Outlook 2013 / 2016 Windows 8 / 10 Desktop Alerts not allowing to Delete or Flag

Issue
A very handy feature of previous versions of Outlook was to Delete and flag e-mail messages  based upon the sender and a small snippet of information of the e-mail within the desktop Alert.
Alas, If you run windows 8 and Outlook 2013 you are subject to the Basic Windows 8 Notifications where you can click to read the mail, and that is It ! not the best when you know the mail is Junk and just want rid !.

Solution
Fear Not, There is a quick and handy workaround to bring the feature back.  Simply make Outlook (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\root\office15\outlook.exe), (may be different for x86)  run in Windows Vista Compatibility Mode. Simply Right click, properties, Compatibility, Select run in Windows Vista (Service Pack 2) mode.

Close and Re-open outlook and all is Good. Welcome Back Desktop Alert !

Intra-Forest Migration and Office 365 - Notes from the Field - Part 1

Introduction
The purpose of this series of blogs is to share a "real-life" migration experience in which a multitude of technologies were used to provide the required solution and the toolsets used to allow us to make that journey. In Part 1 we will look at where we started and where we need to get to. During the series will look into greater detail at each key stage which will discuss Pit falls, quick wins and "known issues"

 Problem Statement
Customer A has a large number of Subsidiary  Businesses compromising several thousand of employees. With a highly de-centralised IT operations model with each business being autonomous for its own domain. The IT Estate was also aging with little or no support. There was also a large amount of unmanaged Messaging data in the form of PST files because of highly restrictive storage limitations.

Business Requirements
The desired end state was to create a much more Simple and Manageable IT solution with each Business still requiring a degree of  autonomous administration. The solution must also provide enhanced collaboration and communications.

Current Environment
The current topology was a Single Active Directory forest (Windows 2003) compromising a number of Child domains with an Exchange Organisation across the forest and each domain. (Exchange 2003)

Design Goals and Decisions

Design Goal - A more Simple and Consolidated Directory Platform
Design Decision - was to migrate all users, Computers, Servers, Groups to the root domain and collapse each child domain.
Dell (Formerly Quest) Migration Manager for Active Directory was the chosen tool. Part 2 will discuss important preparation tasks and considerations that are needed before we start an Intra-Forest Migration.

Design Goal - Autonomous Admin
Design Decision - Each Business Unit has its own Organisational Unit with delegated administration with only the required rights.

Design Goal - Replace the Aging, Unstable and Limited Exchange 2003 Platform
Design Decision - Office 365 was chosen to provide the Communication, Collaboration and Messaging Platform (Exchange, Lync, SharePoint & Yammer) . MobileIron Cloud provided continuous support from the legacy environment to Office 365. Check out Part 2 on how we planned and executed the co-existence and migration to Office 365.

Design Goal - Manage Legacy Archive and all future messaging data.
Design Decision - Symantec EV.Cloud was chosen to provide all mail arching and legacy pst management.

Design Goal - Keeping it Simple. Users must only require a Single User Name and Password to access all platforms.
Design Decision - ADFS and Dirsync was implemented to provide SSO (Single Sign On) for Office 365 and Symantec EV.Cloud **(Check out later posts for some "Known" limitations/features of SSO.

Design Goal - No Single Points of Failure
Design Decision - Office 365 and Symantec by design offers this technology by default. To match the resilience within the on-promised ADFS Design. The solution was dispersed across multiple datacentres and servers. We will cover this in more detail later in the series.
 
So we have our challenge, Some key design decisions. In part 2 we will look start to look at each stage and Identify how we get there and highlight some important processes and considerations that need to be understood.

Lync Server 2010 - Add / Enable users in a Security group

The Challenge
In large complex Active directory's, there tends to be a challenge when targeting certain users across many OU`s. This article describes the process to enable users based on membership of certain groups.

Resolution
From Lync Powershell simply user the -Filter option as per below, changing the required text to match your needs.

Get-CsAdUser -LDAPFilter memberof=cn="MySecurityGroup,ou=mylowestou,ou=myou1,dc=mydomain,dc=co,dc=uk" | Enable-CsUser -RegistrarPool mylyncpool.mydomain.co.uk -SipAddressType EmailAddress

Lync Server 2010 - Install Fails server.msi Error code 1603

Issue
Whilst trying to Install Lync 2010 Server components the Install mail fail during and the following message is logged:
Error returned while installing Server.msi(RegistrarStore), code 1603

Cause
This may occur if the Admin$ Shares have been removed from the local server or SQL server (C$, D$)

Resolution
Re-create the admin shares on the server that the Intstall fails.

Exchange 2010 - Outlook 2010 Personal Archive not visible

Symptom
After enabling a user for a personal archive, the archive does not show through outlook 2007 or 2010 but can be accessed via Outlook Web Access (OWA)

Resolution
Something that is not clearly stated on Technet is that only certain versions of Outlook / Office 2010 are supported with Exchange 2010 Personal Archive.
REF:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/license-requirements-for-personal-archive-and-retention-policies-HA102576659.aspx?CTT=5&origin=HA101830421

Outlook retail licenses

Supported	Not supported
Outlook 2010 stand-alone Outlook 2007* stand-alone Outlook 2007* included with Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007	Outlook 2010 included with Microsoft Office Home and Business 2010 Outlook 2010 included with Microsoft Office Professional 2010

Outlook volume licenses

These licenses are available through volume licensing only. For more information, see Microsoft Volume Licensing Programs.

Supported	Not supported
Outlook 2010 stand-alone Outlook 2010 included with Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Outlook 20071 stand-alone Outlook 20071 included with Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 Outlook 20071 included with Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007	Outlook 2010 included with Microsoft Office 2010 Standard2 Outlook 2007 included with Microsoft Office 2007

Mailtips / OOf

Simple little tip. This is one for the times you scratch your head after configuring EWS with what seems like a simple URL change (eg https://mail.consultantsrus.co.uk/ews/exchange.asmx). You are sure it is correct, and you have done an IISRESET on all your CAS servers. But still when you connect via Outlook Anywhere you get the annoying "Mailtips cannot be retrieved" on a new message, and the Out of Office cannot be set with the "server is not available" warning.

Go back into IIS and recycle the Autodiscover app pool ! Voila ! Simples  :-)

Hope this helps

Create or Modify Windows 2008 R2 DFS Targets

Scenario
You want to create, modify or Migrate to a nice new DFS Architecture and/or migrate data to new file servers/targets, and want to populate all your nice new links with new folder targets, yet ensuring users do not access them while you do this.  So we create the targets via the GUI and set to Disable. Done. !  However the problem is you have hundreds of Links and Targets.  So here comes a severe case tendentious, or we sort to engage Mr Script.

Solution
My Idea of tendentious and GUI screen burn does not bode to well for me as a concept, so utilizing the much more feature rich DFS comdlet of DFSUTIL.EXE is a far better and quicker option. So presuming you have completed your required planning on what, where and how the DFS and Shares are going to look, we put DFSUTIL.EXE into action. (Remember Excel and Notepad are your friend)



Adding a Folder Target to en existing DFS Link
dfsutil target add "\\contoso.local\dfsshare\Shared Files\HR" "\\Filserver1\Share\HR"

Making the Folder target Offline (Disabled)
dfsutil property state offline "\\contoso.local\dfsshare\Shared Files\HR" "\\Filserver1\Share\HR"

Making the Folder target Online (Enabled)

dfsutil property state Online "\\contoso.local\dfsshare\Shared Files\HR" "\\Filserver1\Share\HR"

Happy Migrating !