Skype for Business Server 2019 – Announcing the general availability of Modern Admin Control Panel

by Contributed | Mar 24, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

We are pleased to announce the general availability of Modern Admin Control Panel (MACP), as part of the Skype for Business Server 2019 March 2021 Cumulative Update.

This is a continuation to our earlier released versions of MACP. You can read about previous releases, Phase 2 March 2020 here and Phase 1 in July 2019 here.

We had covered ‘Home’, ‘Users’, ‘Conferencing’ and ‘Federation and External Access’ tabs in earlier releases. In this release we introduce following tabs: ‘Voice Routing’, ‘Voice Features’, ‘Response Group’ and ‘Conferencing (Dial-In-Access Number sub-tab)’

We continue to listen to our customers to prioritize and ship new features and updates. Hence based on your feedback, this release also includes the following enhancements.

• Addition of OAuth (optional) to login into MACP portal


• Support for Simple URL to access MACP portal

Please start using new Control Panel and share feedback and questions via the ‘Give Feedback’ link in the Control Panel. Read on for details.

Installation Instructions

1. Run SSUI

2. Run Bootstrapper.exe

3. Please install the Management OData if not installed using below steps:

a. Open PowerShell in Administrator mode

b. Run command: Add-WindowsFeature ManagementOData

The administrator account must have CsAdministrator role privileges and must be SIP enabled. If the OAuth is set up, administrator is not required to be SIP enabled.

Launching and Using Control Panel

Please put in https://<your pool FQDN>/macp or the configured simple URL https://admin.<your-domain>.com/macp manually in a supported browser, and the Control Panel should open. You can also click on the blue banner at the top of the old Control Panel to launch the new Panel. The login screen looks like the following:

Login screen

Once you hit the login screen, log in with your admin credentials.

Voice Routing

Please create, modify, or delete dial plans in Dial Plan sub-tab as below:

Dial Plan Home screen

Please create, modify, or delete voice policies in Voice Policy sub-tab as below:

Voice Policy Home screen

Please create, modify, delete, or change the priority order of routes in the Route sub-tab below:

Route Home screen

Please view or delete PSTN usages in PSTN Usage sub-tab below. The new PSTN usages can be created under Associated PSTN Usages table in the voice policy form.

PSTN Usage Home screen

Please create, modify, or delete trunk configurations in Trunk Configuration sub-tab below:

Trunk Configuration Home screen

Please create, modify, run, or delete test cases in Test Voice Routing sub-tab below:

Test Voice Routing Home screen

Please try the import/export functionality in Voice Routing sub-tabs. You may export your voice- routing configuration to a file. Also, you may import the voice-routing configuration from the file. This functionality is present in every sub-tab under voice routing as shown below:

Import/Export Configuration

Similarly, you can import/export voice routing test cases in Voice Routing tabs. Also, you can create test cases. This functionality is also present in all voice routing sub-tab as shown below:

Import/Export/Create Test Cases

Please try creating and running test cases with this functionality as shown below:

Create Test Cases

Voice Features

Please try out the scenarios for ‘Call Park’ and ‘Unassigned Number’. You can create various number ranges, edit them, or delete them.

Call Park home screen

Unassigned Number home screen

Response Group

Please note that to create or edit a workflow you need to access the page from inside domain network.

Workflow page in Response Group

If not accessing from inside domain network, then the page displays message as shown below:

Workflow Access from domain message

Please create, modify, or delete Response Group Queues in Queue page below:

Queue page in Response Groups

Please create, modify, or delete group agents in Group page below:

Group page in Response Groups

Conferencing

We have also provided the only remaining page from Conferencing tab – ‘Dial-In-Access Number’.

Dial-In-Access Number in Conferencing

Setup OAuth to login into MACP portal

The following is the step by step process to setup OAuth for MACP portal.

Minimum OS req and ADFS Server version:

• Windows Server 2016 onwards

Steps to be performed on ADFS Farm machine:

1. Ensure that an ADFS farm exists on the topology


2. Create a new app for MACP in the ADFS
   a. Use the script Configure MACP application in ADFS Farm
   b. We suggest you go with default options while running the above script.

Steps To be performed on FE w17 server:
Once you have setup the ADFS farm, execute the following steps.

1. Install the latest SSUI in all the FE pool machines


2. To enable the ADFS OAuth for MACP across all the pools or selective pools
   a. Use the script Configure OAuth for MACP
   b. We suggest you review default options while running the above script.

NOTE:

• You need to run the script on just one FE W17 server machine in your topology and it will automatically identify all the FEs in your topology (or the selective pools you have passed to the script).


• Use the same script to disable ADFS OAuth and fallback to web-ticket auth.


• To re-configure any ADFS related details, you must disable ADFS OAuth using Configure OAuth for MACP and then configure the ADFS again.

If OAuth is correctly configured, then you should see login screen as below:

On clicking the Sign in button, you will get a pop-up to enter your username and password.

Setup Simple URL to access the MACP portal

You can also access MACP using the simple URL https://admin.<your-domain>.com/macp

Use the following steps to configure simple URL

1. Install the latest SSUI

2. Configure Simple URL using cmdlet.

Example below shows how a new URL can be added to an existing collection of simple URLs
$urlEntry = New-CsSimpleUrlEntry -Url “https://admin.<your-domain>.com”
$simpleUrl = New-CsSimpleUrl -Component “macp” -Domain “your-domain.com” -SimpleUrlEntry $urlEntry -ActiveUrl “https://admin.<your-domain>.com”
Set-CsSimpleUrlConfiguration -Identity “Global” -SimpleUrl @{Add=$simpleUrl}

• Refer following cmdlets:
  o New-CsSimpleUrl
  o New-CsSimpleUrlConfiguration
  o New-CsSimpleUrlEntry

3. Run Enable-CsComputer
4. In addition, you must also do such things as

a. create Domain Name System (DNS) records for each URL
b. configure reverse proxy rules for external access
c. add the simple URLs to your Front End Server certificates; and so on.

NOTE:

• Configuring OAuth based authentication for MACP is a prerequisite to use of Simple URL.

Providing Feedback

We always welcomes any feedback and suggestions. Please share feedback and questions via the ‘Give Feedback’ link in the Control Panel. In the top right corner, you’ll see your login name. Click on the adjacent arrow, and you should see a drop-down like the below:

Hit ‘Give Feedback’, and you should see a browser window open with the relevant discussion forum. Please do check the discussions to see if your question has already been addressed. We look forward to hearing from you!

On behalf of the product team,
Ravindra Singh Bisht
Senior Program Manager, Skype for Business Server

Resources for Setting Up Viva Topics and Viva Connections

by Contributed | Mar 24, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Over the last several weeks since Ignite I have been approached by multiple customers about how to go about setting up Microsoft Viva Topics and Viva Connections. With the availability of Viva Topics for deployment and the announcements about Viva Connections rolling out this month customers are anxious to begin leveraging these transformative technologies.

Below are resources to assist in purchasing Topic as well as readiness and preparedness for both.

• Viva Topics
  
  
  
  • Buy Viva Topics 
  
  
  • Introduction to Microsoft Viva Topics   
  
  
  • Microsoft Viva Topics overview | Microsoft Docs
  
  
  • Get your environment ready for Microsoft Viva Topics | Microsoft Docs
  
  
  • Set up Microsoft Viva Topics | Microsoft Docs
  
  
  • Get started with Microsoft Viva Topics | Microsoft Docs
  
  
  • Get started driving adoption of Microsoft Viva Topics | Microsoft Docs
  
  
  
  


• Viva Connections
  
  
  
  • Introducing Microsoft Viva Connections  
  
  
  • Microsoft Viva Connections to start rollout to general availability – Microsoft Tech Community
  
  
  • Add Viva Connections for Microsoft Teams desktop – SharePoint in Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Docs
    
    
    
    • Contains information on: Preparation for Viva Connections, Viva Connections requirements and recommendations, step-by-step guide to setting up Viva Connections desktop, and onboarding end users for Viva Connections.
    
    
    
    
  
  
  • Additional resources to prepare for Viva Connections.
    
    
    
    • Set up a home site for your organization.
    
    
    • Enable and set up global navigation in the SharePoint app bar.
    
    
    • Introduction to SharePoint Online Management Shell.
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

Hope you find these helpful!

 Thanks for visiting – Michael Gannotti   LinkedIn | Twitter

Michael Gannotti

Fetch User Profile Properties From Site Collection And Export To CSV Using PNP PowerShell

by Contributed | Mar 24, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Introduction

Many times we have a requirement like to get users or user profile properties from any SharePoint site collection and we need it in CSV or Excel format. so to achieve this solution we will use PnP Powershell. 

Let’s see step-by-step implementation.

Prerequisites

If we are using Window 10 or we have PowerShellGet then we can run the below commands to install PnP PowerShell and AzuerAD Modules

Install PnP PowerShell Module,

Install-Module SharePointPnPPowerShellOnline -Scope CurrentUser  

Implementation

• Open Windows Powershell ISE


• Create a new file and write a script

Now we will see all the steps which we required to achieve the solution:

1.  We will read the site URL from the user

2.  then we will connect to the O365 admin site and then we will connect to the site which the user has entered

3. Create a function to bind a CSV

4. Create a function to get user profile properties by email d

5.  In the main function we will write a logic to get web and users of site collection URL and then get all the properties and bind it to CSV

So at the end, our script will be like this,

$basePath = #base path where you want to save CSV file("D:Chandani...")
$dateTime = "{0:MM_dd_yy}_{0:HH_mm_ss}" -f (Get-Date)
$csvPath = $basePath + "userdetails" + $dateTime + ".csv"
$adminSiteURL = "https://****-admin.sharepoint.com/" #O365 admin site URL
$username = #user email id
$password = "********"
$secureStringPwd = $password | ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force 
$Creds = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList $username, $secureStringPwd
$global:userDetails = @()
$index = 1;
$userInfo;
  
Function Login() {
    [cmdletbinding()]
    param([parameter(Mandatory = $true, ValueFromPipeline = $true)] $Creds)
 
    #connect to O365 admin site
    Write-Host "Connecting to Tenant Admin Site '$($adminSiteURL)'" -f Yellow | Out-File $LogFile -Append -Force
  
    Connect-PnPOnline -Url $adminSiteURL -Credentials $Creds
    Write-Host "Connection Successfull" -f Yellow | Out-File $LogFile -Append -Force
   
}
Function StartProcessing {
    Login($Creds);
    ConnectionToSite($Creds)
}

Function ConnectionToSite() {
    $siteURL = Read-Host "Please enter site collcetion URL" 
  
    try {            
        Write-Host "Connecting to Site '$($siteURL)'" -f Yellow          
                              
        $SCWeb = Get-PnPWeb -Identity ""              
                                                     
        $getusers = Get-PnPUser -Web $SCWeb

        ForEach ($user in $getusers) { 
            $email = $user.Email
            If ($email) {
                $userInfo = GetUserProfileProperties $email        
                #creating object fro CSV
                $global:userDetails += New-Object PSObject -Property ([ordered]@{                   
                        Id            = $index
                        GUID          = $userInfo.'UserProfile_GUID'
                        FirstName     = $userInfo.FirstName
                        LastName      = $userInfo.LastName
                        WorkEmail     = $userInfo.WorkEmail 
                        PictureURL    = $userInfo.PictureURL    
                        Department    = $userInfo.Department
                        PreferredName = $userInfo.PreferredName                        
                    })
                $index++ 
            } 
        }                                                                
    }
    catch {
        Write-Host -f Red "Error in connecting to Site '$($TenantSite)'"                        
    }                                     
    BindingtoCSV($global:userDetails) 
}

Function BindingtoCSV {
    [cmdletbinding()]
    param([parameter(Mandatory = $true, ValueFromPipeline = $true)] $Global)   
    Write-Host -f Yellow "Exporting to CSV..."
    $userDetails | Export-Csv $csvPath -NoTypeInformation -Append
    Write-Host -f Yellow "Exported Successfully..."
}

Function GetUserProfileProperties($username) {
    $Properties = Get-PnPUserProfileProperty -Account $username
    $Properties = $Properties.UserProfileProperties
   
    If ($Properties) {
        $Properties = $Properties
    }
    else {
        $Properties = $null
    }
    return $Properties
}

StartProcessing

In the above script do the following changes:

1. Change O365 Site Url, base path, username, and password

2. To check all the properties you can print $userInfo and then change $global:userDetails object as per your requirement at where I have used $userInfo.FirstName,LastName etc.

Then run the script with the F5 command.

Output

After this check the CSV file at your base location.

Summary

So in this article, we have seen how to get user and user profile properties and as well as how to export them to CSV.

Hope this helps! If it is helpful to you then share it with others.

Sharing is caring!

Reconnect Series: Hilton Giesenow

by Contributed | Mar 24, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

We’re back once again to Reconnect and thrilled to be joined by 12-time Office Apps & Services MVP Hilton Giesenow! An industry veteran of almost 20 years, Hilton counts experience across varied IT, development and consulting roles, geographies and client industries and types.

Hailing from Cape Town, South Africa, Hilton recently founded a company called ChitChattr which builds products for Microsoft Teams.

Moreover, “I’m having a ton of fun doing lots of Teams development,” Hilton says, “so lately I’ve been learning a lot and working on a number of related open source projects (Teams PnP Samples, Graph Toolkit, Text Recognizers, Teams developer docs), and building some awesome Teams products at ChitChattr (such as our new TeamMate new employee onboarding welcome bot)”

Hilton, who mostly stays in touch with Reconnect via the Yammer group, says MVP has played a large role in his life and the community helps him to still feel part of the program. 

“It has helped me keep in touch with other community members, both Reconnect and ‘regular’ MVPs,” Hilton says. In terms of other projects and community organizations, Hilton says: “I’m a regular contributor to various projects, both code and docs-related, but also quite active on Stack Overflow helping answer Teams development questions (and learning a lot from other people’s challenges!)”

Hilton fondly recalls various global gatherings during his time as an MVP, and encourages all program newcomers to get the most out of the program. “Enjoy the program and keep up the great contributions – community is all about sharing and helping others – we’re all ‘beginners’ in something!”

Looking forward, Hilton says: “Right now I’m loving learning about Teams development, so planning to keep learning more and contributing to the Teams development community. I’m also planning to improve our current ChitChattr products and to build a bunch of new ones for Teams.”

For more on Hilton, visit his blog.

New VSCode extension for autocompleting your Microsoft Graph APIs

by Contributed | Mar 24, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

While working on a project which uses Microsoft Graph APIs, I found myself opening the Microsoft Graph Explorer a lot to check which paths/parameters were available. The Microsoft Graph Explorer is a great tool, but I love not to change context too much.

As I like to create Visual Studio Code extensions, I did not have to think long to start building a new extension.

Background info

The good news for me was that Microsoft Graph Explorer has an API for retrieving the Open API information. This API returns all the available endpoints and their parameters per path. All I had to do, was create the logic to know when you are writing a Microsoft Graph URL and call the API to provide the suggestions.

The extension

> Info: The Visual Studio Code extension can be found on the marketplace: MS Graph Completion.

The initial version of the extension supports the GET API paths, query string parameters, and their values.

The /users/ API completion allows you to add a {user-id} token.

When providing your user-ID or username, it will automatically tokenize it.

When would you use it?

There are various reasons for this. My reasoning, as mentioned, was to know which parameters are available for selecting and expanding quickly.

Another option could be to use it in combination with the popular REST Client – Visual Studio Marketplace. 

Let me know how you would use it and feel free to contribute to the project MS Graph Completion – GitHub Repository.

*Thanks to the Microsoft Graph team for the API and Graph explorer*

How to determine web part size with SPFx v1.12

by Contributed | Mar 23, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

Context

You might know that this new SPFx v1.12 feature has an old story behind it. In the past, developers were getting web part’s width by unsupported ways like DOM classes or attributes. It was working pretty well until Microsoft decided to update SharePoint Online DOM in October last year and broke a lot of custom developments. As Microsoft says, DOM is not and API and you should avoid taking any dependencies in it but until now, nothing was officially released to solve this issue correctly. It’s now done, SPFx v1.12 adds a width property and an onAfterResize() event to determine the width of your web part.

Note: In this article, I’m using a web part project with SPFx v.1.12 and React framework.

Determine web part size

In your web part TS file, you can add the onAfterResize() method to get notified when the web part is resized (for example when you resize your window):

  protected onAfterResize(newWidth: number) {
    console.log("New web part width: " + newWidth);
  }

This new method is documented as below:

This API is invoked when the web part container dom element width is changed, e.g. when the browser window is resized and when the property pane is toggled open/closed.

@param newWidth — Width (in pixels) of the container for the web part after the resize event.

@remarks
Web parts should utilize this method to perform operations such as potentially re-rendering components based on the new available width for the web part.

@virtual

Then you can use the width property as a prop for your React component:

  public render(): void {
    const element: React.ReactElement<IDemoWebPartWidthProps> = React.createElement(
      DemoWebPartWidth,
      {
        description: this.properties.description,
        webPartWidth: this.width
      }
    );

    ReactDom.render(element, this.domElement);
  }

This new property is documented as below:

This propery returns the width of the container for the web part.

@returns — Width (in pixels) of the container for the web part.

@remarks
Web parts should utilize this property to perform operations such as any conditional styling of components based on the initial available width for the web part.

@internalRemarks
This function retrieves web part's key to get stored section width from cache. If cache key does not exist in cache it will calculate and store the width before returning.

In the case where getWebPartCacheKey is not passed down, it will go through the original workflow to caculate web part width.

And you can display it in your component render() method:

<p className={ styles.description }>Web part width = { this.props.webPartWidth }</p>

Final result of this demo web part:

This a great add to SPFx and allows developers to re-render components when the web part is resized :thumbs_up:

Happy coding everyone!

Resources

Determine the rendered web part width | Microsoft Docs

SharePoint Framework enterprise guidance | Microsoft Docs

Enhancing Linux antivirus with behavior monitoring capabilities!

by Contributed | Mar 23, 2021 | Technology

This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.

As we continue our powerful momentum in securing Linux platforms, we are excited to announce the public preview of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Linux antivirus behavior monitoring and blocking!

The new preventive antivirus functionality complements our existing strong content-based capabilities with behavior monitoring and deep memory scanning. These enhancements bring immediate ability to closely monitor processes, file system activities, and process interactions within the system. The enhanced ability to correlate events and behaviors across multiple processes allows us to more generically detect and block malware based on their behavioral classification. These behavior-based signals will act as additional runtime signals for behavioral cloud-powered machine learning models and for effective runtime protection.

Our Linux antivirus behavior monitoring and blocking can be previewed on any Linux distribution that is currently supported by Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Linux:

• RHEL 7.2+,


• CentOS Linux 7.2+


• Ubuntu 16 LTS, or higher LTS


• SLES 12+


• Debian 9+


• Oracle Linux 7.2+

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Linux antivirus behavior monitoring seamlessly integrates into the existing preventive experiences. Behavior monitoring details and artifacts can be explored locally using the existing Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Linux command line interface.

Behavior monitoring alerts appear in the Microsoft Defender Security Center (as well as in the Microsoft 365 security center) alongside all other alerts and can be effectively investigated.

What are the preview prerequisites for Linux antivirus behavior monitoring and blocking?

To experience the Linux antivirus behavior monitoring and blocking in public preview, you’ll need to have preview features turned on in the Microsoft Defender Security Center. If you have not yet opted into previews, we encourage you to turn on preview features in the Microsoft Defender Security Center or in the Microsoft 365 security center today.

As a preview entry prerequisite, please ensure the following requirements are fulfilled:

• Device must be in the InsiderFast channel 


• Minimal Microsoft Defender for Endpoint version number must be (InsiderFast): 101.25.42


• Device must be explicitly enrolled into the preview. The preview enrollment can be activated / deactivated using the following commands:

$ sudo mdatp config behavior-monitoring –value enabled

$ sudo mdatp config behavior-monitoring –value disabled

• Microsoft Defender for Endpoint must be restarted for the enrollment/unenrollment commands to take effect.

How to start previewing Linux antivirus behavior monitoring and blocking?

To get started with the Linux antivirus behavior monitoring and blocking public preview:

• Ensure preview prerequisites are met


• Ensure to initially evaluate this new functionality on a selected subset of your non-production Linux devices


• Ensure cloud-delivered protection is enabled on devices enrolled into the preview by running the following command:  

$ mdatp health –field cloud_enabled # this should print “true”

• Try “Do It Yourself” scenarios to see features in action. You can find “Do It Yourself” scenarios attached to this blog


• Continue running Linux clients enrolled into evaluation as you normally would


• Share your feedback and observations to help us improve.

We welcome your feedback and look forward to hearing from you! You can submit feedback through the Microsoft Defender Security Center or through the Microsoft 365 security center.

Monitor the What’s new in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on Linux page for upcoming announcements (including general availability of Linux antivirus behavior monitoring and blocking). Stay tuned to our blog and Twitter channel to stay up to date on additional Microsoft Defender for Endpoint advancements.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is an industry leading, cloud ML powered endpoint security solution offering endpoint protection, endpoint detection and response, vulnerability management, and mobile threat defense. With our solution, threats are no match. If you are not yet taking advantage of Microsoft’s unrivaled threat optics and proven capabilities, sign up for a free Microsoft Defender for Endpoint trial today. 

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint team