Office 365 Tutorials

One of the best-kept secrets in the hybrid configuration wizard (“HCW”)
 is the F12 easter-egg. Jeff Kizner demonstrated this feature during his Ignite session back in September.

Tip: For a break down of Jeff’s session, with notes and timers, I highly recommend checking out 15 Ignite sessions every Exchange admin should see.

If you press F12 this enables a new section called Diagnostic Tools. This section provides shortcuts to the following tools or folders.

• Open Exchange Management Shell opens a remote PowerShell session to your on-premises Exchange servers.
• Open Exchange Online PowerShell opens a PowerShell connection to Exchange Online. This supports MFA-enabled admin accounts.
• Open Log File opens the active HCW log file in Notepad. The logs are stored in the profile of the user running the HCW. For example, C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Exchange Hybrid Configuration
• Create Support Package will combine your HCW log files into a single ZIP file which can easily be sent to Microsoft support. This link actually opens a second screen where you can specify to ZIP logs from the last 24 hours, or, between a certain date range. You then have the option to copy the file to the clipboard so it can be easily attached to an email.
• Open Logging Folder opens the folder location of the HCW logs. 
  The HCW logs are stored in the profile of the user running the HCW. For example, C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Exchange Hybrid Configuration
• Open Process Folder opens a Command Prompt to the HCW process directory.

Pressing F12 a second time will hide these tools.

What do you think about this easter-egg? Have you run into any cool easter-eggs in other Microsoft products? Drop a comment below or join the conversation on Twitter

When a company has implemented Exchange hybrid and has moved some or all their users to Office 365, the question “How do I create a mailbox in Office 365?” frequently comes up.

In this article, we explore how to create a mailbox in Exchange Online when directory synchronization is in place. For this article, we will explore this process using Exchange 2016. We will look at how to complete this task with the GUI and PowerShell. Note that these steps are identical for Exchange 2013.

Using the Exchange Admin Center

This is the simplest and quickest way to create a mailbox in Office 365. The drawback of this solution is that it only allows you to create an entirely new Active Directory user. A preexisting user without a mailbox cannot be enabled for an Office 365 mailbox using the GUI. To grant an existing user an Office 365 mailbox you will need to use PowerShell. Alternatively, that user could be given an on-prem mailbox and then move that mailbox to Office 365.

If your current process is to create a new account in Active Directory first and then enable the mailbox in Exchange second, I would recommend reversing these steps. Using the method below allows you to create a basic user in Active Directory with a mailbox in Office 365. Then you can go back into Active Directory to make any additional changes to the new account, such as group memberships.

For our example, we are going to create a new user called Wilfred Mott who will have a mailbox in Office 365. Wilfred does not currently have a user account in Active Directory so we can use this method. Wilfred’s email will be wilfred.mott@exchangeservergeek.com.

From your on-premises Exchange 2016 server, log into the Exchange Admin Center. Select the Recipients tab and Mailboxes sub-tab. Click the New (plus sign) and select Office 365 mailbox.

Note: If you do not see this option you may be missing the required RBAC permissions, or, there is an issue with your hybrid configuration.

Selecting this option walks you through the process of creating a remote mailbox in Office 365. The benefit here is that you do not need to migrate the mailbox after it is created as it already exists as an object in the cloud. Keep in mind that you will not see this mailbox in the Office 365 tenant until directory synchronization has run.