I was recently asked how can we send out password expiry notifications to cloud identity users using a template managed email.  Ultimately we want to create amazing looking company branded emails, reminding users that their password would expire soon. This notification would include instructions on how to change the password and which prompts they could expect on applications.

The higher level question was also, Where do we keep business processes in a “serverless first” company strategy.

Requirements

• Standardize the password expiry notifications business process into a common platform where possible (for all other business processes).
• Do not run multiple business functions in any individual components.
• Use an email template specifying only the recipient and the substitutions per email. ( -FullName- in the template is replaced with “John Doe”)

The Strategy

I am a firm believer of solving business problems with serverless technology wherever possible.  There is a number of ways to solve the given problem. The easiest probably only running a powershell script querying AzureAD, iterate through the users and send a mail. I wanted to select a platform to standardize all business processes and integration that needed to happen. Keeping that in mind, I decided on Azure Logic Apps as the base technology for my integration and automation.

The Solution

Solution Overview

1. Azure Automation Runbook – Queries Azure AD and returns a list of users that have expiring passwords.
2. Logic App – This is the backbone of my business process.  The logic app owns the business process.
3. Azure Function – Logic Apps have a connector for Sendgrid, however my requirement was to run

Using 4 components for something as simple as password expiry notifications might seem like overkill, however explanation below.

Azure Automation Runbook

I chose an azure automation runbook as the input of my business process, for the following reasons:

• The Log Apps Azure AD connector doesn’t allow you to query azure ad, only retrieve a specific user object.  IE, I can’t do a Get-MSolUser -All on the built in Log Apps Connector.
• The where clause of my query was specific enough to warrant using an automation runbook.  Where clause based on:
  • The user is licensed (has a mailbox),
  • the user object is of type member (not guest), and;
  • the password expires
• Output needed to already be in Json for easy parsing in the logic app.

To setup your runbook, first create an azure automation account.  Once the account is created, create a new credential you will use to authenticate against AzureAD.

Runbook Code

# Retrieve credential from Automation asset store and authenticate to Azure AD
$AzureADCredential = Get-AutomationPSCredential -Name "AzureADCredential"
Connect-MsolService -Credential $AzureADCredential

# Get default domain to work against
$DefaultDomain = Get-MsolDomain | Where-Object {$_.IsDefault -eq $true} 

# Retrieve password policy
$PasswordPolicy = (Get-MsolPasswordPolicy -DomainName $DefaultDomain.Name).ValidityPeriod 

# If there isn't a policy set, then the default is 90 days
if ($PasswordPolicy -eq $null)
{
    $PasswordPolicy = New-TimeSpan -Days 90
}

    # Get all users in Azure AD
    $ADUsers = Get-MsolUser -All | Where {($_.UserType -eq "Member") -and ($_.IsLicensed -eq $true) -and ($_.PasswordNeverExpires -ne $true)} 
    #$ADUsers
    $Users = @()


foreach ($ADUser in $ADUsers)
{
    # Identify when the password was last changed
    $LastChanged = $ADUser.LastPasswordChangeTimestamp

    # Get the days since the last time the password was changed.
    $DaysSinceLastChanged = New-TimeSpan -Start (Get-Date) -End $LastChanged

    $AlternateEmailAddresses = $ADUser.AlternateEmailAddresses
    $DaysLeft = ($PasswordPolicy + $DaysSinceLastChanged.Days)

        $Users += New-Object psobject -Property @{
                   ObjectID = $ADUser.ObjectId
                   UserDisplayName = $ADUser.DisplayName
                   UserPrincipalName = $ADUser.UserPrincipalName
                   AlternateEmailAddresses = $ADUser.AlternateEmailAddresses
                   PasswordLastChanged = $LastChanged
                   DaysLeft  = $DaysLeft
               }
   
}

#Convert to Json, so that it is in a workable format in the logic app.
Write-Output $Users | ConvertTo-Json

This should provide an output that looks similar to this:

[
    {
        "PasswordLastChanged":  "\/Date(1503081841000)\/",
        "UserPrincipalName":  "jbloggs@mydomain.com",
        "ObjectID":  "aaaaaaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaa-aaaaaaaaaaa",
        "UserDisplayName":  "Joe Bloggs",
        "AlternateEmailAddresses":  [
                                        "bloggy@mcbloggs.com"
                                    ],
        "DaysLeft":  5
   },
    {
        "PasswordLastChanged":  "\/Date(1519181630000)\/",
        "UserPrincipalName":  "jdoe@mydomain.com",
        "ObjectID":  "0d24c8ec-bbbb-bbbb-bbbb-bbbbbbbbbbbbb",
        "UserDisplayName":  "Jane Doe",
        "AlternateEmailAddresses":  [
                                    ],
        "DaysLeft":  25
    },
    {
        "PasswordLastChanged":  "\/Date(1517502057000)\/",
        "UserPrincipalName":  "ckent@mydomain.com",
        "ObjectID":  "2587277e-cccc-cccc-cccc-cccccccccccc",
        "UserDisplayName":  "Clark Kent",
        "AlternateEmailAddresses":  [
                                    ],
        "DaysLeft":  9
    },
    {
        "PasswordLastChanged":  "\/Date(1441998373000)\/",
        "UserPrincipalName":  "brubble@mydomain.com",
        "ObjectID":  "b545dd73-13e5-46e1-8218-eb89a33f574b",
        "UserDisplayName":  "Barnie Rubble",
        "AlternateEmailAddresses":  [
                                        "rubadubdub@stonemail.com"
                                    ],
        "DaysLeft":  4
    }
]

So now I have queried AzureAD for my users with passwords that change, and their values on when it expires.

Azure Logic App

I chose an Azure Logic to run the workflow to keep to my standard. This provides me the ability to monitor the process hrough Azure Log Analytics (back to standardization).  If I wanted to extend this workflow at a later time, that would be easy without touching any other components.

Azure Function

Logic Apps has a connector for Sendgrid, but it’s very basic in the sense that it just sends out email to the user as if you were calling an smtp server.  The “advanced” functionality of the SendGrid api, like calling a template, isn’t available at the time of writing this post.  I did however create a new azure suggestion, asking for support for these advanced features in the connector.  Upvote here: https://feedback.azure.com/forums/287593-logic-apps/suggestions/33461014-sendgrid-logic-apps-connector-add-support-for-cus

Because we cannot just call templates in the sendgrid connector, I needed to call the Sendgrid API manually to be able to call the template and specify the substitutions.  So I chose to write my own code in an Azure Function. I wanted to keep all my variables managed in code, and ultimately reuse this function for all transactional template notifications that needs to be sent out.  In essence, this function will be the reusable function for any logic app or business process that needs to send out mail via a template, so the function is extended a little past the requirements of this process to cater for future use.

To start off, create a new Azure Function, following this article https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/functions-how-to-use-sendgrid with the exception of using the C# webhook trigger template, and not manual trigger (or configure a webhook trigger after the fact….)

Once you have the sendgrid output configured, key added to app settings, etc, as per above, I changed my code a bit to grab the json out of the web request, build the appropriate code, and send it off to sendgrid, as per the below:

#r "SendGrid"
#r "Newtonsoft.Json"
using System;
using SendGrid;
using SendGrid.Helpers.Mail;
using Newtonsoft.Json;

public static void Run(HttpRequestMessage req, TraceWriter log, out Mail message)
{
    // parse query parameter
    var json = req.Content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result;
    RequestData reqData = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<RequestData>(json);

    //Build the mail object
    message = new Mail();
    message.From = new Email(reqData.FromAddress, reqData.FromName);
    log.Info("From address set to: " + reqData.FromName + " (" + reqData.FromAddress + ")");
    message.Subject = reqData.Subject;
    log.Info("Subject:  " + reqData.Subject);
    

    var personalization = new Personalization();
     message.TemplateId = reqData.TemplateID;
    log.Info("TemplateID set to:  " + reqData.TemplateID);

    foreach (Recipient Recipient in reqData.Recipients)
    {
        personalization.AddTo(new Email(Recipient.Address, Recipient.Name));
        log.Info("Added Recipient " + Recipient.Name + " (" + Recipient.Address + ")");
    }

        foreach (Substitution Substitution in reqData.Substitutions)
    {
        personalization.AddSubstitution(Substitution.Name, Substitution.Value);
        log.Info("Added Substitution " + Substitution.Name + " (" + Substitution.Value + ")");
    }

    Content content = new Content
    {
        Type = "text/html",
        Value = "test"
    };


    message.AddContent(content);
    message.AddPersonalization(personalization);
    log.Info("Mail Sent to SendGrid!");


}

public class RequestData
{
    public string TemplateID { get; set; }
    public string Subject { get; set; }
    public string FromName { get; set; }
    public string FromAddress { get; set; }
    public List<Recipient> Recipients { get; set; }
    public List<Substitution> Substitutions { get; set; }
}

public class Recipient
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Address { get; set; }
}

public class Substitution
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Value { get; set; }
}

SendGrid

I chose Sendgrid as the messaging platform as it is a feature rich platform for sending out mail and the fact that they had transactional templates built in.  I created my sendgrid account, created a new transactional mail template, which allowed me to compose the mail template, and add some substitution fields in the body that would ultimately be replaced with the data I pass in:

and my template:

As you can see, it still needs to be styled and branded, but you get the point.  Once my function runs, it will replace the -FullName- and -DaysLeft- parameters through the substitutions I pass into the API, personalizing the email to the user.

Putting it all together

Here’s the full Logic App design to do the work from start to finish:

and that is how you send Office 365 password expiry notifications to end users with cloud identities. Until the AzureAD team builds this functionality into the AzureAD platform

The post AzureAD (Office 365) Password Expiry Notifications appeared first on Tjopsta.

Problem

Ingest data from a Netatmo Weather Station to Azure Log Analytics and present data visually appealing.

Solution

The Netatmo Weather Station consists of two sensors, one indoor and one outdoor, to measure environmental metrics like temperature, humidity, CO2, etc.  The general setup of a netatmo is downloading the mobile app to your phone, creating a new Netatmo account and then connecting the weather station to your account.  Once this is done, the weather station uploads sensor readings every X few minutes (Not sure how often, I’m guessing every 5 minutes) to Netatmo.  The app on your phone queries the netatmo service, which displays rich dashboards of the data.

This then also meant that you cannot read data from the sensors directly, however Netatmo exposes an API through their development program Netatmo Connect, to read data from your sensors and systems on your account.

Thus, the high level steps for this solution was:

1. Create a new app on Netatmo Connect
2. Write a Powershell script to read the sensor readings from the Netatmo API and upload into the Log Analytics HTTP collector Api
3. Create some dashboards.

Netatmo Connect

Navigate to at https://dev.netatmo.com/dev/createanapp and create a new app.  This will provide you with a ClientID and a Client Secret. Keep for later.

Powershell Script

I used the powershell script used in the examples section in the official Log Analytics HTTP Data Collector API documentation, and added the netatmo api reads.  This is the code that did all the work.  Note that you need to change all the fields at the top that’s marked ‘xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx’with your own config data.  Other than that, you can pretty much copy and paste into something likePowershell ISE and run and it should work.

The short explanation of what the script does is this:

• Auth to Netatmo
• Read sensor data from API
• Deconstruct the json response from Netatmo into a powershell object
• Correlate the different measurements and add a new log entry for each sensor and its values.

Code:

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
# THIS CODE AND ANY ASSOCIATED INFORMATION ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT  
# WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT  
# LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND/OR FITNESS  
# FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK OF USE, INABILITY TO USE, OR   
# RESULTS FROM THE USE OF THIS CODE REMAINS WITH THE USER.  
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
$global:access_token = $null
$global:refresh_token = $null
#Netatmo Details. Client ID and secret from creating the App, and a username and password that has access to the api.
$global:client_id='xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'
$global:client_secret='xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'
$global:Netatmo_username='xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'
$global:Netatmo_password='xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'

#OMS Workspace Variables
$global:CustomerId = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" #Workspace ID
$global:SharedKey = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
$global:LogType = "Netatmo_WeatherStation" #Create a Log Type name

#Function to send data to OMS workspace
function WriteOMSEvent($SensorID, $SensorName, $MeasurementName, $MeasurementValue){
        #Specify a time in the format YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ to specify a created datetime for the records.
        $TimeStampField = [DateTime]::UtcNow.ToString("r")

#Create json record
$json = @"
[{  "Sensor_id": "$SensorID",
    "Sensor_name": "$SensorName",
    "Measurement_name": "$MeasurementName",
    "Value": $MeasurementValue
}]
"@

        #Output the json to console so that we can see the results.
        $json

                # Function to create the authorization signature.
                Function Build-Signature ($customerId, $SharedKey, $date, $contentLength, $method, $contentType, $resource)
                {
                    $xHeaders = "x-ms-date:" + $date
                    $stringToHash = $method + "`n" + $contentLength + "`n" + $contentType + "`n" + $xHeaders + "`n" + $resource

                    $bytesToHash = [Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes($stringToHash)
                    $keyBytes = [Convert]::FromBase64String($SharedKey)

                    $sha256 = New-Object System.Security.Cryptography.HMACSHA256
                    $sha256.Key = $keyBytes
                    $calculatedHash = $sha256.ComputeHash($bytesToHash)
                    $encodedHash = [Convert]::ToBase64String($calculatedHash)
                    $authorization = 'SharedKey {0}:{1}' -f $customerId,$encodedHash
                    return $authorization
                }


                # Function doing the post to the OMS Workspace.
                Function Post-OMSData($customerId, $SharedKey, $body, $LogType) 
                {
                    $method = "POST"
                    $contentType = "application/json"
                    $resource = "/api/logs"
                    $rfc1123date = [DateTime]::UtcNow.ToString("r")
                    $contentLength = $body.Length
                    $signature = Build-Signature `
                        -customerId $customerId `
                        -sharedKey $SharedKey `
                        -date $rfc1123date `
                        -contentLength $contentLength `
                        -fileName $fileName `
                        -method $method `
                        -contentType $contentType `
                        -resource $resource
                    $uri = "https://" + $customerId + ".ods.opinsights.azure.com" + $resource + "?api-version=2016-04-01"

                    $headers = @{
                        "Authorization" = $signature;
                        "Log-Type" = $LogType;
                        "x-ms-date" = $rfc1123date;
                        "time-generated-field" = $TimeStampField;
                    }

                $response = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $uri -Method $method -ContentType $contentType -Headers $headers -Body $body -UseBasicParsing
                return $response.StatusCode
            } 

            # The only function after creating the json document that's doing the work.
            Post-OMSData -customerId $customerId -sharedKey $SharedKey -body ([System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes($json)) -logType $LogType  
            }
#End of Function WriteOMSEvent

#Authenticate to the Netatmo API and get an access token.
function Netatmo-DoAuth {
        $postParams = @{
                        grant_type='password';
                        client_id=$client_id;
                        client_secret=$client_secret;
                        username=$Netatmo_username;
                        password=$Netatmo_password
                        }

        $Request = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://api.netatmo.com/oauth2/token -Method POST -Body $postParams -UseBasicParsing
        if ($Request.StatusCode -eq 200) {
            $ResponseJson = $Request.Content | ConvertFrom-Json
            $global:access_token = $ResponseJson.access_token
            $global:refresh_token =  $ResponseJson.refresh_token
        }
        ELSE
        { 
         write-error -message $Request.StatusDescription -ErrorId $Request.StatusCode
        }
}

#Read the Netatmo API for Sensor data, convert into an object, and post to OMS.
function ReadSensorData{$SensorpostParams = @{access_token=$access_token}                
        #Request Sensor data from Netatmo
        $SensorRequest = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://api.netatmo.com/api/getstationsdata -Method POST -Body $SensorpostParams -UseBasicParsing
        if ($SensorRequest.StatusCode -eq 200) {
            #Convert to object.               
            $SensorContent = $SensorRequest.Content | ConvertFrom-Json

            #Indoor unit sensors
            $MainUnit_id = $SensorContent.body.devices[0]._id
            $MainUnit_module_name = $SensorContent.body.devices[0].module_name
            $MainUnit_wifi_status = $SensorContent.body.devices[0].wifi_status
            $MainUnit_Pressure = $SensorContent.body.devices[0].dashboard_data.Pressure 
            $MainUnit_pressure_trend = $SensorContent.body.devices[0].dashboard_data.pressure_trend
            $MainUnit_Temperature = $SensorContent.body.devices[0].dashboard_data.Temperature
            $MainUnit_temp_trend = $SensorContent.body.devices[0].dashboard_data.temp_trend
            $MainUnit_Humidity = $SensorContent.body.devices[0].dashboard_data.Humidity 
            $MainUnit_CO2 = $SensorContent.body.devices[0].dashboard_data.CO2 
         
            WriteOMSEvent -SensorID $MainUnit_id -SensorName $MainUnit_module_name -MeasurementName "Pressure" -MeasurementValue $MainUnit_Pressure 
            WriteOMSEvent -SensorID $MainUnit_id -SensorName $MainUnit_module_name -MeasurementName "Wifi Signal" -MeasurementValue $MainUnit_wifi_status 
            WriteOMSEvent -SensorID $MainUnit_id -SensorName $MainUnit_module_name -MeasurementName "Temperature" -MeasurementValue $MainUnit_Temperature 
            WriteOMSEvent -SensorID $MainUnit_id -SensorName $MainUnit_module_name -MeasurementName "Humidity" -MeasurementValue $MainUnit_Humidity
            WriteOMSEvent -SensorID $MainUnit_id -SensorName $MainUnit_module_name -MeasurementName "CO2" -MeasurementValue $MainUnit_CO2 

            #Outdoor Unit Sensors
            $OutdoorUnit_id = $SensorContent.body.devices[0].modules[0]._id
            $OutdoorUnit_module_name = $SensorContent.body.devices[0].modules[0].module_name
            $OutdoorUnit_Temperature =  $SensorContent.body.devices[0].modules[0].dashboard_data.Temperature -as [double]
            $OutdoorUnit_temp_trend =  $SensorContent.body.devices[0].modules[0].dashboard_data.temp_trend
            $OutdoorUnit_Humidity =  $SensorContent.body.devices[0].modules[0].dashboard_data.Humidity -as [double]

            WriteOMSEvent -SensorID $OutdoorUnit_id -SensorName $OutdoorUnit_module_name -MeasurementName "Temperature" -MeasurementValue $OutdoorUnit_Temperature 
            WriteOMSEvent -SensorID $OutdoorUnit_id -SensorName $OutdoorUnit_module_name -MeasurementName "Humidity" -MeasurementValue $OutdoorUnit_Humidity 

        }
        ELSE
        {
            if ($SensorRequest.StatusCode -eq 403) {
                write-error -message "Netatmo Unauthorized, refreshing access token"
                Netatmo-DoAuth
                ReadSensorData
                }

         write-error -message $Request.StatusDescription -ErrorId $Request.StatusCode
        }
}

#Call the two main functions to do the work
Netatmo-DoAuth
ReadSensorData

Using Azure automation to run script on a schedule

I wanted to be able to run the script once an hour automatically, which I can do on my workstation, but I decided to do it on an Azure Automation account in the free sku… because why not.

To get this done, I created a new Azure automation account:

Once this was done, I created a new runbook, pasted my powershell into it, and setup a schedule running once an hour.

Tested the script, which would show like this if successful:

Over to Log Analytics

After about an hour of sending events over to Log Analytics, you should get the customer fields being in the settings section:

Once these fields show, you should see all fields when doing a search:

and that pretty much proves the concept.  However I wanted to make it look a bit more awesome, so I created an extra custom solution to make my data look great

and drilling down to the solution looks like this.

and once you click on a metric, it shows details, also in a graph.

If you would like to know how I created the custom solution, let me know and I’ll add a blog post about it.  Also, if you would like to get notified of new posts, please subscribe to my blog top left of the page.

The post Netatmo weather station data ingestion to Azure Log Analytics appeared first on Tjopsta.

My Setup

1. Telus Actiontec router setup in port 1 bridge mode
2. Mikrotik router in router mode with port 1 connected to actiontech port 1 bridge
3. Mikrotik router is on firmware version 6.34.6 (bugfix only release).  on the current release (6.36.2) my routes were unreachable.  I had to go down to the bugfix release to get things stable.

Actiontec setup

1. Logon to your actiontec router with your admin username and password (Normally noted at the back of the router), go to advanced settings and set port 1 into bridge mode.

Mikrotik Setup

1. logon to webfig or winbox and navigate to System / Packages and install the ipv6 package.
2. Open a new terminal window and paste the below code

The following code worked for me.  Note that you need to change the parameters in red to your own interface names in order for it to work:

/ipv6 dhcp-client
add add-default-route=yes interface=1-wan-telus pool-name=telus-ipv6 request=prefix
/ipv6 firewall filter
add chain=forward protocol=icmpv6
add chain=input protocol=icmpv6
add chain=input comment="Allow DHCPv6 inbound" dst-port=546 proto
add chain=forward connection-state=established,related
add chain=forward out-interface=1-wan-telus
add action=drop chain=forward in-interface=1-wan-telus
/ipv6 address
add address=::1/64 from-pool=telus-ipv6 interface=2-int-switch

I had to do quite a lot of troubleshooting at this point because it should just work, but routes were unreachable.  Going down to firmware 6.34.6 is what fixed it for me.

At this point after you restart your pc’s nic you should get new shiny ipv6 ips.  Type “what is my ip” in google and you should see your ipv6 ip.  Welcome to IPv6!

The post How To: Setup your home network with IPv6 using Mikrotik routers and Telus Optik Fibre appeared first on Tjopsta.

The end result we are trying to achieve here:

• Send an email to a support mailbox, hosted on Office 365 and receive this on CRM online as a queue item in a “Support” Queue

Note: We are not setting delegate permissions or anything as such for the email router in this tutorial.  This tutorial is to get our qualifying criteria to work!

I’m going to assume that you already have a Microsoft Online Services account set-up for your company with Office 365 and CRM Online subscriptions loaded, thus you should be here:

I created two users for this demo.  An Admin account, and a support user. (Mailbox that will receive my support emails)

Right, let’s get this show on the road.

Step 1 (CRM Configuration):

Login to CRM, and go to SETTINGS / BUSINESS MANAGEMENT / QUEUES

Queue customization screen of CRM online

Click on the “New” button to create the new Queue.

Set the following field properties:

• Queue Name: Support (Or whatever you want to call your queue)

• Email address: The email address of the mailbox you will use in Office 365 to receive your support mails.

• Convert to Email Activities: All Email Messages

• Email access type – incoming: E-mail Router

• Email access type – Outgoing: E-mail Router

New CRM Queue form

Once Saved, you need to approve the email address for the queue.  To do this, click on the newly created queue and click “Approve E-mail”.   You will be presented with a dialog box where you click on ok.

Queue E-mail Address approval page

Step 2: (CRM E-mail router configuration manager config)

Next, startup the E-mail router configuration manager which can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/download/details.aspx?id=27818

Note:  You can install this on any pc.

What we need to achieve here is the following:

• Create an Incoming Profile (Tell CRM which mailbox to COLLECT mail from to change to queue items)

• Create an Outgoing Profile (Tell CRM which mailbox to use to SEND mail)

In the Configuration Profiles Tab, click “New”

To set our Incoming profile, populate the following fields:

• Profile Name: Support_Incoming (or whatever you’d like to call it)

• Direction: Incoming

• E-mail Server Type: ExchangeOnline

• Check the box for Use Autodiscover

• Access Credentials: Other Specified

• Username: your support mailbox email address (In this demo, mine is support@testlabsca.onmicrosoft.com)

• Password: your password for your support mailbox.

Support Queue Incoming Profile Settings

Click OK,

Create another new profile (Now for outgoing) by clicking “New” with the following properties

• PROFILE NAME: SUPPORT_OUTGOING (OR WHATEVER YOU’D LIKE TO CALL IT)
• DIRECTION: OUTGOING
• E-MAIL SERVER TYPE: EXCHANGEONLINE
• CHECK THE BOX FOR USE AUTODISCOVER
• ACCESS CREDENTIALS: OTHER SPECIFIED
• USERNAME: YOUR SUPPORT MAILBOX EMAIL ADDRESS (IN THIS DEMO, MINE IS SUPPORT@TESTLABSCA.ONMICROSOFT.COM)
• PASSWORD: YOUR PASSWORD FOR YOUR SUPPORT MAILBOX.
• ACCESS TYPE: DELEGATE ACCESS

Support Queue Outgoing Profile Settings

When you click Ok, you should now be left with the following two profiles, or something similar:

E-mail router configuration profiles

Next, click on the “Deployments” Tab, and click “New”

for this you will need your organization unique name on CRM online, so to get this, pop back to the CRM Online page, and go to:

SETTINGS / CUSTOMIZATIONS / DEVELOPER RESOURCES

Your unique organization name will be in the first block. Write this down or copy it somewhere.

CRM Online Unique Organization name

Now pop back to your email router config, and in the new profile screen, populate the following fields:

• DEPLOYMENT: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
• Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server: By default, the url there will be https://dev.crm.dynamics.com/ which is for on-premises exchange servers.  You need to change this url to https://disco.crm.dynamics.com/
• Access Credentials: Enter a username and password the configuration manager can use to authenticate to your CRM online account.  This needs to be an administrator account.
• Incoming Configuration Profile: (Select the incoming profile created)
• Outgoing configuration profile: (Select the outgoing profile created)

New Deployment Page

At the end it should look like this:

CRM Online deployment profile

Once complete you can click on the 3rd tab called “Users, Queues and Forward Mailboxes”.  Click on the “Load Data” button.

If your credentials you entered in the deployment profile was correct, you should see your queue that you created listed, like so:

Queues in the CRM E-mail Router

Your configuration should have picked up the profiles you created.  To test this, click “Test Access”, whereby if all your configurations are ok, you should get the following screen:

Profile Tests Results

Once your tests complete successfully, you can click on “Publish”

Publish Profile Screen

That’s it!

Now let’s test our configuration by sending an email to the support box, to see if we get queue items in our Support Queue

Sending test mail to support queue

Once sent, let’s check if we’ve got a support queue item.

Remember to change your Queue Items view to “All Items .  The items aren’t assigned to anyone yet, so you will not see the item if your view is on the default “Items I am working on”.  Also change your queue drop down to “All Queues” or the support queue.

Queue test item in queue

As you can see, our queue items are there (I sent one from Gmail, and one from internal)

Test Queue item detail.

This concludes the tutorial.  If you have any questions, please comment.

Next post we will look at automatically creating Cases for emails sent to the support box, and replying to the client with an appropriate email and “ticket number”

If you found that this post helped you, please consider donating on the right.

The post How to setup automated email queues with Microsoft CRM online and Office 365 appeared first on Tjopsta.

Login to Windows Intune and go to:

ADMINISTRATION /  MOBILE DEVICE MANAGEMENT

At the right under “Tasks” click “Set Mobile Device Management Authority” and select “Windows Intune”

Now go to:

ADMINISTRATION / MOBILE DEVICE MANAGEMENT / IOS / UPLOAD AN APNS CERTIFICATE

and click on “Download the APNs certificate request”.

You will now be presented with a file, save it somewhere on your desktop.

Once you have your request file, you can now request a new certificate from Apple.  To do this, you will need an apple ID.  I suggest you create a new appleID for your company with a generic email address that someone would be able to access should you leave your company.

To do this, go to https://appleid.apple.com and click on “Create”

Fill in the details required to create the new AppleID.

Once complete, you will have to verify the request.

Once created, click on the “Apple Certificates Portal” link in Windows Intune and login with your Apple ID.

Once Logged in, click on “Create a certificate”.  You will upload your certificate request file and at the end of the wizard, you will be presented with this screen

Download your certificate.

Go back to Windows Intune, and click on the button labeled “Upload the APNs Certificate”

Click on the Browse button, and select your certificate file.

Enter your appleID you used to create the certificate in the “Apple ID” field.  (This is just so that Windows Intune can remind you which appleid you used, it’s not used for anything else)

Once uploaded, you will get a confirmation screen.

Now you should be able to enroll IOS devices.  Ask your users to navigate (Using NB: SAFARI) to https://m.manage.microsoft.com on their iPhones.

Click on the “Install” button, to active the management profile.

Once again, click on “Install”

Accept the Warning and click “Install” AGAIN

Which should then be installed.  If you now go to windows Intune and give it a few minutes, you will start seeing devices.

The post How to manage IOS devices with Windows Intune appeared first on Tjopsta.

After an extensive search around the web, I learned that setting up office 365 on your phone works if you use the OWA url as the server name for your exchange server.  eg:

I am on the ch1prd0802 client facing server

but as per microsoft I should use pod51019.outlook.com

Thus, I just used the OWA server as per the OWA url, and all syncs fine now.

Hope this helps for anyone out there also battling with the same thing.

The post Office 365 Exchange ActiveSync settings for the Samsung Galaxy S2 GT-I9100 appeared first on Tjopsta.

Exchange is installed on a GC domain controller, and I couldn’t figure out why exchange couldn’t see it, as replication etc was fine between domain controllers.

I started investigating and the MSExchange ADAccess service reported the following:

Process MAD.EXE (PID=2916). 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:
hrcptws001.mydomain.local CDG 1 7 7 1 0 1 1 7 1
HRCPTWS002.mydomain.local CDG 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
HRCPTWS003.mydomain.local CDG 1 7 7 1 0 1 1 7 1
Out-of-site:

This was a problem for me, as the exchange was installed on HRCPTWS002, and this told me that it was not reachable, and it wasn’t going to use it as a config server.

After a good couple of hours of troubleshooting Active Directory, I found that it was a pretty simple

IPv6 was disabled on the network card…

For some reason, exchange wants ipv6, and for some unknown reason, I disabled it when I setup the server.  The only thing I did was enable ipv6 on the network card, restarted the exchange services, and a couple of minutes later my ADAccess service returned a log evevnt that read:

Process MAD.EXE (PID=2916). 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:
hrcptws001.mydomain.local CDG 1 7 7 1 0 1 1 7 1
HRCPTWS002.mydomain.local CDG 1 7 7 1 0 1 1 7 1
HRCPTWS003.mydomain.local CDG 1 7 7 1 0 1 1 7 1
Out-of-site:

Happy Exchange Server.

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When I heard word that Softline Pastel launched an online accounting package, I was pretty sceptical.  Reason being, the pastel accounting packages (the lower end packages), just looked ugly.  If you aren’t a chartered accountant, and work with pastel all day and are used to the interfaces, you would hate it, and I did.

So I had a look at the demo company, and I was pleasantly surprised at how clean and fresh the layout was.  So I signed up for the beta, but I quickly saw that it was still pretty lacking in functionality and it wasn’t a year after my first look that I actually started using the system in production.

I signed up for a year’s subscription and at the time that I signed up it cost me roughly R800 for the whole year, which I thought was pretty cheap seeing that it is cheaper than buying Pastel Xpress off the shelf and paying the yearly support fees.

Pre-Mybusiness Online, I was using Pastel Xpress, and migrating from the offline to online version (If you want to compare it like that), was a matter of exporting my customers, suppliers and products, and importing it on the online platform.  I do believe if softline wants to push this product, they should write a tool or two to make migrations a little easier.

Navigation is pretty easy to work around, and once you know what all the tabs in their navigation do, it is pretty easy to get from function to function.

Pastel MyBusiness Online Navigation

The rest is pretty straight forward, it’s an accounting application, and it does what you would expect from an accounting application.

Let’s run through some of the features I value most:

Recurring Invoices

Let’s get this straight.  I absolutely hate… hate doing books.  I want to spend my time making money, not reporting it.  The recurring invoices feature I think is the feature I value most in this application.

Pastel MyBusiness Online Recurring Invoices

Setting up a recurring invoice is pretty easy, click on create new recurring invoice, specify the customer, setup the schedule when the invoice needs to run, and set your line items.  You can also set if the invoice needs to be created automatically, whereupon the invoice will be automatically created, and emailed automatically to your client should you select the option, or you can set it up to create as a draft, where you can then first “review” the created invoice, before it get’s actioned against your client’s account.

Downsides:

This is a pretty powerful feature, and I don’t think it’s full potential is quite used here.

• Only one recipient and one cc recipient can be used to email the invoice

• It’s limited to Invoices, no recurring Quotes or Orders.

Import Bank Statements 

I give three cheers to softline for coming up with this.  None of their offline products come close to the way they handle bank statements in the online package, which makes this brilliant.

To import bank statements, it’s pretty much a case of exporting from your online banking, and uploading the file.  Once you click on import, a grid list box is shown with all the transactions in the file.

The methodology they used here is great, because no matter how many times I have tried to import duplicates, it simply doesn’t import transactions which are already in the system.  Another big plus, is that you can map transactions.  For eg:  For each one of my clients, I give a unique code they need to use when they pay us.  Customer ABC shoes will for eg have a reference of “ABC001” which I provide to them.  so every time that ABC shows pays us, the reference on our bank statements read “EFT PAYMENT ABC001”.  This I map on the import bank statements screen once to which customer it needs to map, and once it is done, every time I import a bank statement, it compares my mappings, and shows the transaction line in grey, which means its ready to reconcile.

Pastel MyBusiness Online Bank Statement Mappings

After the first 3 months of using the system, I have mapped most of my clients, so reconciling bank statements is now a case of just checking unmapped transactions, and the whole bank recon process takes me less than 15 minutes now.

All we really need now, is automatic bank statement imports… someone at pastel setup a direct line to the banks already?

Downsides:

In order for the mappings to work correctly, your customers need to use the same payment reference every time they pay, which is how it should be.  Normally you need to provide this “Account Number” to your customer, and there is currently no way that the system gives you something like a unique reference for each customer.  The way they handle customers now is by description only (for eg, ABC Shoes), which I prefer, but at least give me some sort of unique database ID, or incremental number for each customer, something like a customer account number which is automated by the system.

I overcame this limitation by creating a custom customer field name called “Customer Number” and when I create a new customer, I populate the custom field with an incremental number that I generate manually.  This number then shows on the customer’s invoices and statements which they use as their EFT payment reference. Not ideal.. but it does the job.

Customer Statement Runs

Also a great feature.  Select from which to which customer you want to run statements for, click submit, and it emails your customers’ statements to them.

Pastel MyBusiness Customer Statement Runs

Downsides

It would be nice if you could schedule this monthly / weekly to run automatically.

Report Designer

This is the first time that I have seen a rich text / html based report designer for any pastel product.  You simply download the report designer application, and once you login, you can design report templates to your heart’s content.

Once you have created your template, you simply save it, then logon to the web system, and select the template you want to use for that specific document type.  Hands down a great feature.

Pastel MyBusiness Online Report Designer

Downsides:

The reports are all HTML based.  Which is good.  For our invoice templates, we did some hefty designing in order to make it look great, we in some parts have little lines overlapping (sometimes you do have to let certain elements overlap, in order for your design to work) which looks great on our PDF exports, but viewing a report in HTML online simply just looks horrid, thus we always export to PDF.

Overall System Shortcomings:

There are a couple of things that this system could really do with:

• No API

• Limited Email Capabilities

The functionality to use email for documentation etc is there, but it’s very limited.  I would like to be able to go into my customer’s account, and setup extra contacts and specify if I want documents to be sent to this contact automatically when I create a document for the customer, for eg: also send the invoice I just created to this contact, include this contact in the list of recipients for statements, etc.

Conclusion

Pastel’s attempt at an online accounting system is so far so good.  It’s cheap, and as long as they actively keep on developing on the platform, and release updates often, I foresee this as a winner.  It does have it’s shortcomings, but pastel does have a suggestion box (suggestion@pastelmybusiness.co.za) and they are actively monitoring it. I think the idea of an API will be a deal breaker or maker, as these days you do need some kind of integration mechanism for any system out there.

I would recommend this product to anyone that has just started up a company, or someone that wants the online capabilities of an accounting system.

The post Pastel MyBusiness Online Review appeared first on Tjopsta.

The SAN I had available to do this on, is the Promise VessRAID 1830i

NOTE: Your interface to your SAN might look different, but the terminology stays the same.

  1. Creating the storage LUN on the SAN�

Login to your SAN interface, and create a new logical drive / LUN (whatever your SAN calls it)

For the purpose of the tutorial, I created a LUN of 500GB in space, in RAID 5 configuration.

My SAN asks if I want to edit lun mapping (Masking), once a LUN is configured. I always mask luns, as I want devices to only see the LUNs they are entitled to. I clicked “OK”

Next I selected my iSCSI initiator (Shown later in post), and gave the LUN I just created an ID of 0, as this is the first LUN that I am assigning to my ESXI server.

And once I submitted my changes, my SAN is all setup and ready to go.

2. Adding the LUN to ESXI

Now, open your vSphere client, and login to your ESXI host. On the main page, click on your “Congifuration” tab, then click “Storage Adapters”

Your first item will be the iScsi initiator. Select it, and click on “Properties” in the below section

You will first need to enable your iScsi initiator. To do this, click “Configure” in the properties dialog.

Check the “Enable” tickbox, and in the iSCSI Name field, you will see the name of the iSCSI initiator (Which you will use on your san for LUN masking) and click “Ok”

On the next Tab (Dynamic Discovery), click on “Add” and enter the IP address of one of your iSCSI ports of your san, mine is 10.1.1.27

Click “Ok” and then “Close” the properties window.

Once this is done, vSphere will prompt you to rescan the iSCSI host for any new luns available, click “Yes”

Once the adapter is rescanned (Takes a couple of seconds), your LUN will be shown in the list view below.

The reason I am only seeing the 500GB LUN I Created, is because I use LUN Masking on my SAN, thus making only the created LUN available to the ESXI iSCSI initiator.

Now, your SAN LUN is Added to ESXI. Only config left is to tell ESXI what to use the new storage for.

Click on “Storage” on the left menu in the “Hardware” section, where you will see it displays my current local datastore which is only the local harddrives. Click on “Add Storage”

In the Add Storage wizard first page, select “Disk/LUN” and click Next

Your Added LUN will be in the list, select it, and click “Next”

Next will be a summary of your disk layout, click next

(NOTE: If you get an error when this page loads, it will probably be because there is a SAN operation running on the LUN like Initialization, Syncing, capacity expansion, etc – all in all, if you get an error here, your LUN isn’t ready on the san)

Next enter a name for the LUN (Just so you can identify it)

On the next page you will see the file formatting config, I left the defaults, and clicked next

You will get a final summary page to confirm everything, click “Finish”

Once you have successfully finished the wizard, you will see your LUN storage ready in the storage list.

Now when you create a new VM, you will see the new storage on your san in the Datastore step of the create VM Wizard.

And of course, when adding a new hard drive on a VM.

Final Word:

It is really really easy to add a SAN as a storage location for your VMs in ESXI, the Promise VessRAID range is an affordable SAN solution for small businesses and I would recommend this to any company that would like to enter the SAN arena for little cost. The Promise VessRAID 1830i will cost you around $250 with disks unpopulated.

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