more

What is Microsoft Identity Manager (MIM) 2016?

What is Microsoft Identity Manager (MIM) 2016? To start, it’s actually not a new Microsoft technology. It’s a rebranded technology with many added features, such as privileged access management (PAM). Let’s take a look back. In July of 1999, Microsoft acquired Zoomit Corp; a meta-directory solution provider. Microsoft branded the solution Microsoft Metadirectory Services (MMS). (Read … Read more

Deploying OneDrive for Business Solo

Sometimes you want to deploy all of Office 365, and sometimes you don’t. The need to deploy individual components of Office in an a la carte manner may arise from a number of scenarios. Maybe you are executing a phased rollout of the office products, or perhaps you are only licensed for some components and … Read more

ADFS 3.0 – Invalid Algorithm Specified

I recently ran into an issue at a customer site installing and configuring ADFS 3.0 on Server 2012 R2. With help from the Microsoft Support team we were able to resolve rather quickly. Below is the issue and the steps we followed to resolve said issue: Planning and Prerequisites Following the guidelines listed on TechNet, … Read more

No-Code Global Navigation Flyouts in SharePoint 2013

Navigation plays a key role in the design of any website, and SharePoint should be no different. It should provide users with a simple and obvious method of locating content that is relevant to the the site, regardless of where the content resides. In SharePoint, designing and maintaining an intuitive navigation structure can present a problem to site … Read more

Defense in Depth: Safeguard your Business

The security landscape has changed dramatically, particularly in the last 3 years. Today we are experiencing a revolution in cyber-threats. No longer motivated by mischief, cybercriminals today are well-funded organizations out to steal intellectual property and disrupt your business. It is imperative that businesses have access to tools and technologies that will allow them to … Read more

Deploying Office 365 ProPlus with SCCM Fails to Detect Install Complete

New Signature’s, Adin Ermie, recently post a blog on his site about a recent discovery that was made on the New Signature team. They found when attempting to deploy Office 365 ProPlus with System Center Configuration Manager, by following this TechNet article (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn708063.aspx) it doesn’t work. It fails to detect the installation has completed. To read … Read more

Be a Disaster Recovery Hero with Azure Site Recovery

All IT departments should have an fundamental goal to be their company’s Hero! They should be loooking for opportunities to make the technology gods stand out to the executive team with thoughtful solutions that could save the company thousands and thousands of dollars (hopefully). There have been significant innovation turning points in the last several … Read more

An Easier Way to Manage Azure AD Synchronization Mismatches

Directory Synchronization with Office 365 is a solution almost all enterprises take advantage of to make their journey to the cloud a slightly less bumpy one. It simplifies the admin and end user experience by ensuring a user’s groups and information are identical in the cloud as it in in your on premises Active Directory. … Read more

The Updates are Coming! The Updates are Coming!

For the past thirty years, most enterprise information technology shops have had a regular cadence for changes to the software environment they manage: updates are approved, plans are drawn up, and large “migrations” or “deployments” take place over the course of multiple months. That is now changing. This process has never been a particularly friendly … Read more

Bug Alert! How to Exterminate the Autodiscover Bug in Windows 10 and Microsoft Office

Have you upgraded to Windows 10 and noticed that your Outlook is no longer finding the proper settings to connect to your Office 365 email? Does your configuration just hang on the “Searching for mail server settings…” screen? I ran into this issue recently and discovered that there’s a known issue with Windows 10 and … Read more

Network Location Awareness Service: How It Can Ruin Your Day (and How To Fix It)

Have you ever come into the office to find that your critical line-of-business app fails to connect to your SQL server? After further investigation, you may find that your domain-joined is no longer on a “domain network” but is now on a public network. This will cause problems as a public network profile will also … Read more

Security through Omniscience: The Myth of the Panacea of Auditing

A customer recently asked a question about a third party security add-on to cover a perceived gap in the Office 365 security model. The scenario? They wanted to get a list of all the types of files that had been shared, and with whom, for the entire organization. More security is better, right? In this … Read more

No One Is Impressed with Your Phone System… So Why Are You?

In a previous life, I ran an IT group for a consulting company in NYC. For many years admittedly, as long as my phone system didn’t fail or my users weren’t complaining I really didn’t pay much attention to it. My solution was like any one of a 100 other hosted VoIP providers running Cisco’s … Read more

With Great Power…Using Azure AD Privileged Identity Management

In any organization of a reasonable size, security quickly becomes a problem. It’s not simply a matter of preventing malicious actors, but also of ensuring that regular folks (like you and me) do not trip and bring down a critical system through a simple mistake. As recently as 2013, I have seen innocuous reply-all storms … Read more

OneNote Saves the Day!

You may have been using Microsoft OneNote for some time without realizing it has a built-in backup system, or that each Notebook has its own recycle bin. In this post we’ll explore how to make use of both those features. You may also be interested in our earlier posts in this series. How does the OneNote recycle bin … Read more

How to install msi based Skype for Business from scratch

Anyone trying to install Skype for Business has or will soon realize there is no single .msi based install for it. If you already have an msi based Lync 2013 install there is an update (KB2889923 (32 bit)) that will install Skype for Business. Lync 2013 needs to have a few prerequisites installed for the … Read more

Azure RMS – You mean my assistant who has access to my emails, can read my emails?

RMS, Azure RMS, and IRM, are playing a critical role on the DLP front and are securing content inside and outside of organizations across the globe. The main purpose of these solutions are to ensure the recipient of content is the only individual who can access that content and they can only do so according to … Read more

SCOM Help, Tips and Tricks

Adin Ermie, Senior Consultant at New Signature, is our resident System Center Cloud and Data Management expert. He posted a great article on how to resolve the issue of getting SCOM to connect to OMS. Adin first encountered this issue when trying out the System Center Operations Manager 2016 Technical Preview 2. Adin recently received the TechNet Technical … Read more

Folder Level Tracking in Dynamics CRM

Tracking emails in Dynamics CRM Online is not a new feature. It’s a fairly run-of-the-mill capability in all good CRM platforms and allows insight into invaluable details of the sales conversations and historical data for a given customer. Whether that’s a glimpse into previous communications, or what deals were missed (and why), or new products that are … Read more

Where Did My Azure Backup Go?

Azure Backups are a great way to secure machine data for servers, workstations, laptops and anything running a Windows operating system. All you need to do is install an agent, connect it to Azure vault storage, identify what you want to backup, set a schedule, and you are off. It’s that easy. There begins to … Read more

Were you happy with your Experience?

“Were you happy with your Experience?” We hear it all of the time and there is good reason for it. Think about your experience in a restaurant where you were not happy with the service. Businesses today utilize phrases like “happy customers are repeat customers” or “customer satisfaction is job one”. Simply put, if you … Read more

Utilizing Reserved IP Options in Azure

Jason Cotton A reserved IP is just another term for a VIP, except it isn’t necessarily tied to
a cloud service when it is created. Originally reserved IPs had to be prior to deployment of your cloud
service. That has since changed and you can now reserve IPs before or after deployment.In this article
we will discuss the reserved IP options in Azure, converting an existing Dynamic VIP deployment to
static, and investigate a 'multi-VIP' deployment which has the default VIP plus
additional VIPs assigned to it.

Windows 10 Launches. Why Should You Care?

Okay, so Microsoft’s latest desktop operating system, Windows 10, launches tomorrow, July 29th, 2015. Why should you care? I would love to rattle off a list of the helpful features, but in fear of diluting the significance of what is direly important, I’ll instead give you the one reason that makes it critical you start … Read more

System Center Operations Manager 2016 Technical Preview 2 First Look

Adin Ermie Microsoft recently released the Technical Preview 2 of System Center Operations Manager 2016: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/dn997273.aspx

In this article New Signature’s Senior Infrastructure Consultant Adin Ermie continues his overview series on new capabilities and incremental improvements.

First Look at System Center 2016 Virtual Machine Manager Technical Preview 2

Adin Ermie Microsoft recently released the Technical Preview 2 of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2016: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/dn705350.aspx and https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=46910

New Signature’s Senior Infrastructure Consultant Adin Ermie provides an overview of new capabilities and incremental improvements.

SharePoint Content Type Creation Simplified

SharePoint 2013 is slick. No really. It’s pretty snazzy. I’ve worked with SharePoint technologies for a decade now, and when I first saw the technical preview for SharePoint 2013, I felt such relief. Virtually all of the things that annoyed me about previous versions were finally resolved (with the exception of Windows Explorer View…Grrr). From … Read more

Skype for Business Persistent Chat – Migration Lessons when there are Disabled Users

Persistent Chat is a Microsoft Skype for Business (Lync) role that lets you create topic-based discussion rooms that persist over time. These rooms allow users to communicate and collaborate with a group of people who have a common area of interest. Sharing ideas and information by posting in real time along with maintaining those messages … Read more

New Signature Migrates to a Digital Approval Process with DocuSign and Office 365

Everyone at New Signature strongly believes in the importance of using Microsoft’s platforms, products and services internally. Using the tools and technology we implement for our customers ourselves every day helps us find new and innovative approaches. This includes deploying new tools from other Microsoft partners that help New Signature make our own processes more … Read more

Predictive Analytics: Success in Healthcare

Recently, New Signature has been asked to speak at a regional conference focusing on Predictive Analytics: Success in Healthcare. When I mentioned this topic to friends and colleagues, beyond the initial curious look, the first question I’m invariably asked is, “What is that?” Generally, I answer their question with a question, “How long does it … Read more

Skype for Business Online Launches Preview of New PSTN and Meeting Services

Since the launch of Microsoft Lync 2010, Microsoft has been steadfast and committed in their journey to bring enterprise grade unified communications services to Office 365 and provide the same great feature set that we have come to know in the On-Premises world. Today, Microsoft has taken the first major step toward bringing that dream … Read more

Mobilegeddon: The Fallout

Google’s mobile algorithm update, christened “Mobilegeddon” by the internet community, has now been in effect for a little over a month and a half. While Google was nice enough to give advance warning of their mobile-friendly ranking update, it didn’t stop companies from sending their development teams into a frenzy in an attempt to convert … Read more

Secure Enterprise Mobile Apps Office 365, ADAL and Azure

As data is stored more frequently in Office 365, there is an increased need for enterprise mobile apps to access this content. The more data being stored in SharePoint Online, OneDrive For Business, and Dynamics CRM Online, the more Enterprise use computing power in the cloud. How can you secure enterprise mobile apps to access all of … Read more

Digital Door Locks: Multi-Factor for Everyone

The apocryphal idyllic town of the early twentieth century lacked a singular item across many houses: locked doors. Since most thieves could just as easily break a door or a window (or a screen) the lock didn’t provide much beyond annoyance for home owners. These days, door locks can be jimmied in a matter of … Read more

Office 365 for Exchange Professionals

With the release of “Office 365 for Exchange Professionals,” a small group of Exchange experts have come together to fill a gap in the marketplace. The book aims to help administrators and managers of Microsoft Exchange email servers as they consider, implement and finally manage a relationship between their on-premise Exchange servers and Microsoft’s cloud-based … Read more

Unpacking a Black Box: The Magic Behind Delve Experiences

If you’re one of the lucky ones to begin using Office Delve, your first question is often, “How did it know I wanted that document?” The process appears magical in the way of any advanced technology. Your second question, which may occur weeks later, is much more mundane: “Why did Delve choose that title?” The … Read more

Taking Control of your Clutter in Office 365

Last fall, Microsoft launched Clutter as a feature in Office 365 Exchange Online to help manage the large amounts of non-spam email that we receive on a daily basis. Leveraging the Office Graph functionality (built on Azure Machine learning), Clutter learns your email habits and helps to make sure that important emails stay in your … Read more

Starting to Sway: Latest Office 365 Service Prepares for Takeoff

Introducing a new service is always risky. Over the past few years we’ve seen several large scale launches of “novel” types of applications that enable “new user experiences” only to see them heat up, burn out, and crash hard. The combined weight of some of these experiments, from multiple technology providers, has led many office … Read more

Microsoft OneNote gets the message, and the meeting too!

In earlier blog posts we looked at some of the versatile ways to use the OneNote application that is part of the Microsoft Office suite. Today we will review some practical integration between OneNote and Outlook. Following are a few tips on getting the best out of the relationship between the two products. Tip One: … Read more

New Lync Server 2013 Updates and Exchange Implications

While attention is on the new release of Skype for Business at the moment, Microsoft has quietly released updates for Lync Server 2013. The update fixes a number of lingering issues along with a few fixes that could help you get ready for Skype for Business, and an update to Lync Web App to Support Chrome on OSX. You … Read more

Are You Ready for Google's Mobile Update?

On April 21, 2015, Google will release a mobile-focused update to its search algorithm. You can read the official announcement on The Google Webmaster Blog. While the announcement has sparked much speculation, there are a few things to keep in mind: With this update Google is “expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal.” … Read more

Bigger Isn't Better: Customer Service Democratization

Bad customer service, it seems, is endemic. We’ve all experienced it and often chosen different paths because of it. One of the bigger frustrations for customers comes when they work with a large organization — one that has the resources and the executive sponsorship to ensure a good experience, and yet doesn’t. Earlier this week … Read more

Changing times with OneDrive for Business

If you have used the Version History option in OneDrive to review or restore previous versions of a file, you may have noticed that the times shown use PST. If you are not in the PST time zone then you probably wish to change this. Unfortunately it is not possible for your IT department to set … Read more

Installing Windows RT Applications from HockeyApp

A workflow detailing the process of installing Windows RT Applications from HockeyApp onto a local device (PC/Tablet) using Powershell scripts. HockeyApp: What and Why? HockeyApp is a web-based platform that allows developers to distribute beta versions of applications on iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac OS. The platform also allows for collection of live crash reports, user … Read more

Enhance Your Security Stance

Businesses require tools and technologies to provide effective management, security, and compliance capabilities across a multitude of devices while providing the highest levels of security and user satisfaction. Enterprise Mobility can help organizations meet their regulatory compliance requirements by providing data protection at the device level, at the app level, and at the data level. … Read more

Office 365 Services Access Based on Location and MFA

As more and more businesses realize the value of offloading key messaging technologies to Microsoft Office 365 cloud services, the complexity in cloud migration deployments tends to increase as well. I wanted to share an interesting scenario with those of you who are currently looking to move to Office 365 but are unsure of the … Read more

Streaming large CSVs with ActiveAdmin 0.6 and Heroku

Suppose you have a Ruby on Rails website with ActiveAdmin, hosted on Heroku. The site has hundreds of thousands of records, and you want to download them all as a CSV. You setup a CSV definition in ActiveAdmin, but there’s so much data that it takes longer than 30 seconds to generate the CSV and … Read more

How to Get Started with Office Delve

Have you ever felt like there should be an easier way to find documents that are relevant to your job? You perform a search, peruse the local file share or maybe even pick up the phone to ask a colleague where to find it. Chances are you end up finding what you’re looking for, but … Read more

Distributed Cache Errors in SharePoint 2013

While working on a recent project to determine why a client’s SharePoint 2013 application was performing so poorly, we came across an interesting bug with the Distributed Cache, ultimately caused by AppFabric. AppFabric is used to cache a lot of different information in a SharePoint 2013 installation, but the issue we are looking at today … Read more

How to Troubleshoot Office 365 OWA Integration with Lync On-Premise

One of the neat features of Office 365 is the ability to use instant messaging (IM) capabilities within the Exchange Online Office Web App (OWA). Customers can leverage their existing Lync on-premise deployment to provide this functionality. To integrate on-premise Lync Server with Exchange Online, administrators must first configured a Shared SIP Address space. Next … Read more

How to Manage Cross Platform Mobile Resources and Assets

Managing mobile resources and assets for a cross platform enterprise solution can be tricky. Read more to find out our recommendations for tackling this problem. Use Shared Portable Class Library for Resources For a MvvmCross project like the one we developed for Green Shield Canada, mobile resources are managed separately in each platform. For Windows and Windows … Read more

Real World Scenarios for Using Azure Active Directory for Authentication

A few months ago I was approached to investigate using Azure Active Directory for accessing Cloud-based applications. The original ask didn’t specify what applications, or include any guidance as to how to enable this functionality, so it was a bit of a loaded task. Luckily it was much easier than I originally thought. To start … Read more

Lync Online Policy Quick Reference

In Lync online, the web management tools make it very easy for you to update the options for a user to adjust items such as allowing audio and video, allowing recording or controlling content sharing. In one off settings, updating these items via the web page is very simple as it is just a drop … Read more

Office 365 Message Migration Size Limit Increased

At New Signature, we have been involved with Office 365 and Exchange Online planning and migrations of all sizes, from the 2 person small business to the largest enterprise shops. One of the items that has always come up during those engagements was the fact that there was no way to migrate email messages that … Read more

Data Security with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

It seems like a new story pops up every week about sensitive data being compromised in the workplace. So much so that there are various websites one can visit to see if they have been breached. Leaked passwords and emails, hacked documents (see Sony, Target, etc.). As business integrates with the digital world, more and more bad … Read more

Resolving 'Unsupported Cluster Configuration' in Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2

System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) is a great tool for managing virtual machines once you have more than 2 or 3 hosts. It exposes a lot of tools and resources that are hidden or not available when managing machines at the base Hyper-V level. However, it may require you to rethink some of the ways you … Read more

Solving the iOS Workflow "Gotcha"

If you’re having difficulty running tasks on iOS, here’s a solution that will stop your system from hanging up. The trouble with iOS… You may be having trouble implementing workflows on your iOS-based enterprise app built with something like MVVMCross. For example, when trying to log out, the iOS workflow might go something like this: … Read more

iDRAC authentication issues on Dell servers

Some servers incorporate the functionality to remotely control their power even when they are shut down within the operating system. Such a method of access is often referred to as “out of band” or OOB. The OOB card on a Dell server is called an iDRAC, and in this post we will cover how … Read more

5 Cross Platform To Do's for Multilingual Apps

If your app needs to support multiple languages, make sure you take the following cross platform behaviour into account when you’re setting expectations with your clients: 1. Design the user experience according to native platform behaviour Windows phone requires restarting the device for the language to take into effect. Currently it has a defect where … Read more

Card Sorting: Techniques, Pros, and Cons

Card sorting is a low-tech method designed to assist in evaluating the information architecture of a site. During card sorting sessions, participants are generally instructed to organize topics into categories that make sense to them. Card sorting can be conducted and a variety of ways that could include note cards, pieces of paper, or more … Read more

Microtagging with Drupal and Schema.org

Out of the box, Drupal 7 and 8 provide support for microtagging using RDF. What does this mean, why should you use it, and how can you customize it to model the objects on your site? … Read more

Leveraging Azure Traffic Manager for Maintenance Pages

Have you ever wanted to have a maintenance page for a website or system running in Azure, which gets ‘activated’ automatically when your site is down? We set out to accomplish this task for one of our clients. Background One of our clients is running a website built on SharePoint 2013 in Azure. The topology … Read more

Enabling eDiscovery in Office 365

If you want to carry out electronic discovery of data, known as eDiscovery, in your Office 365 environment, you will need to carry out a series of steps to enable it, since it’s not enabled by default. Following is an outline of the five steps needed to begin enabling eDiscovery in Office 365; further details can … Read more

OneNote on the move

This post continues our series on Microsoft OneNote by looking at its use on the iPad. Part of the Microsoft Office suite of applications, OneNote enables you to make flexible, multi-media notes for meetings, projects and study, for example. A version of the OneNote application is available free from the iPad App store. To use … Read more

How to Fully Patch SharePoint 2013 with SP1 and the latest updates

SharePoint 2013 has now been in the wild for two years, and with that amount of time comes a LOT of updates to it. A common question I’m asked is “How do I get to the latest version of SharePoint” for clients or projects that are setting up a brand new SharePoint Farm and want … Read more

Office Sway: More Than PowerPoint for Touch

Microsoft released the preview iteration of it’s new Office Sway product, and we’ve had a few days to play around with it. The product itself is not difficult to use, but we’re still working out exactly how to build complex artifacts with it. The premise seems to focus around making ideas and content more easily exploratory … Read more

Hey, MEC 6.1, Where is My Contoso Intranet?

The Microsoft Experience Center (MEC) is an immersive experience designed to show sales, marketing, operations, and other productivity workers how Office 365 products such as Lync, SharePoint, Dynamics CRM, and Yammer work together to create a seamless collaborative working environment. They are also a great way to demo these environments with robust sample data and example … Read more

Shared computer activation of Microsoft Office on a remote desktop server

The Office deployment tool is designed to give network administrators additional options when deploying versions of Microsoft Office. In this post we will look at using the Office deployment tool on a remote desktop server to deploy Office 365 applications (e.g. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) for use by multiple users. This approach is called “shared … Read more

4 ways migration helps to improve data usage scenarios

Sometimes there’s just no saving current operating systems or procedures. In these instances, companies need to be willing, aware and ready to move their assets to more appropriate environments. Migration policies and procedures can help increase the effectiveness of these transitions, thereby making corporate infrastructure more efficient and accessible while utilizing a means of movement … Read more

Defining Email Aliases with Office 365

Today’s blog focuses on how you can define email aliases if you have users in an on-premise Active Directory (AD) synchronized with Azure AD and Office 365. An alias email address is a secondary address that is attached to a mailbox so that email sent to that alias address is delivered to the mailbox. For … Read more

Hybrid cloud computing increasing enterprise flexibility

The presence of cloud computing assets in the enterprise environment ensures that organizations are able to provide links to critical infrastructure and generate lines of communication to integral members of target audiences. Such opportunities make cloud computing an ideal option for generating return on investment while also providing personal interest in security, safety and user … Read more

EMS: The Bodyguard of Mobile Device Management

Microsoft’s Enterprise Mobility Suite can be a great tool for Mobile Device Management (MDM) in a medium or large organization. MDM is a solution to an emerging trend of employees using their own devices, such as tablets and phones, to access work data. This trend is referred to as BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device, … Read more

Check if Site Exists with SharePoint Designer Workflow

One of the most common requests received by a SharePoint admin or content owner is to create a new site for a staff member. Automating this process has been covered in detail already, and others have extended the solution to accommodate custom site templates. In the process of implementing this solution however, I found that … Read more

Creating a SharePoint Server Farm in Azure

Since WPC, the world has been abuzz with some new functionality introduced into Azure – the ability to create a SharePoint farm from scratch with the click of a button. It sounds great, but there’s a lot you need to know. So let’s dive in! Overview of SharePoint Server Farms in Azure To start … Read more

Federation with ADFS 3.0 and SNI Support

When assisting our customers in migrating to online services such as Office 365, deploying Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) is often a topic of conversation as an option to maintain a single sign-on experience. Deploying AD FS without a proper environment assessment and planning may have you in a bit of trouble. AD FS … Read more

Azure Rights Management with Office 365

The addition of Azure Rights Management features to the Office 365 service makes accessible something that was previously complex. With Rights Management Services you can protect your documents and decide, and enforce, what others can do with them, even after they have left your possession. Rights Management Service, or RMS, works with Microsoft Office documents … Read more

Back Button Considerations in Cross Platform Mobile App Design

A common miss in requirements is the back button. How you design this button has tremendous impact on how users navigate within your mobile app. It’s one of those things that seems intuitive and easy to grasp until you dig into it and find out that none of the platforms you’re targeting agree on a … Read more

Get Involved and Join a W3C Working Group

A few years ago, an initiative called Move the Web Forward was launched to help developers and technical folks get involved with creating standards for web technologies. The project links to various methods and projects to give back to the web community. One of those suggested projects involves W3C Working Groups. The groups are made … Read more

Information Management with Microsoft OneNote

This post is the first in a series of articles covering useful and new features within Microsoft’s OneNote application. OneNote comes as part of the Microsoft Office suite, and is sometimes overlooked by people looking to use better-known software in the suite such as Word or Outlook. However, OneNote is a powerful application in its … Read more

Six Critical Requirements Gathering Considerations

This summer, I presented several workshops on requirements gathering and I kept finding myself focusing on six critical considerations. As it turns out, asking the right questions to the right people to get the right information you need to design your technology solution turns out to be much more challenging than many organizations expect. However, … Read more

Modern Apps At the Threshold

With any new version of Windows, rumors tend to leak well in advance of the software bits being available for preview. Over the past few months the next version of Windows (codename: Threshold) have started to firm up and what has become clear is a big focus on Modern Apps. As we discussed earlier, Modern Apps are … Read more

Wireless network troubleshooting with Wifi Explorer

When you need to troubleshoot issues with wireless networks, Wifi Explorer is a great tool to use. Below is a screen shot that shows some of the functionality of the product. I’ll be referring to the details in that screen shot for the examples in this blog post. The top part of the picture shows … Read more

How to Use Symbols in Your Balsamiq Wireframes

Creating symbols in Balsamiq allows you to make the most out of your custom components. Symbols are maintained in one central location, ensuring that all wireframes that reference them are always up-to-date. Learn how to leverage this tool in your Balsamiq wireframes by following these simple steps. Symbols are to Balsamiq what CSS is to … Read more

Microsoft Social Listening: The Optimal Business Tool for Social Media Monitoring

Can you hear that? Off in the distance, someone is talking about you. And if your company has yet to invest in social media monitoring, then you’re likely missing out on the conversation. The growing realm of social media has transferred “word on the street” to “word on the web”. Companies can hear what the world … Read more

Responsive Email Templates in Outlook: Tips and Pitfalls

Creating HTML email templates can seem like a lesson in navigating minefields, due in part to the many various email clients and systems that process emails. In this article, I’ll focus on tips for creating responsive email templates in Microsoft Outlook. How Outlook Works If your newsletter subscribers or clients are in an office setting … Read more

Communicating Information vs Action Using Yammer!

We’ve all been there before: a customer or colleague has sent an email a few hours ago and runs into you in the hall, asking “Did you get my email?” Of course, this question is somewhat absurd: the email was in all likelihood delivered within seconds and in most cases one has either simply not read … Read more

Setting up OAuth for SharePoint 2013 Using Authentication Servers (ACS)

When trying to access SharePoint content with OAuth you need to have an Authentication Server. With SP2013, this Authentication Server can only be set up in the cloud in Azure. This Authentication Server must also be Microsoft’s implementation of the authentication server called AZURE ACCESS CONTROL SERVICE (ACS). Before I dive into details though, here … Read more

Tracking Down IP Addresses With Help From Solar Winds

I recommend a handy free tool from Solar Winds called “IP address tracker” that allows you to easily build a database of the IP addresses in use on a network. Every device on a modern network will likely have an IP address, which is a number that identifies and locates it on the network. If … Read more

Manually Installing the Azure Guest Agent on an Existing VM (Inside an Availability Set)

Last week I wrote a post on how to manually install the Azure Guest Agent on an Existing VM, but it appears that this only works if the VM is not in an Availability Set. Microsoft posted a workaround for this, but it looks like a few things don’t work 100% with their script. I’ll … Read more

Email Journaling in Office 365

This is the fourth in a series of posts regarding the retention, protection, deletion and auditing of email data in Office 365. In this post we will look at journaling in Exchange Online under Office 365. The configuration of Journal rules can be made under the Compliance Management area within the Exchange admin center in Office 365. Journaling is the … Read more

Manually Installing the Azure Guest Agent on Existing Virtual Machines

Back in February, Microsoft released a VM Agent for Azure Virtual Machines. The most basic tool this enabled, was adding BG Info to the background on all your VMs, but there’s more advanced functionality available for it today (such as installing antivirus), and promises of even more greatness to come in the future. The only … Read more

Shared Computer Activation Support Coming to Office 365 ProPlus

Office 365 ProPlus is the version of Office that comes with Office 365 Enterprise E3 and E4 plans. Office 365 ProPlus is a full version of Office and includes Access, Excel, InfoPath, Lync, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, and Word. When you deploy Office 365 ProPlus, it’s installed on the user’s local computer using the same … Read more

Call Quality Methodology for Lync Server

Microsoft Lync is an enterprise unified communications platform on which users can make a phone call, keep track of their contacts’ availability (aka presence), send an instant message, and start or join an audio, video, or web conference. Call Quality Methodology (CQM) was introduced by Microsoft in 2014 to provide a new troubleshooting and service … Read more

Office 365 and the Proxy Server

When planning to deploy Office 365 it is very important to review your existing network configuration, including your proxy server, to ensure optimal configuration. Very often you will need to make changes to network configuration, and as a subset of this proxy server configuration, in order to deliver the best experience to your company’s end … Read more

Building Clouds with Windows Azure Pack

The Windows Azure Pack is a collection of Microsoft Azure technologies available to Microsoft customers at no additional cost. It runs on top of Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2 and, through the use of the Windows Azure technologies, enables you to offer a rich, self-service, multi-tenant cloud, consistent with the public … Read more

Going Behind the Scenes with Microsoft on Data Protection in Office 365

Microsoft is constantly sharing rich content on Office 365 and three recent posts really caught my attention because they use short format video to provide really great insight into a topic that many of my customers are interested in: data protection in Office 365. Microsoft has invested $15 billion to build its massive cloud infrastructure … Read more

Responsive Design Isn’t a Response for Enterprises

Responsive design has been touted as the ideal solution for delivering web content to mobile devices. While this may be the case for simple content like web pages, blogs or wikis, for most enterprise applications involving robust information management tools, attempting to implement responsive design can create more problems than it solves. … Read more

Azure Active Directory Password Synchronization as a Temporary Backup for Active Directory Federation Services

New Signature has helped hundreds of companies leverage Microsoft cloud services such as Office 365, Dynamics CRM Online, and Windows Intune and many of them have opted to leverage highly-available Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) to provide their end-users with a Single Sign-On experience and in some cases to meet specific business or security requirements. … Read more

Data Driven Intelligence with Azure Machine Learning

Microsoft has released Azure Machine Learning and you can sign up today to be notified when it is available to the public to try. As CEO of New Signature, I am always asking my finance, sales and operations teams to come up with predictive intelligence based on New Signature’s large stores of historical data. But … Read more

Site Recovery to Azure – Now You Can Replicate VMs Directly to Azure

Microsoft has introduced a new capability in preview as part of Azure Site Recovery that allows you to replicate virtual machines from your primary site directly to Azure, instead of your own secondary site. In the event of an outage at the primary site, the service orchestrates the recovery of virtual machines in Azure. It … Read more

Microsoft Improves Visibility and Access to Office 365 Service Updates with Public Roadmap and First Release

Jake Zborowski, Microsoft group product manager for Office 365, wrote a great blog post last week on the launch of the Office 365 for business public roadmap. As Jake writes, “The Office 365 for business public roadmap provides you with a way to learn more about upcoming updates before the change comes to your service. … Read more

Creating Office 365 Random Passwords

If you aren’t using a password synchronization tool with Office 365, such as Windows Azure Directory Sync with Password Sync, Office 365 will randomly generate temporary passwords. This works out fine if the person using the mailbox is setting up their own account in Outlook and on mobile devices. Since ForceChangePassword attribute defaults to true, they are … Read more

Yammer Single Sign-On – Not What You Would Expect!

About six months ago I was tasked with implementing Single Sign-On for Yammer, leveraging Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) as the Token Provider. The setup of it was fairly straight forward, following the instructions provided on the Yammer Success Center.Of course, after we implemented SSO with Yammer, there were a few gotchas that I’ll highlight … Read more

Building Multi-Platform SharePoint Solutions

In a previous post we discussed the Future of Portals. Now here is how we build them to support this vision of the future. In my opinion the reason why responsive design has been so popular and continues to be the first option for many people, is that it is a single application to maintain. … Read more

Retention Policies and Scheduled Deletion

This is the third in a series of posts regarding the retention, protection, deletion and auditing of email data in Office 365. In this post we will look a retention tags, retention policies and how they are used in Messaging Records Management (MRM). Why use Messaging Records Management (MRM)? Messaging Records Management is normally used to … Read more

Setting up a Hosted Tenant Environment on SharePoint 2013 with Partitioned Service Applications

When setting up site collections in SharePoint 2013 (and SharePoint 2010) you can set up a ‘hosted’ / ‘tenant’ environment – which essentially means you create your own version of Office365/SharePoint Online but on your own servers in-house. This means that you can partition your SharePoint Web Applications and give your users the capability to … Read more

Another account from your organization is already signed in on this computer

When opening a document using a Microsoft office application, e.g. PowerPoint, that is licensed through an Office 365 subscription, you may be prompted to re-authenticate with your email address and password. This is normal and is part of the way the service ensures the software is licensed and used appropriately. However if you are using … Read more

How to Tweet from SharePoint

Sounds easy enough, but it turned out to be a little more challenging than I had originally anticipated. Twitter recently updated their API and now requires authentication on every request, using OAuth. It’s actually fairly simple once you know what it’s expecting, so I thought I’d share. The following steps should help you Tweet from … Read more

Modern Front End Development for .NET with AngularJS

While the Razor syntax provided in the View layer for .NET apps is very powerful, it isn’t always as flexible as you need, and won’t always provide you with friendly markup on the front end. At the same time, there may be instances where you’d like to decouple your front end from the back end, … Read more

Auditing email data and systems in Office 365

Office 365 contains several built in reports you can run to audit different aspects of the security of your Office 365 service. Below is a list of the key reports related to email and what they can tell you. The reports can be found under the Auditing section of the Compliance Management area within the … Read more

Review of "Microinteractions: Designing with Details"

Dan Saffer published “Microinteractions: Designing with Details” in 2013. Below I pull quotes and excerpts from the book, and summarize key concepts to give you a quick insight into what microinteractions are and why you should learn more about them. If you find the concepts engaging, I highly recommend that you purchase “Microinteractions: Designing with Details” … Read more

Lynconomics: The Economic Impact of Unified Communications

On April 10, 2014, New Signature’s Chief Economist, Luis Morinigo, presented, Lynconomics: The Economic Impact of Unified Communications, at the Microsoft Federal Lync Event in Reston, Va. The presentation was focused on describing the benefits and impact of integrating unified communication capabilities into an organization. The following is an overview of the presentation followed by a … Read more

Sharing WordPress Variable Content with the Front End

Many times when working on WordPress sites, you’ll find yourself wanting to pass variables entered into the WordPress admin system to the front end for use in Javascript. There are many reasons you might want to accomplish this task. For example, you may have a plugin where a user enters parameters like speed, duration, and … Read more

SharePoint Branding with Focus on Accessibility

Accessibility is one of the things that we try to focus on for all of our clients in SharePoint branding engagements for a public facing website. One of the metrics that we track against is to validate the SharePoint website against W3C Markup Validation Service. Last month Steve and I collaborated on Accessibility Matters: Access for … Read more

Architecture of SharePoint 2013 Farms: Search Components and Tier Performance

SharePoint 2013 on-premise is a different beast from SharePoint 2010. There are a lot of new features that you need to account for in terms of infrastructure, deployment, and performance. I was at the SharePoint Conference 2014 in Las Vegas and attended an extremely useful session on key architectural decisions to follow when designing your … Read more

Building Office 365-Ready SharePoint 2013 On-Premises Applications

I just came back from the SharePoint Conference 2014 in Las Vegas, and as you might have heard the conference might as well have been called the Office 365 / SharePoint Online Conference. I say that in jest of course, but the key takeaway for developers was: on-premises will still exist, but cloud is a … Read more

4 Ways to Target Content in SharePoint

There are many reasons why you may want to target content in SharePoint. Here I will explain 4 ways of implementing content targeting and when you would want to use them. 1. SPSecurityTrimmedControl SharePoint 2007 introduced a wonderful web control called SPSecurityTrimmedControl that allows you to define sections of content based on user permission, authentication, … Read more

Warning! SharePoint 2013 SP1 Breaks Search and Edit Page Properties

Do not follow blind faith when it comes to SharePoint Server 2013’s cumulative updates. Although the existing software has its fair share of issues, the cumulative updates are not the ultimate answer to your prayers. … Read more

Anonymous Users Getting 401 Unauthorized for OOTB Web Parts in SharePoint 2013

We have a client on SharePoint 2013 with an external facing website (i.e. anonymous users) that uses a lot of OOTB web parts. One of these is the Pages web part (with custom styling of course): However, for some reason, when we press the Next button on this web part we get a 401 Unauthorized … Read more

SharePoint Apps

What are SharePoint Apps? How do they work? Will they change everything, again!? Microsoft is introducing the concept of Apps in Office 2013. What does this mean? Here’s my understanding right now… First, here’s a friendly video that introduces you to the world of Apps. Developers that have been writing scripts for Excel can now … Read more

Our Load Testing Process

This question gets asked on many of our projects, so I thought I would write down some key information about how we conduct load testing at imason. Our load testing process consists of 4 steps, plus 1 optional step: Plan the tests Set up the environment Run the tests Collect the data and conclude / … Read more

Windows Server 2012 R2 VPort Usage Collection Errors

We recently upgraded most of our hosts to Windows Server 2012 R2, to take advantage of some of the latest Hyper-V updates and to get current on our OS levels. Shortly after migrating some Virtual Machines to the new hosts, we began to see errors getting reported in the event viewer every 30 minutes, event … Read more

The Project Closure Process and Why It's Important

Alright! UAT is over and your client just launched their shiny new site! Before you raise a glass and celebrate, have you followed due process to close out the project? Project closure is often ignored at the end of an engagement. Things are chaotic leading up to a Go Live, and that is usually followed … Read more

SharePoint FAST Error: Unable to Resolve Content Distributor

Have you seen this error before: “Failed to initialize session with document engine: Unable to resolve Content distributor”? This will appear on your SharePoint 2010 Front End server in the event viewer when you run crawls. Symptoms: Your crawls will not succeed (everything will be logged as an error) Every 10 minutes the Event Viewer will … Read more

Retrieve All SharePoint Document URLs

Have you ever wanted to retrieve all SharePoint Document URLs including pages, documents, images? I wrote a script that takes a very short amount of time to run and generates an inventory of SharePoint document URLs: … Read more

Positive Objectification: Reviewing C# 5.0 Pocket Reference

For those of us utilizing Microsoft technologies over the past five years, there has been a large shift away from system administration relying upon knowledge of graphical user interfaces, and towards repeatable, easily automated commands using PowerShell. Similarly, on the device front, the explosion of small devices using the open-source .net micro framework has expanded … Read more

Thoughts on Cloud Adoption (Repost)

I started this blog post sometime during this summer and really never got around to finishing
it and posting it. Ive decided today to post what Ive got, as I think its enough to start the
conversation. Of course this could be a book, but I just want to start you thinking.

Frankly theres so much more to write, but what follows is at least my basic thoughts
around how youll see the adoption of cloud services over the next little while. Of course Im partial,
but I think IaaS is the most interesting. Give a read, and then post a comment. Id love to hear your
thoughts.

Styling SharePoint 2010 – Referencing Your Custom CSS

As I delve deeper into styling SharePoint 2010 sites, I am discovering a few quirks here and there. Normally as each new challenge arises and I find a fix for it I just move on, rarely documenting what I did to fix the problem. … Read more

Configuring Enterprise Library 4.0 for Exception handling and Logging

A few weeks back, I was trying to configure Enterprise Library 4.0 for Exception handling and Logging exception into event log but was not able to find any help on the internet so it took me long time to do all the configurations for handling and logging exceptions using Enterprise Library 4.0. Follow the following steps to configure … Read more

Microsoft Cloud Computing: “We’re All In”

Several raised eyebrows went up in our company when in March 2010, Steve Ballmer proclaimed “For the cloud, we’re all in”. Our company makes a living on advising enterprises when technology is ready to adopt, and in March 2010, we were skeptical. Since then we’ve seen enhancements to Office 365, Windows Server, System Center and most recently Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering VMs in the cloud as well as the ability to connect your Azure cloud back to on premises. Over the past year we’ve deployed a few private cloud solutions for our customers as well as migrated thousands of mailboxes to Office 365. … Read more

Desktop and Datacenter Management and Security Best Practices

CMS Consulting Inc. is putting together a comprehensive presentation and demonstration on Microsoft's System Center 2012 stack of technologies at the upcoming Security Education Conference held on Monday, October 7. This is a high value, half day presentation held by our Solutions Architect – Rodney Buike on the latest release of SCCM, SCOM, SCVMM, Orchestrator, and more. … Read more

SecTor: Canada's IT Security Education Conference

SecTor is Canada's premier IT Security Education Conference. An annual event where IT professionals from throughout Canada can learn from and network with the world's most innovative, intellectual, exciting and entertaining security professionals.

SecTor is IT Security Training at its best – plan to join us October 8-9, 2013 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. With speakers such as founder and President of National Security Corporation G. Mark Hardy and multiple award winning CTO, researcher and author Gene Kim, you know this conference will deliver the latest research, attacks and defence content that you're looking for.

Use discount code ‘CMS-2013’ and save 10% off registration! Visit SecTor today.

Can’t attend the full conference, join us in the expo hall for free by registering with code “CMS-expo2013.”

Implementing Microsoft Service Manager: 7 “Basic Laws” for IT Pros

Jose Fehse For many of you, being a very technical focused professional has helped in designing and deploying some very complex projects. If you’re like me, you love to get your hands greasy with the guts of the beast but would prefer skipping the political, sales and budgetary discussions. … Read more

Top Five Tips for Daily System Center Orchestrator Best Practices

This year’s Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) in Las Vegas was once again jam packed with sessions ranging in technical level. It’s always great to see what’s new and catch up with others from around the world. There was so much going on, we here at CMS Consulting decided to condense the highlights we saw into a one-day event in Toronto.

Reclaiming space from the winsxs folder to alleviate disk space issues in Server 2008

As a server administrator you have probably found yourself troubleshooting issues with shortage of disk space on Microsoft Windows Server 2008. Servers that were built years ago may now be filling up and the system drive critically short on space. Ideally you want to have at least 10% free space on the drive where Windows … Read more

Exam Ref 70-417, J.C. Mackin, Microsoft Press

Exam Ref 70-417 is written for a very specific audience that is already experienced with Windows Server 2008 or 2008R2, but is looking to learn about the new features introduced in Windows Server 2012. With that in mind, J.C. Mackin has done an excellent job at keeping this book tightly focused only on the new … Read more

Digital Security in a Networked World

In this post we are going to review the book “Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World ” by Bruce Schneier. While the book is now over ten years old, some of the insights on security issues are timeless. Bruce’s introduction starts with a litany of computer security incidents and weaknesses in March … Read more

Introducing Windows Server 2012

The Microsoft Windows Server platform has come a long way in the past 12 years. What was once a platform that focused solely on easy to manage service delivery using the economical x86 architecture has become the standard for directory services, application delivery platforms, and virtualization infrastructure for hundreds of markets and industries worldwide. Microsoft’s … Read more

DevOps and PaaS

Mike Loukides takes on a hot topic in his latest treaty, What is DevOps? For those unfamiliar to the debate, several IT professionals have weighed in on this meaty subject, with a starting salvo from Netflix’s Adrian Cockcroft followed by a counterpoint from Etsy’s John Allspaw. The crux of the debate revolves around the definition of DevOps. For those … Read more

Architecting Mobile Solutions

In his latest book, Dino Esposito walks through the myriad of mobile design decisions for business, appropriately titled Architecting Mobile Solutions for the Enterprise. The work starts from a high-level, breaking through many of the current myths that surround mobile device development including which platforms to build on (hint: it depends on your user base and … Read more

CSS Media Queries and Flexible Embeddable Widgets

While CSS3’s media queries are typically used in service of responsive design, we’ve identified another use for them: embeddable widgets. It’s not uncommon for an organization to want to offer to its customers/supporters something they can quickly post onto their own websites, such as a poll or artwork announcing an upcoming event or current campaign/sale. … Read more

Windows Internals, 6th Edition Part 1

Much like a blockbuster movie, the Windows Internals team decided to split their latest tome, Windows Internals 6th Edition (WI6), covering Windows 7 into two chunks to ensure it arrived before Windows 8 was released. The first part of the series arrived earlier this month, and is a comprehensive look at the inside of the Windows platform. … Read more

Responsive Design Works for Email, Too!

In the past, accommodating different email systems has largely consisted of simply offering an HTML formatted message, and a “plain text” version of the message for those who can’t (or won’t) receive HTML emails. But unlike those in the past, today’s mobile phones do actually support HTML-formatted messages. While best practices for email template design … Read more

Privacy and Big Data

As the internet and mobile technologies have grown more prevalent, concerns about privacy and how data is collected and used have come to the forefront. Here at New Signature, we’re always looking to help our clients educate themselves about the risks and opportunities of sharing data in this increasingly connected world. In “Privacy and … Read more

Book Review: Practical Packet Analysis, 2nd Edition — Using Wireshark to Solve Real-World Network Problems

The 2nd edition of “Practical Packet Analysis” by Chris Sanders provides a thorough introduction to the subject of reviewing and protecting traffic on your network. It shows how to analyze your own network traffic and in the process demonstrates how a malicious attacker might try to snoop on your network, thus enabling you to proactively … Read more

Book Review: Windows Sysinternals Administrator’s Reference

When it comes to all things Microsoft, no one is held in greater esteem (sorry, Bill G!) than Mark Russinovich. As the founder of Sysinternals (later acquired by Microsoft itself) he poked more deeply into the Windows kernel than any non-Microsoft employee, exposing hidden API hooks and developing powerful tools to help both system administrators … Read more

Hiding the SharePoint 2010 Ribbon Based on Permissions

Have you ever noticed how owners can click site actions in the SharePoint 2010 ribbon, but readers see the ribbon too and there is no Site Actions for them to click. In some cases there is nothing else going on up there for Readers. It is wasted real estate! Owner: Reader: The Reader can use all the … Read more

Book Review: 21 Recipes for Mining Twitter

“21 Recipes for Mining Twitter” by Matthew A. Russell is written for a technical audience and specifically programmers that use or are comfortable with the Python programming language. The bulk of the book is a collection of Python code samples (a.k.a., recipes), and suggested tools, that will help you develop the code that you need … Read more

Book Review: Cassandra the Definitive Guide

Chances are either you, one of your friends, or possibly a co-worker have created–or worked with a database–over the past decade. Most likely, it was a relational database, such as Microsoft Access, SQL Server, Oracle or mySQL. For many years, relational databases have been the foundation for applications as diverse as home finance and space … Read more

"401 unauthorized access" in a Browser

It all started out as a problem I got in a load-balanced environment. However, this error can occur whenever you try to browse to a server’s URL from that same server, but using a different host header.In my case, I wrote server-side code that browsed to my server through the load balancer URL, instead of the … Read more

Book Review: Deploying Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010

Forefront Threat Management gateway has come a long way since the days of “Proxy Server 2.0”. With the recent crop of “Next Generation Firewalls” performing deep packet inspection on the application level, Microsoft needed to bolster their argument that a software-based firewall could perform at the level of their hardware-based competitors. In “Deploying Microsoft Forefront … Read more

Book Review: "The Myths of Innovation"

In “The Myths of Innovation,” author Scott Berkun attempts to debunk the myths and stories surrounding how innovation happens, and presents his findings in a funny, historical and authoritative manner. The book initially sets out to define what innovation is, and how the term “innovation” has become one of the most overused terms in the … Read more

Book Review: "Windows PowerShell Cookbook"

As PowerShell has grown up, the set of canonical texts required to support it has expanded as well. O’Reilly’s “Windows PowerShell Cookbook” is one of those books. Now in the second edition, WPC retains all the utility of the original book but adds new features and topics. The original version’s clean, easy-to-understand syntax and examples … Read more

Book Review: "Being Geek: The Software Developer's Career Handbook"

“Being Geek” covers the career path of a software developer and the goals therein. Along the path are anecdotes of failures, disasters and the occasional bright spot. The writing style is addictive, and Rands clearly lays out the perils in transitioning from someone in the front lines of operations to a manager. It’s clear that … Read more

Beginner’s Guide to Developing on Windows Phone 7

The official release date for Windows Phone 7 is October 11th (in the US). Word around the internet is that it will be released in Canada around the end of October / beginning of November. LG, Samsung, HTC, and Dell have all developed handsets that will be available in Canada. One of the services we offer at imason is … Read more

Book Review: “Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 Plain & Simple”

“Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 Plain & Simple“, by Nancy Muir, is a step-by-step walk-through training guide to the latest version of Microsoft’s presentation creation software. Nancy does an excellent job setting your expectations for the book. She starts off on the right foot with an introduction as her first chapter, where she sets the roadmap for … Read more

Book Review: "Microsoft Outlook 2010 Plain & Simple"

“Microsoft Outlook 2010 Plain & Simple,” written by Jim Boyce, provides a comprehensive, colorful, and easy-to-follow guide to Outlook. The majority of tasks that this book covers could easily be figured out with a bit of trial-and-error or a quick Google search, but this book provides an easy alternative that less tech-savvy people might find … Read more

Book Review: "Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Best Practices"

“Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Best Practices” is a guide ‘by Exchange geeks for Exchange geeks’. The author worked with the Exchange team when writing this book and drew on the experience of Exchange MVP’s (Most Valuable Professionals). It’s very clear from the beginning that the authors are passionate about the topic and have a firm … Read more

Adobe PDF iFilter not working after installing June 2010 Cumulative Update for SharePoint

Recently I installed the June 2010 CU for WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 on one of our farms and noticed that after the installation, the Adobe PDF iFilter stopped working; more specifically, it wouldn’t crawl the content within the PDF documents. Quick look in the crawl log shows the following: Upon further analysis I decided … Read more

Book Review: "Programming Windows Azure"

From the first few pages of “Programming Windows Azure” it’s easy to tell that the author has a great grasp of both the historical parallels to today’s interest in “Cloud Computing” as well as a good idea for where it’s going. Sriram Krishnan has a great conversational style, and the book is a tribute to … Read more

Book Review: "Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Administrator’s Pocket Consultant"

Stanek has done it again: “Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Administrator’s Pocket Consultant” is a book all Exchange administrators should have on their shelf, or dogeared on their desk. William Stanek, one of the more prolific tech writers today, adopts a professional tone early in the book, which is appropriate. This is a reference work first … Read more

Book Review: "Windows 7 Annoyances"

Let me preface this review with a caveat: “Windows 7 Annoyances“, thanks to author David A. Karp, is a great book that every single IT professional supporting desktop operating systems should read. Several chapters bridge the gap between highly technical works such as Windows Internals and the lighter marketing communications that emerges from Redmond’s own … Read more

Book Review: "Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 Resource Kit"

In the Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0 Resource Kit, authors Mike Volardsky, Olga Londer, Bret Hill, Bernard Cheah, Steve Schofield, Carlos Aguilar Mares, Kurt Meyer and the Microsoft IIS Team all contribute. The result is mixed. IIS 7 is a completely different product than its predecessor, IIS 6, and the book covers the improvements in … Read more

Book Review: "Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) Administrator's Companion"

As network threats have become more complex, every node in a network has become a potential target, from routers to switches to workstations. Enter Microsoft Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010. The successor to Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server, TMG 2010 offers a more robust set of features than its predecessor. In the book, … Read more

Book Review: "Windows 7 Resource Kit"

At 1,760 pages “Windows 7 Resource Kit” isn’t a light tome, which reinforces the idea that it’s a reference book, rather than something to be read cover to cover. This sense of extreme width and depth pervades most of the book’s chapters, many of which cover a huge range of topics, rather than focusing on … Read more

Book Review: "Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services Resource Kit"

Microsoft recently changed the name to “Remote Desktop Server” but the underlying technology is still the same: Terminal Services have been powering remote access to corporate networks for years. In the “Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services Resource Kit” book authors Christa Anderson and Kristin Griffin manage to take a fairly dry topic and keep it … Read more

Book Review: “Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Resource Kit”

Writing a “Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Resource Kit” book is a tall order. A book of this nature must be written for two distinct audiences: (1) IT professionals with little experience on the Microsoft virtualization stack, and (2) administrators experienced with virtualization who need more knowledge on the new features contained within Hyper-V 2008 R2. … Read more

Book Review: "Windows Internals, Fifth Edition"

As Microsoft has grown larger the Windows operating system has become much more complex, secure and transparent. One of the principal people behind that increased transparency is Mark Russinovich, who launched a company which would end up exposing many of the key features “under the hood” of Windows. His work didn’t go unnoticed, and Microsoft … Read more

Productivity Tool for TFS Work Items

This is a great little productivity tool for teams actively using Work Items to track development activities in TFS. I used it at a recent customer (thanks Dilip!) and found it helpful. … Read more

Enterprise Search: Why Search Scoping Doesn’t Work

My previous post outlined the problem with the ‘traditional’ approach to search scoping. To explore the problem and a solution that leverages Microsoft FAST search, I’ve invented a fictitious company called Canadian Financial. That gives us some context – it is a bank with multiple geographies, lines of business, languages, and products. There are dozens of internal … Read more

SharePoint Custom List Form Error

I have been finding errors with the SharePoint custom list form. I’m not sure why this happens but here is the scenario: Open SharePoint Designer and create your own edit form following instructions [1] (i.e. copy EditForm.aspx to MyEditForm.aspx) Apply the MS Hot Fix that allows attachments on custom edit forms [2] Hit the save … Read more

Compatibility Mode with IE8 and CRM 3.0

[Update (April 8, 2009) – I’ve just concluded the the source of the trouble is the OfficeLiveAddIn. I’m also hearing from colleagues that the OfficeLiveAddIn, which causes changes to the user agent, is wreaking havoc with Sharepoint users as well. Apparently the WebDav implementation for Sharepoint has a specific check for office, presumably for different handling for non-browser-based clients.] [Update: … Read more

SharePoint FAST Navigators

This series of articles will examine FAST Navigators and how they can be utilized in your application. Navigators are very much like filters. Users are able to drill down into the result set by clicking one or more navigators. In my opinion, the future of search relies on being able to serve relevant results as well as allow the … Read more

Creating your own CAS Policy File for SharePoint

It’s common when doing custom development in SharePoint to quickly change the trust level to Full at the first sign of trouble and then tell ourselves that we’ll work on writing a custom code access security policy later. Most of the time we make this change from WSS_Minimal to Full because creating a custom one … Read more

Adding a non breaking space in an XSLT

I’ve had the chance over the course of the last few days to work with styling an XSLT for some content query webparts. I plan on writing a bit more about this but for now I thought I’d share something that seems so simple now that I figured it out. When you’re working on an XSLT you can … Read more

Deploying ASPX Pages Inside Your SharePoint Environment

Why you would deploy custom ASPX pages SharePoint lets you do a lot out of the box, but as we all know, sometimes the need arises to deploy custom pages within your SharePoint environment. Custom wizards, dashboards, and administration pages are just a few examples where you would like your web pages to exist within … Read more

SharePoint Font Colour and Font Family CSS Stylesheets

One of the most frustrating things I’ve found while customizing Microsoft’s Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS for short) sites are the hundreds of colour and font family declarations spanning across multiple CSS files. As soon as I think I’ve changed all the link colours to the same hex code, I realize that there is yet another declaration that I’ve … Read more

How to Cache Web Part Pages on WSS

I recently was given the task of creating an entire Internet facing site using WSS (Windows SharePoint Services) 3.0. I created web part pages everywhere so that the content manager could login and customize the content on each page. The problem that I was having was that this site had very high web traffic so … Read more