On March 24th I had the great pleasure of being a guest on #MVPBuzzChat. I joined host Christian Buckley to discuss data residency, hybrid modern authentication and new products shipping in 2018. We also discussed the importance of TAP, Windows Insider program and participating on UserVoice.
[Read more…] about #MVPbuzzChat – Data residency, Hybrid Modern Authentication & Exchange 2019Exchange March 2018 Updates
Today was a big day for Exchange updates. Not only did we get Cumulative Update 9 for Exchange 2016, but we also got Cumulative Update 20 for Exchange 2013. Exchange 2010 also receives a critical security update in rollup 20.
As always, test these updates in a lab first! I recommend checking out this 7-part guide on configuring Exchange in your lab. It doesn’t take much to get one going.
The updates are as follows:
Exchange 2016 Cumulative Update 9 | KB4055222 | UM Language Pack
Exchange 2013 Cumulative Update 20 | KB4055221 | UM Language Pack
Exchange 2010 SP3 Rollup 20 | KB4073537
So, what’s new in these Cumulative Updates?
The March 2018 updates introduces full support for TLS 1.2. This is critical because in future updates Exchange will disable support for the older TLS protocols. TLS 1.2 boasts significantly stronger ciphers than its predecessors by introducing SHA-256. For a great comparison on the differences between each version of the protocol I recommend the article TLS 1.2 vs TLS 1.1 by KeyCDN.
Disabling the older TLS protocols does present some challenges. As mentioned in my article Disabling TLS 1.0 may cause Outlook to crash, older operating systems such as Windows 7, will require additional registry hacks and tweaks to work in a pure TLS 1.2 environment. Before disabling TLS 1.0 in your environment you may want to look at the state of your client operating systems as a whole and determine if a project to upgrade to Windows 10 should be tackled first. TLS support is based on what the operating system can do and not the Outlook client.
I highly recommend checking out Brian Day’s series on transitioning an Exchange organization to TLS 1.2.
These updates also contain security and bug fixes. Check the appropriate KB article above for a list of issues each update resolves. [Read more…] about Exchange March 2018 Updates
131 funny, geeky and creepy questions to ask Alexa
A couple of years ago we published a post titled 131 funny, geeky and creepy questions to ask Cortana. That post had fantastic engagement. Despite the original 131 questions, the community discovered hundreds more. In fact, you are still finding new questions even today. Be sure to check out the comments on that article.
With that in mind we thought it would be really cool to figure out what questions we could ask Alexa. We wondered if we could ask her the some of the funny, geeky and, creepy questions we asked Cortana. But we also went looking for plenty of new questions.
We don’t want to show her responses. That’s for you to enjoy. Besides, who likes spoilers anyway?
Okay, in the name of science, just one spoiler. Plus, it’s a great excuse to quote some Monty Python.
“Alexa, what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?”
Pro Tip: Be sure to ask Alexa, “Give me the Five-Nine”. This command actually starts an interactive skill with Alexa and is reminiscent of the old choose your own adventure novels (affiliate). The Alexa adventure is set in the world of one of my favorite TV shows, Mr. Robot (affiliate). If you haven’t seen that show I highly recommend it. It takes about 5-10 minutes to complete. It’s a lot of fun.
Let’s smash the 400 questions you found for Cortana! Let us know if we missed any good ones in the comments below. [Read more…] about 131 funny, geeky and creepy questions to ask Alexa
MVPs Talk Microsoft 365 podcast – What’s new in Exchange & Office 365
On January 13th I had the great pleasure of being a guest on the MVPs Talk Microsoft 365 podcast. I joined host Neil McDonnell to discuss what’s new in Exchange and Office 365.
[Read more…] about MVPs Talk Microsoft 365 podcast – What’s new in Exchange & Office 365Fixing frequent blank screens in Outlook for iOS & Android
When I first started using Outlook for Android it was running great. I use it to check three different email accounts–two accounts in Office 365 and one Outlook.com.
However, as the months went by the app seemed to get slower and slower, with more frequent blank screens. These blank screens would appear most often when I would try to pull up my folder list (pictured below)
Although it would happen at other times as well. Such as trying to open an email (pictured below).
This delay would generally last a few seconds. But sometimes it could take as long as 10 seconds for the folder list or email to appear. Certainly enough to hinder productivity in the app. [Read more…] about Fixing frequent blank screens in Outlook for iOS & Android
All network connections broken – Windows 10 Fall Creators Update
After installing the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (Build 1709) on my PC, all my network connections–whether wired or wireless–were broken. When I checked device manager I had a exclamation mark against all but one network device. The only device excluded from error was the “Check Point Virtual Network Adapter”.
Going into the properties of one of these devices gave equally cryptic errors. All devices reported the same thing.
Windows is still setting up the class configuration for this device. (Code 56)
A couple extra reboots did not resolve the odd error either.
A quick search on the internet revealed forum postings that identified the Check Point VPN as the culprit (credit SOHIC for the answer). This made sense as the version of the Check Point software I had made no mention that it was supported on Windows 10. My bad!
But this was the key. When I uninstalled the software, and rebooted, all my network connections came back to life. [Read more…] about All network connections broken – Windows 10 Fall Creators Update
GMail App fails to connect to Exchange – Certificate not valid
Ran into an issue recently where Outlook was working fine, however Android devices, particularly mobile phones, would throw an error that the certificate was invalid when configuring an Exchange mailbox via the GMail app. The error was:
Certificate not valid The Gmail app can't guarantee the security of this email address. Your messages would be at risk.
When clicking Advanced we received more clarification that the certificate was not trusted. However, we could quickly see that the correct certificate was being presented to the Android devices and it clearly wasn’t an issue with the date.
Certificate not trusted Contact your email provider about this error, or proceed with username (unsafe).
We then tested our certificate with DigiCert’s SSL Certificate Checker. This is a great tool to confirm that the certificate is installed correctly and that the certificate path is valid. You can check any certificate with this tool. It does not have to be a certificate issued by DigiCert. In our case we were testing our GoDaddy certificate with this tool. [Read more…] about GMail App fails to connect to Exchange – Certificate not valid
Exchange does not have Audit Security Privilege on the domain controller
While reviewing the event logs on your Exchange server you could encounter the following error.
Log Name: Application Source: MSExchange ADAccess Event ID: 2112 Task Category: Topology Description: Process Microsoft.Exchange.Directory.TopologyService.exe (PID=2700). The Exchange computer dc03.supertekboy.com does not have Audit Security Privilege on the domain controller dc03.supertekboy.com. This domain controller will not be used by Exchange Active Directory Provider.
We ran into this recently at a customer. This was an odd error because the description specified the name of one of our domain controllers as an “Exchange Computer”. That aside, my customer was receiving this error for two of their three domain controllers (dc02 & dc03). The error was also repeated across all their Exchange servers.
To make matters worse if the customer shut down the only domain controller not reported in these errors (dc01) Exchange would become completely unavailable. As the error stated, dc02 and dc03 were definitely not being used by the Exchange Active Directory Provider.
Further analysis of the event logs also revealed informational alert MSExchange ADAccess 2080. In this alert we could see our three domain controllers with one striking difference.
Log Name: Application Source: MSExchange ADAccess Event ID: 2080 Task Category: Topology Description: Exchange Active Directory Provider has discovered the following servers with the following characteristics: (Server name | Roles | Enabled | Reachability | Synchronized | GC capable | PDC | SACL right | Critical Data | Netlogon | OS Version) In-site: dc01.supertekboy.com CDG 1 7 7 1 0 1 1 7 1 dc02.supertekboy.com CDG 1 7 7 1 0 0 1 7 1 dc03.supertekboy.com CDG 1 7 7 1 0 0 1 7 1
In the eighth column (highlighted), dc01 was reporting a 1 whereas dc02 and dc03 were reporting a 0. All other column data was identical between the three servers. The words in parenthesis are actually the column headers. They don’t line up very well in event viewer but if we count to the eighth word we see the column is titled “SACL right”. What this means is that the Exchange servers are missing the SACL right on the domain controllers marked with a zero. Or more specifically, Exchange is missing the right to manage the security and audit logs of those two domain controllers. [Read more…] about Exchange does not have Audit Security Privilege on the domain controller