Microsoft 365 changes regularly, changes are implemented almost on a daily basis and as an Admin responsible for the service you must be aware of which changes are coming to your tenant. In order to inform administrators Microsoft uses the Message Center. From within the message center administrative users are also automatically subscribed to weekly…
Category: Modern Workplace
How to prevent your users from downloading and installing Office via the Office portals
If your goal is to restrict the usage of Office applications on non-managed devices and only allow Web access in limited mode (as explained in my article: Limit Access to Outlook Web Access, SharePoint Online and OneDrive using Conditional Access App Enforced Restrictions) you might ask yourself if you want the Office applications to be…
Assigning groups to Azure AD roles and Privileged access groups, a first look!
On August 13th 2020, Alex Simons (Microsoft Identity PM) announced that assigning groups to Azure AD roles in now in public preview. This feature is one of the most requested features to be found in the Azure AD feedback forum. I have been following this feature request for a while now, and up until recently…
Self Service Purchasing for Power Platform, Visio and Project, should you keep it enabled or disable the functionality?
In October 2019, Microsoft announced that it would enable end users to buy and manage their own licenses within their corporate account. At that time this “feature” was announced for the Power Platform: PowerApps, Flow (now Power Automate) and Power BI. After that announcement Microsoft received critical feedback from tenant administrators where eventually Microsoft allowed…
Office 365 Templated policies and Preset security policies in Exchange Online Protection and Office 365 ATP
In my deep dive article on Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) I mentioned that Microsoft provides best practices as described in the following article: “Recommended settings for EOP and Office 365 ATP security“. When implementing the settings in the article you either have the option to go for a “Standard” or “Strict” security level,…
Limit Access to Outlook Web Access, SharePoint Online and OneDrive using Conditional Access App Enforced Restrictions
One of the scenario’s we can build with Conditional Access, is the scenario where we restrict access inside the web application itself. By doing so, you could for example limit the functionality of the web applications on non-managed devices, or when accessing the web application from a country where your company normally doesn’t operate. The…
May 2020 update of the Conditional Access Demystified Whitepaper, Workflow cheat sheet, Implementation workflow and Documentation spreadsheet
In August last year, I published eight articles in a series on Conditional Access, and later when finished I decided to bundle those articles in a paper which I made available on the TechNet Gallery. In March this year, Microsoft decided to retire the TechNet Gallery, so I had to find another solution to host…
Some welcome additions to the Admin consent workflow in Azure AD
Update October 7 2020: This functionality is now GA, see Publisher verification and app consent policies are now generally available In February this year, I wrote an article about Admin consent in Azure Active Directory. The article titled: “Did you already modify your Azure AD consent defaults settings? Here is why you should“, explained why…
Speaking at Workplace Ninja Virtual Edition 2020
I’m very proud to announce that I will be speaking at the Workplace Ninja Virtual Edition 2020 event. The Workplace Ninja Virtual Edition 2020 event will take place from Tuesday 25th till Thursday 27th of August 2020 and will contain 45 sessions, spread across 3 days. Each day will provide 3 tracks, with 5 timeslots….
Speaking at RDW Techday on April 1st 2020
On Wednesday April 1st, I have the opportunity to present at the RDW Techday. RDW Techday is a community event organized by the RDW, the goal is to stimulate knowledge sharing within the company and between companies in the same region. I had the pleasure to present at earlier events already and received some really…
License requirements for administering Microsoft 365 services
Microsoft licensing is tough and vague but something we must deal with while implementing our solutions. I’m also aware that some of the features I describe on my blog are only available in the most expensive licensing options Microsoft provides, making some of the features I describe not usable for some of my readers. Update…
Microsoft is going to disable basic/legacy authentication for Exchange Online. What does that actually mean and does that impact me?
Update: On September 23, 2021, the Exchange Team announced that effective October 1st, 2022 basic authentication, regardless of usage will be permanently disabled in all tenants. Update: On June 17, 2021, the Exchange Team announced that they are going to turn of basic authentication for tenants not using it. Update: On February 5th, 2021, the…
A guide to implementing Applocker on your Modern Workplace
At our last Windows Management User Group Netherlands meeting, we had the honor to have Sami Laiho, one of the world’s leading professionals in the Windows OS and Security flying over to the Netherlands and present for our user group. In his presentation titled: “Securing Windows in 2020 and forward”, Sami made us aware that…
Ask yourself if you still really need ADFS
In Q1 2017 Microsoft released the Pass Through Authentication (PTA) functionality as part of Azure AD connect. With the release of Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Pass-through Authentication allowed for your users to sign in to both on-premises and cloud-based applications using the same passwords without the need to implement a Active Directory Federation Services…