Stay ahead on Hybrid Identities–Microsoft’s Azure AD Connect v1.3.20.0 has a lot to offer

Microsoft has released the latest version of Azure AD Connect last week which was long impending !

Azure AD Connect is the bridge that is used to synchronize identities (objects and their attributes) across on-premise and cloud environments by many organizations.  However, every feature that is bundled in this release doesn’t target every audience. You can choose the ones that are most applicable to your organization’s environment.

Download the latest version of AADConnect

Fixes this version carries:

1. Fix the SQL reconnect logic for ADSync service
2. Fix to allow clean Install using an empty SQL AOA DB
3. Fix PS Permissions script to refine GWB permissions
4. Fix VSS Errors with LocalDB
5. Fix misleading error message when object type is not in scope
6. Corrected an issue where installation of Azure AD PowerShell on a server could potentially cause an assembly conflict with Azure AD Connect.
7. Fixed PHS bug on Staging Server when Connector Credentials are updated in the old UI.
8. Fixed some memory leaks
9. Miscellaneous Auto upgrade fixes
10. Miscellaneous fixes to Export and Unconfirmed Import Processing
11. Fixed a bug with handling a backslash in Domain and OU filtering
12. Fixed an issue where ADSync service takes more than 2 minutes to stop and causes a problem at upgrade time.

New features and advancements (19 new stuff in one go !)

1. Add support for Domain Refresh
2. Exchange Mail Public Folders feature goes GA
3. Improve wizard error handling for service failures
4. Added warning link for old UI on connector properties page.
5. The Unified Groups Writeback feature is now GA
6. Improved SSPR error message when the DC is missing an LDAP control
7. Added diagnostics for DCOM registry errors during install
8. Improved tracing of PHS RPC errors
9. Allow EA creds from a child domain
10. Allow database name to be entered during install (default name ADSync)
11. Upgrade to ADAL 3.19.8 to pick up a WS-Trust fix for Ping and add support for new Azure instances
12. Modify Group Sync Rules to flow samAccountName, DomainNetbios and domainFQDN to cloud – needed for claims
13. Modified Default Sync Rule Handling – read more here.
14. Added a new agent running as a windows service. This agent, named “Admin Agent”, enables deeper remote diagnostics of the Azure AD Connect server to help Microsoft Engineers troubleshoot when you open a support case. This agent is not installed and enabled by default. For more information on how to install and enable the agent see What is the Azure AD Connect Admin Agent?.
    Updated the End User License Agreement (EULA)
15. Added auto upgrade support for deployments that use AD FS as their login type. This also removed the requirement of updating the AD FS Azure AD Relying Party Trust as part of the upgrade process.
16. Added an Azure AD trust management task that provides two options: analyze/update trust and reset trust.
17. Changed the AD FS Azure AD Relying Party trust behavior so that it always uses the -SupportMultipleDomain switch (includes trust and Azure AD domain updates).
18. Changed the install new AD FS farm behavior so that it requires a .pfx certificate by removing the option of using a pre-installed certificate.
19. Updated the install new AD FS farm workflow so that it only allows deploying 1 AD FS and 1 WAP server. All additional servers will be done after initial installation.

If you plan to upgrade, the following resources should be your first reads.

• Explore the steps to upgrade from a previous version to the new AADConnect – How to upgrade
• Automatic update approach – How to
• Release History – AADConnect Releases

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First step towards your cloud adventure – SharePoint in hybrid mode deep dive

Have you heard about the virtual Collab365 Global Conference 2017 that’s streaming online November 1st – 2nd?

Join me and 120 other speakers from around the world who will be bringing you the very latest content around SharePoint, Office 365, Flow, PowerApps, Azure, OneDrive for Business and of course the increasingly popular Microsoft Teams. The event is produced by the Collab365 Community and is entirely free to attend.

Places are limited to 5000 so be quick and register now.

During the conference I’d love you to watch my session which is called : ‘First step towards your cloud adventure – SharePoint in hybrid mode deep dive’

With SharePoint 2013, Microsoft Introduced new Hybrid capabilities to transfer some of your workloads to the cloud using Azure and Office 365 in order to mitigate administrative and managing efforts of your on-premises farms. And now with latest SharePoint 2016 and bold cloud platform vision, Hybrid capabilities are massively improved to make your journey towards cloud smooth and right. This is a technical and business user mixed session suitable for IT Pros, Developers and Business Users. ​

If you join me, you will learn:

• When and Why SharePoint has to be in Hybrid Mode
• Requirements to Implement a Hybrid Setup
• Latest SharePoint Hybrid Capabilities including Hybrid Search, Insights (Analytics), Hybrid Profiles, Hybrid Sites
• Setting up Hybrid SharePoint Environment (Live Demonstration of a deployment of SharePoint Hybrid Scenario)

Topic(s):

• Hybrid SharePoint

Audience :

• Business Analyst
• Developer
• End User
• IT Pro
• Power User

Time (in UTC) :

• Thursday, November 2 2017 8:00 AM

How to attend :

1. Register here.
2. At the time listed above go here to watch my session. (you can also add me to your own personal planner from the agenda.
3. Be ready to take notes!

Its Official and I will be speaking at Collab365 Global Conference!

It is indeed a great opportunity for me to present in the world’s largest online conference with over 5000 attendees from more than 100 countries.

Collab365 is the largest online conference with hundreds of live sessions streamed nonstop 24 hours. Join the Collab365 team on the 19th – 20th October, for great sessions of SharePoint, Azure and Office365 content by the global experts. Delivered direct to your device, wherever you are in the world, when you want it and for no cost at all.

Register yourself today at http://collab365.events/collab365-global-conference-2016/

SharePoint All New Intelligent Intranet: Future of SharePoint Global Event at a Glance

The SharePoint Begins and MAY THE COMMUNITY BE WITH YOU !

With the global event of Future of SharePoint by Microsoft, here I’m covering some key areas highlighted during the presentation and demo.

SharePoint 2016 is the most reliable, rock-solid release ever done by Microsoft “Seth Patton – General Manager SharePoint and OneDrive”

• This is a Foundational release not the last server release. Born in the cloud, Delivered on-premises, Hybrid at core.
• The Most Comprehensive, Validated, tested version of SharePoint history so far.
• Built for continuous innovation and improvements.

The first point is a huge breath release for all SharePoint lovers across the globe for sure. Swipe your sweat and this is the biggest news on the event which means the absolute SharePoint era is just began. Finally with the mobile first cloud first strategy, Microsoft brings SharePoint in to the arena with trending capabilities with all new technological changes.

SharePoint 2016 is the most comprehensive, validated and tested version so far. bringing the power used in Office 365 in to SharePoint 2016 is a big leap in terms of performance and experience. and that seems to be very much true because my deployment proved it with the experience I had with SharePoint 2016 compare to 2013. Performance and experience wise, this is obviously the most robust and wonderful (few things yet to come though !).

Key Areas:

• User Experience
• Compliance and Policies
• Hybrid Cloud
• Insights (based on graphs) end to end security and manageability
• Comprehensive DLP and E-Discovery

SharePoint is very much core to the productivity and core to the Office 365 platform. And it is central to Office 365. This means a lot for SharePoint community indeed. It is obvious in this people and data centric era, SharePoint acts the biggest role.

It was previously the SharePoint wheel if you remember. Those features won’t die and don’t get misled with this image. This isn’t the new version of SharePoint wheel. These are the improvements were highlighted by Microsoft as bolt investments carrying out.

New Site Creation

Easy and faster site creation with the Group Integration and a brand-new UI.

New Mobile App for both SharePoint online and On-Premise will be rolled out this year. Mobile app isn’t new but an effective and nice looking mobile app was one thing missed the most for SharePoint specifically for Intranets. Ultimately you will get your Intelligent Intranet in your Pocket with these wonderful capabilities along with Office Graphs.

Activity Feed for various sites will allow you to navigate across sites and content easily than ever before.

Frequent (navigate across both On-Prem and Cloud Content effectively)

Used office graphs to Display people who often interacts with you.

And tap in to profiles simply via People Tap. See the content they are working on and even communicate straightaway.

New SharePoint Home

Finally an all New home for SharePoint. The Left navigation is there but not the traditional ways it supposed to be in any previous versions. Sites and Links are nicely displayed in the left panel while the Frequent and Suggested items are shown in the Main area with the Office Graphs Intelligence. You can create a new site right away thought the link given and even follow a site straight from the same area.

New team Sites Experience

Either on Web or Mobile, All new Team Sites experience is just looks incredible. Finally Microsoft has bought the trending user experience to pages. News and Activities are by default displayed with the power of office graph. Office graph is everywhere and it understands your work pattern and trend then brings you the most awaited experience all over the portal.

The Experience is showed in Office 365 SharePoint and it might also get in to SharePoint On-Premise in the future with the updates (well, that’s the wish!)

All in all, the new site experience is definitely a huge change in terms of design and the performance perspectives. Creation of a Page, site or a library is incredibly faster than it was so that will simply grab the user adoption and attraction.

Simple File Sharing

1. Deep Office Integration (office, PPT and all works hard to make this integration more seamless)
2. Rock solid Sync
3. Intuitive browser experience
4. Seamless collaboration
5. 4+ star-rated mobile apps
6. Intelligence – Power of Office Graph (helping you to be productive with)

Document Libraries Redefined

Introduced under the Unified access and intelligent Discovery, a Seamless experience given to Libraries as your experience on OneDrive. With these new Library improvements, you will get the same experience as you interact with OneDrive Interface.

Faster Uploading and Syncing with more key board Interaction commands. This Library experience will provide you full power with the consistency of OneDrive. Doesn’t matter where you are and what type of a device you use, your experience will yet remain the same.

These Capabilities are Rolling out this quarter:

• Access to SharePoint Online document libraries and Office 365 Group files from the OneDrive mobile app.
• Intelligent discovery of documents from both OneDrive and SharePoint.
• Copy from OneDrive to SharePoint in the OneDrive web experience.
• OneDrive Universal Windows Platform (UWP) application.

And within this year (2016):

• Document analytics surfaced in OneDrive to provide insight into document usage, reach and impact.
• Synchronization of SharePoint Online document libraries with the new OneDrive sync client.
• Synchronization of shared folders with the new OneDrive sync client.
• Mobile access to SharePoint document libraries in on-premises farms.
• Move and copy files between OneDrive and SharePoint in web experiences.

One of the most excited INSIGHTS

Community was so much exited to see the insights. There were many rumors about this capability but the ultimate idea is to provide Comprehensive Security and Compliance power to SharePoint In-Premise which is powered by Office 365. Office 365 operates with a massive commitment to security, privacy and compliance. Insights will provide you the same capabilities to have in your in-premise environment via the Hybrid Integration. All new DLP (Data Loss Prevention) features will be then available to SharePoint in-premise as same as Online.

Office 365 Currently Supports:

• Customer Lockbox.
• DLP, mobile device management (MDM) and mobile application management (MAM).
• Whitelist and blacklist domains for external sharing.

Releasing Within this quarter:

• Dynamic conditional access policies.

Releasing End of the Year 2016:

• New datacenters in Germany and Canada.
• Bring your own encryption key.
• Granular access controls.
• SharePoint site classification.
• Hybrid SharePoint Insights (preview).

Biggest News was for the Developers

The SharePoint Framework introduced and will be available soon. A Page and Part model based Open platform with full Client-Side development support was an incredible news for Developers indeed. This is much awaited renovation for long time and now here it comes at the right time with Mobile-First Cloud-First era. Pretty sure that developers are the most exited audience during the whole presentation.

Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Flow, Power Apps, Power BI and finally SharePoint Framework. Now we know where we have been heading from last few years by seeing this lineup isn’t it? Yes the SharePoint feels to be just began !

Microsoft planned to release these in 3rd quarter in 2016:

• The Files API on Microsoft Graph.
• SharePoint Webhooks (preview).
• Client-side web parts for existing pages (preview).

And in the end of 2016:

• The Sites API on Microsoft Graph.
• SharePoint Webhooks (GA).
• Custom sites on the SharePoint Framework.

What and year full surprises for SharePoint community ahead !. Stay Tuned with updates here – https://blogs.office.com/2016

More Resources:

Announcing simple and powerful file sharing and collaboration for Office 365

Power to the people—introducing Microsoft Flow and announcing the public preview of PowerApps

Flow and SharePoint

PowerApps and SharePoint

SharePoint—the mobile and intelligent intranet

The SharePoint Framework—an open and connected platform

SharePoint Server 2016—your foundation for the future

Office 365 Trust Center

SharePoint 2016 Hybrid Options and Your Leap Towards Cloud

This is the part 1 of my Series: SharePoint 2016 Hybrid Options and Your Leap Towards Cloud

With the latest announcement of SharePoint 2016 releases in last few months, Hybrid has been the most popular word across the community and users. There are various scenarios and requirements yet Microsoft on its way of concluding this.

However, not to be surprised much because Hybrid isn’t that new ! It’s been there for 2013 as well.

First of all, What is Hybrid ?

The name says it all. Hybrid is when you have some set of SharePoint services runs On-Premise and some on cloud. This isn’t new in SharePoint as it has been already there from 2013 as well. Microsoft has made it much more broader and robust with SharePoint 2016.

Ladder towards the cloud (What’s Hybrid in SharePoint Perspective?)

Some of the organizations may not have an interest yet in going completely cloud based but to keep a foot on it with few services and that’s where SharePoint 2016 going to play a big role. SharePoint 2016 has been introduced to make that leap easier by providing better tools.

Hybrid Sites

Hybrid Sites allows you to keep some SharePoint sites on-premise and some on the cloud (Office 365 ultimately). As Regulatory Compliance is the main point blocks many organizations (Specially Government Entities) of moving to the Cloud, Hybrid Sites would be the strength to move forward.

A Simple Example: If ABC Corp has an intranet Built on SharePoint On-Premise and there are many legal and finance records stored in some of the sites in it. In this scenario Regulatory Compliances block ABC crop from moving to cloud entirely. Using Hybrid Sites capability, ABC can host selected set of Sites in Office 365 (SharePoint Online) and let the other (Legal and Finance) sites remain in On-Premise.

Hybrid Profiles

With Hybrid Profiles you don’t need to have a heavy On-Premise SharePoint Setup with User Profiles Services running on it. Instead just let the Office 365 play that role for you so that you can make your servers light weight and lesser management overhead. Having the Profile in Cloud will also a huge benefit as you will get the latest updates that Microsoft deploys to Office 365.

Having User profiles on Cloud will also benefit (Depends on the O365 Plan Mostly) users with latest features such as Planer. Planner is the latest replacement of “My Task” SharePoint feature which is now available in Office 365. This feature hits the ceiling of User adoption and productivity indeed.

With “Planner” my tasks and timeline is nicely presented and made user friendly. Isn’t this gorgeous dashboard impresses you to have your tasks over here ?

Hybrid OneDrive

Depends on your Decision to host services either On-Premise or Cloud, OneDrive can sit anywhere you want. If ABC Corp do not want to expose their user’s content to the cloud, they can keep OneDrive (MySites Ultimately) On-Premise. Or simply go for Office 365 and let it host the service so that there is no additional storage cost or management overhead for ABC Corp.

App Launcher Becomes Hybrid Ultimately

App Launcher was introduced in to SharePoint 2016 now. This was one of the attraction used in office 365 to make the navigation of Apps easier. With the configuration of Hybrid Services, you will get the App Launcher of your In-Premise SharePoint Portal modified accordingly. Each link will direct your users to relevant destinations without hassling around.

Hybrid Search What if you could get a single Unified Result set even though you have content in On-Premise Sites and SharePoint Online Sites ? That’s the whole idea of Cloud Search Service application which delivers the capability of Crawling your On-Premise and Online content centrally yet unified. The Results Highlighted are from On-Premise Content and others from Cloud (SharePoint Online). Cloud Search Service Application is a ultimate Standout here.

Lot more to write about and I will keep posting on configuration of Hybrid features soon as well. till then happy flying towards cloud folks !