Exchange Online with 3rd party mailing system

Recently, one of my customer is having issue on the Exchange Online.

The case is that the company is using a 3rd-party notification system to send out alerts to internal staffs everyday, somehow, he found that the messages are displayed to be blocked in the 3rd-party reporting system.

We have double checked the allow-and-block in Mail Flow, and even set the domain of the system to bypass the spam filtering, however, it does not help.

Finally, I came up with a solution.

When you send an email through a 3rd-party system (it depends), the email is transmitted through the 3rd-party servers instead of Office 365 server. Email can be easy to forge, so the system will automatically authenticates all emails sent through its system using multiple authentication methods to help improve deliverability.

In order to let it authorized in Office 365, what you need is adding the DNS record to allow the 3rd-party domain in SPF record.

v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com include:3rd-party.domain.com -all

That did the trick!

New Office 365 on Outlook 2010

With the new launch of Office 365, the entire platform is consolidated with Exchange 2013, SharePoint 2013 and Lync 2013. However, when working with a customer to connect Outlook 2010 to Exchange Online in new Office 365, it prompts for password again and again and it cannot connect while saying the Exchange Server is offline.

In this situation, the SMTP address is displayed incorrectly. For example, the address is displayed as GUID@DOMAIN.COM.

 Here comes to the solution.

SharePoint Online Worth-noticing new features

The new Office 365 has been officially launched on 27 Feb 2013.

I, then registered a trial and quickly go the site features for the newly supported features.
Really, some features are very worth noticing.

Offline Synchronization for External Lists

Enables offline synchronization between external lists and Outlook.

External System Events

This feature enables Alerts and Event Receivers on the External List and External Content Types.

Site Mailbox

The Site Mailbox app helps you keep email and documents close together by connecting your site to an Exchange mailbox. You can then view your email on SharePoint, and view site documents in Outlook.

Site Notebook

Creates a Microsoft OneNote 2010 notebook in the Shared Documents library and places a link to it on the Quick Launch. This feature requires a properly configured WOPI application server to create OneNote 2010 notebooks.

Here I tried the Site Mailbox and Site Notebook.

In terms of collaboration, site mailbox and notebook keep a team in sync no matter it is dealing with customer or inside team communication, notebook and mailbox within a site are inevitable.

Site Notebook

After Site Notebook has been activated, you can find the Notebook option on the left panel.

 

Navigating to Notebook option will redirect you to OneNote Web App.

 

Site MailBox

I am very excited to see how it will look like and the way it present to users.

Turns out it is a native Outlook App Web just for the site.

 

At the same time, you own a new site mail address.

I love these new features, however, the support in Offline access is any important issue to look into. For example, how to connect this mailbox in Outlook? Grant it as a MailBox? Would it be automatically added to mobile if I set my Office 365 Account in Mobile? and more others.

Indeed, I think the new Office 365 has quite a big change and more new features introduction will be posted here as well.

Feel free to subscribe and comment.

SharePoint in Chrome, Firefox, etc NON-IE

Customer raised a question about Upload Multiple Files button is disabled (Grey out) in SharePoint Online.

First thing that I test is to use IE, it works perfect. But my customer is using Chrome on it.

The root reason is SharePoint 2010 is using ActiveX Controls. To use it perfectly in Chrome, you need this tool.

Office 365 Share Calendar (Secretary Mode)

It is simple to share a calendar in Office 365 – Exchange Online. However, you may find it difficult to share with advanced feature – permission for creating, editing and deleting of Calendar Items. You can do it directly in Outlook 2010 , but some may be only using Outlook Web App (OWA). Here comes to the solution.

Exchange Online Management Console

For Exchange Online administrators, managing the hosted Exchange (by Microsoft) may be both easy and difficult. Easy because of the Online Administration Panel provided by Microsoft located at https://portal.microsoftonline.com/. Difficult since some advanced setup is not entertained in the portal.

It will not be the case for some large enterprises since they usually deploy as hybrid mode, existence of both cloud and on-premises Exchange Server. Therefore, the Exchange Management Console can be used to manage both cloud and on-premises server.

Up to this, I have the initiative to create the Online Management Console for those who have only used the Cloud Service and are headache about using PowerShell.

Here is the screenshots, give me some advice if you have any about the tool.

Disable POP3/IMAP in Exchange Online Office 365

I think most of the customer migrating from on-premise to cloud will have a question. How can I limit the POP3/IMAP access of the employees.

To do this in on-premise is as easy as stopping the IMAP4 service or stop the IMAP4 in Exchange Server Management Application.

However, they may wonder, I do not have the tool in Office 365. How can I be able to achieve.

To do this, you need PowerShell to help you.

New Office 365 Preview

Hi All,

The new version of Office 365 is ready for preview. Everyone can register from Microsoft.

http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en/office-365-enterprise

After login to the new system, there is a brand new Administration Panel.

Organizational settings in Lync

Hi everyone,

When I was finding out where to do the organizational settings so that it will be appeared in Lync contact. I tried to go to Office 365 Lync settings, Lync Management but with no luck. Then I noticed Lync is connecting to Exchange, why not go for a check. Finally the solution is really there.