Monday, August 3, 2015

Intricacies and Snares of Office 365 Administration

Remember when you are setting up Office 365 you are running into a block of MS products. You have the Office 365 part. You also have the Exchange part, the Sharepoint part, and the Azure part. This is good and bad. Good because you are moving towards a truly Enterprise Class Solution when you get on the 365 platform and at a very affordale price. Bad because you will find that each part has it's own intricacies. If you think you are going to be able to configure everything and have it work like clockwork with all the touted features you will be in for a huge awakening. If you do not set the proper expectations you're going to have disappointed users demanding what you promised. Throw in the hoopla surrounding Skype for Business and all the other features MS is moving towards and you better step lightly.
Case in point would be MS Groups. You have the
A. Office 365 Dashboard Groups
and then you have the
B. EAC Groups (exchange admin center)
consisting of
1. distribution groups
2. security groups
3. dynamic distribution groups
A and B are 2 differenet animals. Plus remember that Active directory groups and Exchange groups have there own differences. Make sure you know what they are.
Once you get into the intricacies of how these groups are interwoven with the other parts mentioned (Sharepoint and Azure and Skype for Business) as well as shared folders options and other collaboration features you better know exactly what you are doing or have help. Add to that the way Microsoft's Cloud seems to be continually evolving and you will have your hands full.
My advice... contact a reseller whose credentials and experience can help set expectations and guide you through the process. Unless you work in a culture that will allow you the time to figure this stuff out on your own at a cost savings. Most vendors will help with this for reasonable price considering it a gateway to other services. Really unless you are planning to really dig deeply into Sharepoint stuff you will be limited by what Office 365 can do without the other bells and whistles.
When you are trying to sort through this just make sure that you are in the right place under the right plan and talking about the same thing, whether you are researchiing online or chatting with a vendor.
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https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Create-edit-or-delete-a-security-group-55c96b32-e086-4c9e-948b-a018b44510cb?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US#__groups_in_exchange
Groups in Exchange Online and SharePoint Online
If you want to create groups of users so you can send email to them all at the same time, you can do that in the Exchange admin center by clicking Admin > Exchange > Recipients > Groups. Next, click New , and select the kind of group you want to create:
Distribution group: Used to distribute messages to a group of users. It’s also called a mail-enabled distribution group, or, in Office 365, a distribution list. For more information, see ⦁ Manage Distribution Groups.
Security group: Can be used to distribute messages to a group of users, or to grant access permissions to resources. This group is also called a mail-enabled security group. For more information, see ⦁ Manage Mail-Enabled Security Groups.
Dynamic distribution group: A type of distribution group whose list of recipients is recalculated every time you send a message based on filters and conditions that you define. For more information, see ⦁ Manage Dynamic Distribution Groups.
After you create distribution groups and mail-enabled security groups in the Exchange admin center, their names and user lists appear on the Office 365 Security groups page. You can delete these groups in both locations, but you can edit them only in the Exchange admin center. Dynamic distribution groups don’t show up on the Office 365 Security groups page.
SharePoint groups are created automatically when you make a site collection. The default groups use the default permission levels in SharePoint—sometimes called SharePoint roles—to grant users rights and access. For more information, see Default SharePoint Groups in SharePoint Online.
Applies To: Office 365 End User
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https://technet.microsoft.com/library/bb124513.aspx
Manage Distribution Groups
Exchange 2013
Other Versions
Applies to: Exchange Server 2013, Exchange Online
Topic Last Modified: 2014-04-21
Use the Exchange Administration Center (EAC) or the Exchange Management Shell to create a new distribution group in your Exchange organization or to mail-enable an existing group in Active Directory.
There are two types of groups that can be used to distribute messages:
Mail-enabled universal distribution groups (also called distribution groups) can be used only to distribute messages.
Mail-enabled universal security groups (also called security groups) can be used to distribute messages as well as to grant access permissions to resources in Active Directory. For more information, see ⦁ Manage mail-enabled security groups.
It's important to note the terminology differences between Active Directory and Exchange. In Active Directory, a distribution group refers to any group that doesn't have a security context, whether it's mail-enabled or not. In contrast, in Exchange, all mail-enabled groups are referred to as distribution groups, whether they have a security context or not.
You can create or mail-enable only universal distribution groups. To convert a domain-local or a global group to a universal group, you can use the Set-Group cmdlet using the Shell. You may have mail-enabled groups that were migrated from previous versions of Exchange that are not universal groups. You can use the EAC or the Shell to manage these groups
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Use the Shell to create a distribution group
This example creates a distribution group with an alias itadmin and the name IT Administrators. The distribution group is created in the default OU, and anyone can join this group without approval by the group owners.
New-DistributionGroup -Name "IT Administrators" -Alias itadmin -MemberJoinRestriction open
For more information about using the Shell to create distribution groups, see New-DistributionGroup.
Check your work:
In the Shell, run the following command to display information about the new distribution group.
Get-DistributionGroup <Name> | FL Name,RecipientTypeDetails,PrimarySmtpAddress
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Use the Shell to change distribution group properties
Use the Get-DistributionGroup and Set-DistributionGroup cmdlets to view and change properties for distribution groups. Advantages of using the Shell are the ability to change the properties that aren’t available in the EAC and to change properties for multiple groups. For information about which parameters correspond to distribution group properties, see the following topics:
Get-DistributionGroup
Set-DistributionGroup
Here are some examples of using the Shell to change distribution group properties.
This example changes the primary SMTP address (also called the reply address) for the Seattle Employees distribution group from employees@contoso.com to sea.employees@contoso.com. Also, the previous reply address will be kept as a proxy address.
Set-DistributionGroup "Seattle Employees" -EmailAddresses SMTP:sea.employees@contoso.com,smtp:employees@contoso.com
This example limits the maximum message size that can be sent to all distribution groups in the organization to 10 megabytes (MB).
Get-DistributionGroup -ResultSize unlimited -Filter {(RecipientTypeDetails -eq 'MailUniversalDistributionGroup')} | Set-DistributionGroup -MaxReceiveSize 10MB
This example enables moderation for the distribution group Customer Support and sets the moderator to Amy. In addition, this moderated distribution group will notify senders who send mail from within the organization if their messages aren't approved.
Set-DistributionGroup -Identity "Customer Support" -ModeratedBy "Amy" -ModerationEnabled $true -SendModerationNotifications 'Internal'
This example changes the user-created distribution group Dog Lovers to require the group manager to approve users' requests to join the group. In addition, by using the BypassSecurityGroupManagerCheck parameter, the group manager will not be notified that a change was made to the distribution group's settings.
Set-DistributionGroup -Identity "Dog Lovers" -MemberJoinRestriction 'ApprovalRequired' -BypassSecurityGroupManagerCheck

Check Your Work
In the Shell, use the Get-DistributionGroup cmdlet to verify the changes. One advantage of using the Shell is that you can view multiple properties for multiple groups. In the example above where the recipient limit was changed, run the following command to verify the new value.
Get-Mailbox -ResultSize unlimited -Filter {(RecipientTypeDetails -eq 'UserMailbox')} | fl Name,RecipientLimits
For the example above where the message limits were changed, run this command.
Get-Mailbox -OrganizationalUnit "Marketing" | fl Name,IssueWarningQuota,ProhibitSendQuota,ProhibitSendReceiveQuota,UseDatabaseQuotaDefaults

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