Category Archives: Office 365

Office 365 – Quick Optimizations

I’ll be adding to this as I continue to work with O365, but for now I have two things I usually do for every tenant:

First, connect to O365 via Powershell.  If you don’t know how, please see my recent blog post

Disable “Clutter” feature for all mailboxes:

Get-Mailbox -Filter * -ResultSize Unlimited | Set-Clutter -Enable $false

Raise email message size limits for all mailboxes (and mailbox plans):

Get-Mailbox -Resultsize Unlimited | Set-Mailbox -MaxReceiveSize 75MB -MaxSendSize 75MB

Get-MailboxPlan | fl name,maxsendsize,maxreceivesize,isdefault

Set-MailboxPlan ExchangeOnlineEnterprise-XXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXX -MaxSendSize 75MB -MaxReceiveSize 75MB (use mailbox plan name from previous command)

Disable password expiration:

Log into O365 web admin portal (https://portal.office365.com)

Go to “Service Settings” –> “Passwords” and select “Passwords never expire”

 

Office 365 – Powershell

Connecting to Office 365 via Powershell for the first time? Here are the steps to get started:

  1. Install the Microsoft Online Services Sign-In Assistant for IT Professionals RTW
  2. Install the Azure Active Directory Module for Windows Powershell (64-bit version)
  3. Open Powershell and run this command the first time you connect on your computer:
    1. Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
  4. Next, run these three commands (you’ll do this everytime you want to connect):
    1. $UserCredential = Get-Credential
    2. $Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/ -Credential $UserCredential -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection
    3. Import-PSSession $Session
  5. You should now be connected.  When finished, run:
    1. Remove-PSSession $Session

UPDATE: Here is an awesome project on github that is a Office 365 Powershell GUI: https://github.com/bwya77/O365-Administration-Center

Microsoft References:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/library/jj151815.aspx#bkmk_installmodule
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj984289(v=exchg.160).aspx