Once Azure Rights Management service is enabled for your organization, every Azure RMS workflow is tracked in the “usage logs” of the service. These logs can be downloaded from the Microsoft managed store to a repository of their choice (such as a database, an online analytical processing system, or a map-reduce system) for reporting and analysis.

Often times, customers have expressed a desire to integrate this functionality to their existing Operational Intelligence tools (such as Splunk). One of our partners, Keyon, recently delivered a Splunk app which enables customers to gain business and usage insights from the raw Azure RMS logs. Here’s our interview with Rene G. Eberhard, CEO of Keyon.

Dan: Hello Rene. Can you talk a little bit about Keyon and your role?

Rene: Hi Dan and thank you. Keyon AG is a leading provider in Switzerland of solutions and services in the area of IT-security and custom software development. The company has been operating since 1999 and has a number of excellent references of strategic projects for the Swiss government and customers in the area of finance, insurance, trade, industry, and telecommunication.

Keyon has, in addition to the above mentioned Splunk App for Azure RMS, also other products in its portfolio. Particularly noteworthy are the following products:

• true-Xtender: Comprehensive solution for the issuance and management of X.509 certificates for the Microsoft PKI
• true-Sign: Central service for electronic signatures which can be easily integrated on Windows Client-Systems and Workflow components such as Microsoft SharePoint.

I’m one of three founders of Keyon and as CEO also involved in strategic security projects of major customers. This gives me the chance to precisely understand the needs of our customers and to integrate them into our products or solutions.

Dan: That’s great! Can you share some details about the Azure RMS Splunk app? Where can I download it from, how do I install it and what are the requirement?

Rene: true-Xtended Reporting for Microsoft Azure RMS is a powerful solution to visualize Azure RMS events in Splunk®. It allows tracking user activities and usage trends, shows document and template usages, identifies potential data leakage, and much more in a powerful yet simple UI.

The customer must use Azure RMS and enable the corresponding RMS logs. In addition, he must have an instance of a Splunk server.

true-Xtended Reporting for Microsoft Azure RMS is available as a freemium version.

• The free version can be downloaded from the Splunkbase or from the Keyon website. Import and processing of Azure RMS log files takes place exclusively via PowerShell scripts. There’s no need to install an application. There is also a step by step guidance in the Admin Manual
• The premium version can be ordered from Keyon (info@keyon.ch). It offers extended dashboards and correlates the RMS logs with other sources such as AD (Active Directory). That way RMS events can be correlated with organizational units, user attributes, locations or business cases. The import, processing, and correlation of Azure RMS log files takes place via the true-Xtended Data Engine application.

Dan: Do you have some sample reports which highlight the reporting capability?

Rene: All the reports of the free version are described in the presentation which can be foundon our website.

The example below shows the trend-line of the user- and administrator activities over a given time range. In addition the trend-line can be shown based on specific RMS events (e.g. Decrypt, AcquireLicense, etc.).

Another example shows the distribution of RMS templates being used and the distribution of applications and operating systems using Azure RMS.

The free version offers the following dashboards

• User- and Administrative Activities based on RMS events
• Trend-line of user activities based on RMS events
• Total active users
• Distribution of successful and failed access requests to documents
• Number of denied access requests by users
• User activity reports
• Distribution of the usage of RMS templates
• Distribution of the operating systems using RMS
• Distribution of the applications using RMS
  

Dan: Can customers download this for free?

Rene: Yes, the free version can be downloaded from the Splunkbase or from the Keyon website. To get an access code to our online demo you may send a request to info@keyon.ch

Dan: If customers have further questions, how do they reach you? Is there a demo or documentation?

Rene: A presentation which describes the dashboard and the Admin Manual can be found on our website. Any questions can be sent to info@keyon.ch .

That awesome Rene. It was great partnering with you to build this solution and we highly encourage our customers to try out the Splunk integration using this plug in.

Customers have been asking me about what are the ways to estimate / size their Hardware Inventory information (HINV) - (Full and Delta) in ConfigMgr 2012 which is sent from the client to the site server, so I decided to talk about this topic here.

The hardware inventory files don't go directly to the site server, there are other components (actually a bunch of them) working behind the scenes until the client creates the .XML with the hardware inventory information (which is also hidden on the client side by default) and sent to the Management Point that converts it to a .MIF file which gets processed by Data Loader component on the site server. We know that each client requires approximately 3 MB of space in the database but that will depends on the number of HINV customizations you have in your environment.

There is an known trick for SMS 2003/SCCM 2007 to gather the Full/Delta HINV file size that it can be applied in the client side, which is still applicable to ConfigMgr 2012:

1. To save off inventory reports in a client that is not a Management Point, create the following folder:

      %systemroot%\windows\ccm\inventory\temp\archive_reports.sms

2. To save off inventory reports in a client that is not an Management Point, create the following folder:

     <x>:\sms_ccm\inventory\temp\archive_reports.sms

The hardware inventory XML file is saved in the inventory\temp folder, which means a copy is archived before sending it to the Management Point itself. After going through the process of archiving the XML file, you just need to see the file size (I'd recommend doing this for a few clients) then you will have the HINV file size baseline by calculating the file size X number of clients in your environment.

Also you can open the .XML file, to see the information gathered from the WMI by viewing it with notepad or other .xml viewer.
This is really useful when is necessary to troubleshoot HINV, and also to check if the client is sending other information such as:

      1. Software Inventory
      2. Discovery Data (Heartbeat)
      3. Software Metering usage reports

The folder: "archive_reports.sms" can be deleted after you gather the HINV sizing information.

I hope this helps!

Cheers,

Andre Della Monica (SMS/SCCM Senior Premier Field Engineer)

My customer wanted to know what happens behind the scenes when they select the option Reassign Distribution Point (This option was previously known as "Upgrade Distribution Point" on RTM and SP1 version), which upgrades/migrates a ConfigMgr 2007 Distribution Point to a ConfigMgr 2012 Distribution Point.

Scenario: You need to upgrade a ConfigMgr 2007 Distribution Point to ConfigMgr 2012 Distribution Point and the goal is to avoid redistributing content throughout the network.

That said, our focus on this post is to talk about this specific "behind the scenes process", the main idea here is to provide additional information for those who need to troubleshoot this process. 

Here is what happens when you click on "Reassign Distribution Point" on ConfigMgr 2012 R2:

1.       Deletes DP role in the source site
2.       Deletes site system record in the source site
3.       Deletes shared DP role in the destination site
4.       Deletes shared DP site system record in the destination site
5.       Installs a new site system in the destination site
6.       Installs a new DP role in the destination site
7.       Runs a store procedure "sp_MIG_UpgradeDistributionPoint" to fix NALPath to point to new Distribution Point (created in the step 6) in the following Distribution Point related tables:

• PkgServers
• PkgStatus
• ContentDPMap
• DPUpgradeStatus

This is important so all packages prior to DP upgrade can continue to work with new DP without redistributing the content again.

8.       Drop a notification (.dpu file with the DP ID number under of distmgr.box) that wakes Distribution Manager to convert the old SMSPkg folder to new content library. You can see the process through the distmgr.log on site server side and the smsdpprov.log on the DP side. As soon as the Distribution Manager component gets the DP upgrade notification, it does the following:

•  It goes through each migrated package on that Distribution Point, it gets the Distribution Point package location on the DP for this package from the ContentDPMap table for each such package.
•  It connects to this DP and imports all the package files to the SIS (Single Instance Store) Content Library in the upgraded DP.
•  Once all the files have been successfully copied to the Content Library, it removes the package files from the DP package location, depending upon whether or not the package is marked to copy content to the package share (This is enabled to migrated packages if there is an associated advertisement which requires package to be run directly from Distribution Point).

9.       When the conversion is done, Distribution Manager marks the "Distribution Point upgrade job" to completed, with the ContentLib folder containing three folders:

• DataLib
• FileLib
• PkgLib

Troubleshooting Tip:

If you cannot see all three folders above, you have an issue. Review the logs: distmgr.log on the site server side and smsdpprov.log on the Distribution Point side to more information.

I've seen a common error and you may see that too: "Failed to convert content". If you open the distmgr.log you'll be able to see a WMI error as well which it is not the issue.

The solution here is straight forward, you just need to follow few steps:

1. Run the following query against your site server by using SQL Management Studio:

• Select * from DistributionPoints where ServerName = '<DP Server name>'

2. Get the DP ID number, then create an empty .dpu file, in my lab as my DP is ID 4, the file was: 4.dpu

3. Drop this file in \distmgr.box, wait few seconds

You're basically enforcing the content conversion process, so you're be able to see your DP upgraded/migrated through the console with the status Completed reassign Distribution Point.

Final considerations here, I do recommend you to enable SQL tracing and verbose logging to see further information through the distmgr.log, in case you want to go deep in this process, it's really good stuff.

Special thanks to ConfigMgr Product Team for helping me out with the details on this process.

Hope this help!

Cheers,

Andre Della Monica

SMS/SCCM Senior Premier Field Engineer

It's been a long time since my last post, so at this time let's talk about a powerful tool: Log Parser 2.2!

Log Parser 2.2 is used by IIS, Platforms and Exchange engineers, but the cool thing about Log Parser 2.2 is the fact it’s not related to a specific product/technology. In this post, I'll give an example about how to extract information from text files, in this case .MIF files, since a lot of customers need to do this on a day to day basis.

This could be accomplished by using FINDSTR as well, but again, I’ll focus on Log Parser 2.2 here.

All that said, here is the common scenario:

• Customer wants to extract NETBIOS names from the .MIF files (BADMIF folder) to better understand issues they may have with the SCCM clients trying to forward hardware inventory information to the SCCM site server.

This is a common scenario, sometimes we have an unique machine sending lots of HINV deltas to the SCCM site server, but not getting processed for some reason.

You may end up having an unique machine or maybe only a few machines with more than hundreds BADMIFs, and the number of files can be huge.

Let’s go through this three step process:

1. Download Log Parser 2.2 from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=24659 and install it;
2. Open CMD as Administrator and navigate to Log Parser 2.2 installation path which by default is: C:\Program Files (x86)\Log Parser 2.2
3. Here is the query that we need to run:
   1. LogParser.exe -o:CSV "select replace_chr(extract_token(Text,1,'><'),'>','') into BadMif_Computer_Name.csv from D:\SMS\Inboxes\auth\dataldr.box\BadMifs\*.mif where text like '//KeyAttribute<NetBIOS Name>%'" -q -headers:off

What the Log parser query does:

• Basically it scans for all .MIF files under a specific directory, on this case "D:\SMS\Inboxes\auth\dataldr.box\BadMifs\", and it extracts the NETBIOS names from it.

Let’s break down this Log Parser query:

• –o: It means how the output looks like, we have more options here, such as, XML, TEXTLINE, DATAGRID and so on;
• Into *.csv file: This is going to generate the .CSV file under Log Parser installation path which again, by default is C:\Program Files (x86)\Log Parser 2.2;
• replace_chr: Replaces each occurrence of a character in a given set of characters with a string;
• extract_token(Text,1,'><'),'>',''): Splits the string into substrings at each point where the separator occurs, and returns the substring with the specified index. Here is where I remove all the unneeded characters from my string (//KeyAttribute<NetBIOS Name>%), since I’m only interested on the NETBIOS name itself;
• from D:\SMS\Inboxes\auth\dataldr.box\BadMifs\*.mif: This is just the path I’m using for extracting the information, you can change it for the path where your BADMIFs are located in your environment (this could be wherever location you have your .MIF files);
• where text like '//KeyAttribute<NetBIOS Name>%': This is exactly the string I’m looking to manipulate, since it is where the NETBIOS name is located under the MIF files, you can also use wildcards here;
• -q: This for quiet mode;
• -headers:off: I used this to remove the header information, as I’m using replace_chr and extract token parameters. If you don’t use this parameter, you will be able to see the header information as soon as the query runs and creates the .CSV file, which I prefer removing it.

We could simplify this query by running like this: LogParser.exe -o:CSV "select * into BadMif_Computer_Name.csv from D:\SMS\Inboxes\auth\dataldr.box\BadMifs\*.mif where text like '//KeyAttribute<NetBIOS Name>%'" but the problem is, we still need to spend some time by using a text editor such as PSPAD or others to remove those unneeded characters until we have what really matters, in this case, the NETBIOS name.

This is only one example of using Log Parser 2.2 with SCCM, we could use it in different scenarios, for example when we need to extract some specific information from SCCM component logs, DDRs, CCRs, etc… we have a lot of possibilities here!

I hope this helps!

Andre Della Monica
ConfigMgr Senior Premier Field Engineer – U.S Central Region

SharePoint used to have a menu option called “Sign in as Different User” in the top-right corner of every page. It is very useful but form admins sometimes it can be a bit of a pain. So simple solution is to build it right into the Home Page Resources like you see below.

In this configuration we are using SharePoint 2013 so SharePoint 2010 might be a bit different to close the connection .

First Step  Click on Administration –> Home Page Resources

Then click on New

Now you see the new information around our Home Page resource General tab

DisplayName: Sign in as Different User
Usage Keywords: BasicUI

Next screen : UI Position

Region: Right region of homepage
Parent order: 4
Order: 0

Next: Behavior

Finally: Localization Tab

Supported Languages: English
Localized Display Name: Sign in as Different User

Once complete click Ok and finish. You will need to run IISRESET to have the cache refresh so your users can see it . Once done if a user click on it they will get redirected to a sign in prompt to enter in new credentials.

Happy Identity !!

Welcome back for another analysis of contributions to TechNet Wiki over the last week, up until Saturday, not today.

A couple of days late due to, well,  life being messy like that sometimes...

First up, the weekly leader board snapshot...

As always, here are the results of another weekly crawl over the updated articles feed.

Most Revisions Award   Who has made the most individual revisions

#1 Peter Geelen - MSFT with 27 revisions.

#2 Ken Cenerelli with 21 revisions.

#3 Richard Mueller with 21 revisions.

Just behind the winners but also worth a mention are:

#4 Geetanjali Arora with 21 revisions.

#5 Florent Duret with 17 revisions.

#6 Ed Price - MSFT with 10 revisions.

#7 Recep YUKSEL with 9 revisions.

#8 Jeff Ingalls with 9 revisions.

#9 XAML guy with 8 revisions.

#10 Andy ONeill with 7 revisions.

Most Articles Updated Award   Who has updated the most articles

#1 Ken Cenerelli with 19 articles.

#2 Richard Mueller with 18 articles.

#3 Peter Geelen - MSFT with 13 articles.

Just behind the winners but also worth a mention are:

#4 Recep YUKSEL with 9 articles.

#5 Ed Price - MSFT with 6 articles.

#6 Lucass Otávio with 3 articles.

#7 Jeff Ingalls with 3 articles.

#8 Andy ONeill with 3 articles.

#9 Erdem Avni SELÇUK with 3 articles.

#10 Wim Beck with 2 articles.

Most Updated Article Award   Largest amount of updated content in a single article

The article to have the most change this week was BizTalk Server 2013: Exposing a REST/JSON GET endpoint, by AboorvaRaja Ramar

This week's revisers were Peter Geelen - MSFT& AboorvaRaja Ramar

An excellent new article here for you!  Great work Ab!

Longest Article Award   Biggest article updated this week

This week's largest document to get some attention is Windows 10: Security Overview for the retail industry, by Pinar Salk

This week's revisers were Peter Geelen - MSFT, Richard Mueller& Pinar Salk

Fascinating read Pinar, thank you for this!

Most Revised Article Award   Article with the most revisions in a week

This week's most fiddled with article is An Introduction to Microsoft Graph API, by Geetanjali Arora. It was revised 20 times last week.

This week's revisers were Geetanjali Arora& Santhosh Sivarajan-

Busy bee G! Lots of love going into this one!

Most Popular Article Award   Collaboration is the name of the game!

The article to be updated by the most people this week is TechNet Guru Contributions - February 2016, by XAML guy

Gurus come far and wide to show us their awesomeness! What a great batch of articles this month!

This week's revisers were Wim Beck, chilberto, Geetanjali Arora, Florent Duret, Andy ONeill, Jesper Arnecke, Darren Joyce, Ed Price - MSFT, taylor.l& Richard Mueller

As Guru often wins, the article to be updated by the second most people this week is Windows 10: Security Overview for the retail industry, by Pinar Salk

Second medal this week, great work Pinar!

This week's revisers were Peter Geelen - MSFT, Richard Mueller& Pinar Salk

Ninja Edit Award   A ninja needs lightning fast reactions!

Below is a list of this week's fastest ninja edits. That's an edit to an article after another person

• Revision 16 of An Introduction to Microsoft Graph API was saved by Santhosh Sivarajan- just 9 minutes after Geetanjali Arora
  
  Congratulations to Santhosh Sivarajan-! Nine minutes is a good win, well done G, second win for you too!
  Also in the top ten are:
  
  
• Revision 17 of An Introduction to Microsoft Graph API was saved by Geetanjali Arora just 24 minutes after Santhosh Sivarajan-
• Revision 8 of Windows 10: Security Overview for the retail industry was saved by Peter Geelen - MSFT just 130 minutes after Richard Mueller
• Revision 45 of TechNet Guru Contributions - February 2016 was saved by Florent Duret just 156 minutes after Andy ONeill
• Revision 7 of Windows 10: Security Overview for the retail industry was saved by Richard Mueller just 237 minutes after Peter Geelen - MSFT
• Revision 46 of TechNet Guru Contributions - February 2016 was saved by Geetanjali Arora just 271 minutes after Florent Duret
• Revision 41 of TechNet Guru Contributions - February 2016 was saved by Darren Joyce just 376 minutes after Ed Price - MSFT
• Revision 1 of Windows 10: Security Overview for the retail industry was saved by Peter Geelen - MSFT just 538 minutes after Pinar Salk
• Revision 43 of TechNet Guru Contributions - February 2016 was saved by Jesper Arnecke just 591 minutes after Darren Joyce
• Revision 40 of TechNet Guru Contributions - February 2016 was saved by Ed Price - MSFT just 594 minutes after taylor.l

Winner Summary   Let's celebrate our winners!

Below are a few statistics on this week's award winners.

Most Revisions Award Winner
The reviser is the winner of this category.

Peter Geelen - MSFT

Peter Geelen - MSFT has been interviewed on TechNet Wiki!

• 26 Dec '11: interview-with-a-forefront-identity-manager-mvp-peter-geelen-wiki-tips-experiences-amp-tips-on-becoming-an-mvp

Peter Geelen - MSFT has featured articles on TechNet Wiki!

• 19 Aug '11: Wiki: How to Automatically Add a Table of Contents (TOC) to Your TechNet Wiki Article
• 05 Sep '11: Forefront Identity Manager Resources
• 03 Jan '12: FIM 2010 Wiki Articles
• 08 May '12: How to Use PowerShell to Create a Wiki Catalog Page
• 09 Mar '13: FIM 2010 Software Solutions from Partners
• 11 Apr '15: Wiki Governance: Copyright, Privacy & Piracy
• 31 Dec '15: Wiki Governance: Copyright, Privacy & Piracy

Peter Geelen - MSFT has won 92 previous Top Contributor Awards. Most recent five shown below:

• 29 Feb '16: Most Revisions Award
• 29 Feb '16: Most Articles Updated Award
• 14 Feb '16: Most Revisions Award
• 14 Feb '16: Most Articles Updated Award
• 06 Feb '16: Most Revisions Award

Peter Geelen - MSFT has TechNet Guru medals, for the following articles:

• In Nov '14: Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) - Resource Portal
• In Sep '15: FIM 2010: Verifying the Sync Engine Security Groups
• In Sep '15: PowerShell: Event viewer statistics

Peter Geelen - MSFT's profile page

Most Articles Award Winner
The reviser is the winner of this category.

Ken Cenerelli

Ken Cenerelli has been interviewed on TechNet Wiki!

• 17 Aug '15: interview-with-net-developer-microsoft-mvp-and-wiki-ninja-ken-cenerelli

Ken Cenerelli has featured articles on TechNet Wiki!

• 11 Jun '15: Using Microsoft Application Insights in an MVC application

Ken Cenerelli has won 28 previous Top Contributor Awards. Most recent five shown below:

• 29 Feb '16: Most Revisions Award
• 29 Feb '16: Most Articles Updated Award
• 20 Feb '16: Most Revisions Award
• 20 Feb '16: Most Articles Updated Award
• 06 Feb '16: Most Revisions Award

Ken Cenerelli has TechNet Guru medals, for the following articles:

• In Mar '15: Creating an Microsoft Application Insights resource
• In Apr '15: Using Microsoft Application Insights in an MVC application
• In May '15: Custom Telemetry Events with TrackEvent in Microsoft Application Insights
• In May '15: Azure PowerShell cmdlets version updates
• In Jun '15: How to enable line numbers for C# in Visual Studio 2013
• In Jun '15: Wiki: How to Subscribe to the Wiki Ninjas Blog through RSS in Outlook 2013
• In Jul '15: Using the Checked and Unchecked keywords in C# to perform overflow checking
• In Jul '15: Toolbox searching in Visual Studio 2013
• In Aug '15: Availability Testing With Microsoft Application Insights
• In Sep '15: Understanding the Visual Studio AssemblyInfo Class
• In Sep '15: Visual Studio 2015 Portal

Ken Cenerelli's profile page

Most Updated Article Award Winner
The author is the winner, as it is their article that has had the changes.

AboorvaRaja Ramar

This is the first Top Contributors award for AboorvaRaja Ramar on TechNet Wiki! Congratulations AboorvaRaja Ramar!

AboorvaRaja Ramar has not yet had any interviews, featured articles or TechNet Guru medals (see below)

AboorvaRaja Ramar's profile page

Longest Article Award Winner
The author is the winner, as it is their article that is so long!

Pinar Salk

Pinar Salk has won 2 previous Top Contributor Awards:

• 29 Feb '16: Longest Article Award for windows-10-security-overview-for-the-retail-industry
• 29 Feb '16: Most Popular Article Award for windows-10-security-overview-for-the-retail-industry

Pinar Salk has not yet had any interviews, featured articles or TechNet Guru medals (see below)

Pinar Salk's profile page

Most Revised Article Winner
The author is the winner, as it is their article that has ben changed the most

Geetanjali Arora

Geetanjali Arora has won 2 previous Top Contributor Awards:

• 29 Feb '16: Most Revised Article Award for an-introduction-to-microsoft-graph-api
• 19 Apr '14: Most Revised Article Award for perform-basic-admin-operations-using-csom-in-sharepoint-online

Geetanjali Arora has TechNet Guru medals, for the following articles:

• In Apr '14: Perform Basic Admin Operations using CSOM in SharePoint Online
• In May '14: Export User Profile Properties using CSOM
• In Jun '14: SharePoint Online : Working with People Search and User Profiles
• In Aug '14: Step by Step Guide to Configure Environment for Creating your first SharePoint Hosted App
• In Oct '14: SharePoint Online : An Introduction to Office Delve
• In Jan '15: SharePoint 2013 : An Introduction to JSLink
• In Feb '15: SharePoint Online : Performing Batch Operations using REST API
• In Feb '15: SharePoint Online : Performing Batch Operations using REST API
• In Jun '15: SharePoint Online : Using App Only Policy to create site collection in SharePoint Online

Geetanjali Arora has not yet had any interviews or featured articles (see below)

Geetanjali Arora's profile page

Most Popular Article Winner
The author is the winner, as it is their article that has had the most attention.

XAML guy

XAML guy has been interviewed on TechNet Wiki!

• 23 Oct '12: interview-with-2-wikininjas-peter-laker-amp-ana-paula-de-almeida
• 28 Oct '13: interview-with-quot-xaml-guy-quot

XAML guy has featured articles on TechNet Wiki!

• 11 Nov '12: TechNet Wiki Widget (Windows 8)
• 23 Nov '12: Blackboard Design Pattern: A Practical Example - Radar Defense System

XAML guy has won 102 previous Top Contributor Awards. Most recent five shown below:

• 29 Feb '16: Most Popular Article Award for technet-guru-contributions-february-2016
• 20 Feb '16: Most Popular Article Award for technet-guru-contributions-february-2016
• 14 Feb '16: Most Popular Article Award for technet-guru-contributions-february-2016
• 06 Feb '16: Most Popular Article Award for technet-guru-contributions-january-2016
• 30 Jan '16: Most Popular Article Award for technet-guru-contributions-january-2016

XAML guy has TechNet Guru medals, for the following articles:

• In Jun '13: WPF: How to manage available/selected lists. Simple examples. MVVM and Code behind
• In Jul '13: WPF Data, Item and Control Templates - Minimum code, maximum awesome
• In Aug '13: Best ComboBox Tutorial Ever
• In Oct '13: WPF: Watermarked TextBox and PasswordBox
• In May '14: TechNet Guru Competition: Judge System Explanation
• In Jun '14: History and Technology Behind the TechNet Wiki Ninja Belt Calculator
• In Mar '15: Convert and Edit Microsoft Office Live Meeting Recordings

XAML guy's profile page

Pinar Salk

Pinar Salk is mentioned above.

Ninja Edit Award Winner
The author is the reviser, for it is their hand that is quickest!

Santhosh Sivarajan-

Santhosh Sivarajan- has been interviewed on TechNet Wiki!

• 29 Sep '15: interview-with-an-mvp-windows-server-expert-and-wiki-ninja-santhosh-sivarajan

This is the first Top Contributors award for Santhosh Sivarajan- on TechNet Wiki! Congratulations Santhosh Sivarajan-!

Santhosh Sivarajan- has TechNet Guru medals, for the following articles:

• In Jan '14: Keyboard Shortcuts and Commands - Server

Santhosh Sivarajan- has not yet had any featured articles (see below)

Santhosh Sivarajan-'s profile page

Soooo, much to read this week, so much to learn! :D

Thanks for reading, albeit a couple of days late!

Best regards,
Pete Laker (XAML guy)

• More about TechNet Wiki Ninja Belts
• Get nominated for a TechNet Wiki Featured Article
• More about being interviewed on TechNet Wiki blogs
• And if you want to get listed HERE, you'd better get busy! :D

Have you ever experienced an issue where you are working in an Excel file, connected without a problem to your SQL Server cube data, but after letting the application sit idle for a time (ex. 3-6 minutes), you get an error similar to the one below when you come back and try to refresh the connection again or click on a slicer?

 ERROR:  "We couldn't get data from the external data source. Here's the error message we got: An error was encountered in the transport layer."

If you continue to try to refresh the connection again, does it then eventually return and refresh successfully?

If you've seen this before, first check to ensure your MSOLAP driver is updated on your client and your server. In addition, verify that all of your SQL Server settings such as Idleconnectiontimeout, IdleOrphanSessionTimeout, MaxIdleSessionTimeout, MinIdleSessionTimeout are set to the default values. If yes, we'd then recommend removing any encryption, antivirus or monitoring types of software from the environment and testing for improvement. As it's typically simpler to perform these types of tests on the client machine, we'd recommend testing there first, but if the issues persist, try doing the same on your server.

Additional Note:

If you've experienced an error similar to above or "Operation cancelled by user" , and the issue appears specific to something on your client machine, you may also want to install the hotfix below.

3114734 MS16-015: Description of the security update for Excel 2013: February 9, 2016
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/3114734/EN-US

If you have or are about to deploy Microsoft Intune make sure you check out this free Ebook from one of our MVP’s in the System Center space.  Mai Ali demystifies the implementation and configuration process for Microsoft Intune.  Here is an outline of what’s covered in the book:

• Chapter 1 - Definition of Microsoft Intune.
• Chapter 2 - Configure Microsoft Intune.
• Chapter 3 - Implement and Configure ADFS for Single Sign-ON.
• Chapter 4 - Create Intune groups to organize users and devices.
• Chapter 5 - Set Mobile Devices Management (MDM) Authority.
• Chapter 6 - Create Mobile Management Policies.
• Chapter 7 - Manage Computers Using Microsoft Intune.
• Chapter 8 - Deploy Applications Using Microsoft Intune.
• Chapter 9 - Configure Alerts, Notifications and Reports.
• Chapter 10 - Enroll Mobile Devices in Intune.
• Chapter 11 - Configure Mobile Application Management policies “MAM”.
• Chapter 12 - Resource Access profile with Microsoft Intune.
• Appendix - Firewall Ports and Proxy Server Settings for Client Computers.

So make sure you check it out here!

Jeffa

Everyone Needs to know this.   All those Windows Servers you have been selling to customers via volume licensing can move to Azure without incurring the runtime charges for the OS if the customer has Software Assurance.  This is HUGE.   Generally Microsoft has vehicles for larger customers to protect their existing investment when transitioning to the cloud, but these benefits do not always extend to the small or midmarket business that buys from a reseller or channel partner.

The Microsoft Azure Hybrid Cloud Benefit for Windows Server become generally available this month (Mid February) and I have already taken calls from resellers to clarify some of the details.  I thought I would share them with you below.

From the landing page on the Azure website, the Microsoft Azure Hybrid Cloud Benefit for Windows Server  allows one to “Benefit from your existing Windows Server license and move to the cloud for less”

The Azure Hybrid Use Benefit lets those using Windows Server with Software Assurance bring their on-premises licenses to Azure. Rather than paying the full price for new Windows Server virtual machines in Azure, you only pay for the base compute rate*. For each Windows Server 2 processor license with Software Assurance, customers may run two virtual machines with up to 8 cores each, or one virtual machine with up to 16 cores, at the lower price.

An illustration graphically depicts the savings and it is substantial!

I would encourage everyone to read the detailed FAQ that is mentioned on the site as well.   It provides answers to all the common questions one might ask. It breaks it down quite well, but the real meet is the discount and I want to share a few more examples and further clarify.   The FAQ states the rate used to compute the cost is the “base compute rate” which is commensurate with the “Linux” rate.   This can be gathered by looking at the cost breakdown here.  If you attempt to secure pricing elsewhere you might be faced with a dropdown that includes SUSE Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.  If only given those choices, choose SUSE as it is correct.  The pricing consistent with the Hybrid Cloud Benefit is “Linux” pricing:

As an example let us explore the relative costs of a default D1 virtual machine running Windows Server in Azure versus the Linux or Hybrid Cloud Benefit price.

A D1 Virtual Machine running Windows is priced at $104 a month.  That same virtual machine leveraging the Microsoft Azure Hybrid Cloud Benefit for Windows Server would be the Linux price of $57 a month below.

That represents a savings of roughly 45%!

Now, how do I do this on the Technical side?

It is very important to understand the way you go about accomplishing this technically.  The process is straightforward, but not necessarily simple depending on your level of expertise and familiarity with PowerShell and VM images work in Azure.   you do NOT select a Linux VM from the gallery and you do not select a Windows Server image from the gallery.  The FAQ explains:

The Azure Hybrid Use Benefit is applied by creating a Windows virtual machine through PowerShell and setting the new licenseType property for each virtual machine. Windows virtual machines with the new property are billed at the base compute rate, with a specific notation in the bill that the benefit has been applied. Gallery images cannot be used with this benefit.

So those of you that have never cracked the book on PowerShell, now might be the time to start! ;-)

The LicenseType property cannot be updated once a machine is created so no existing virtual machines can be “converted” by changing this property.  That said one could certainly still use the VHD file and associate it with the newly created virtual machine also using PowerShell.

For those that need a primer on creating virtual machines in Azure using PowerShell there are numerous resources.  Guidance on how to do so using the newer (and recommended) Resource Manager Model can be found here.

In addition to the virtual machine creation guidance above you will need to add the LicenseType Property of  “Windows_Server”

The graphic below explains the LicenseType  property.

Actual syntax to stipulate the licenseType property is within the MSDN article close to the bottom.  It reads:

"properties": { "licenseType": "Windows_Server", "availabilitySet": { "id":"/subscriptions/{subscription-id}/resourceGroups/myresourcegroup1/providers/Microsoft.Compute/availabilitySets/myav1" }, ...

I hope this information is helpful to you and can make a difference in accelerating your customers to Azure.   I love it when we make something less expensive and I love it when we add additional value to our products like  Software Assurance in this case!

Happy Leap Day!

Woody

Woody Walton

(この記事は 2016 年 2 月 25 日に Office Blogs に投稿された記事 New security management and transparency capabilities coming to Office 365の翻訳です。最新情報については、翻訳元の記事をご参照ください。)

このたび、マイクロソフトの最高情報セキュリティ責任者を務める Bret Arsenault が、包括的なクラウド アクセス セキュリティ ブローカー (CASB) ソリューションである Microsoft Cloud App Security を発表しました。このソリューションは、マイクロソフトが買収したクラウド セキュリティのイノベーターである Adallom (英語)の技術を基盤としており、IT 部門の可視性と統制を改善する高度な新しいセキュリティ管理機能を Office 365 に提供します。

それでは、Office 365 に新たに導入されるセキュリティ管理機能について、詳しくご紹介しましょう。

Office 365 Advanced Security Alerts (先進的なセキュリティ アラート) では、異常な挙動や不審な挙動に管理者が対応できるように警告します。あるユーザーがそれまでログインしたことがない場所から管理操作 (ユーザーの新規作成など) を実行するといった異常な動作が検出された場合に通知が表示されます。

Office 365 Cloud App Discoveryでは、ユーザーが接続している Office 365 以外のクラウド サービスを把握することが可能で、Office 365 管理ポータルからネットワーク アクティビティのダッシュボードを確認できます。たとえば、ユーザーがドキュメントの保存や共同編集に使用している場所や、Office 365 以外のアプリやサービスにアップロードされたデータ量などを把握できます。

Office 365 App Permissions (アプリケーション利用許可) では、アプリケーションに対して Office 365 へのアクセス許可の承認や取り消しができます。たとえば、あるユーザーが自分の CRM アプリケーションから Office 365 の連絡先データへのアクセス許可を承認したとします。この CRM アプリケーションがビジネス ポリシーに違反する場合、アクセス許可を取り消すことができます。

これらの新機能は今年の第 3 四半期にロールアウトが開始される予定で、Office 365 E5 プランの一部として提供されます。

Customer Lockbox を SharePoint Online と OneDrive for Business でも利用可能に

ごくまれにマイクロソフトのエンジニアが Office 365 サービスにアクセスする必要が生じることがあります。お客様がメールボックスやドキュメントの内容に関する問題を抱えていて、エンジニアがトラブルシューティングを行う場合などです。この場合、エンジニアはマイクロソフト社内で複数のレベルの承認を受ける必要があります。12 月には Exchange Online で、この承認プロセスにお客様の承認を含める Customer Lockbox の一般提供が開始されました。そして今回、今年の第 2 四半期より SharePoint Online と OneDrive for Business にも Customer Lockbox のロールアウトが開始されることになりました。

マイクロソフトは、今後も最高レベルの透明性とデータ セキュリティ機能を提供すると同時に、場所やデバイスを問わず、常にユーザーが生産性を維持し、共同作業を行えるように取り組んでまいります。最高レベルのセキュリティと優れた生産性エクスペリエンスのどちらを取るか迷う必要はありません。

Office 365 におけるセキュリティ、プライバシー、コンプライアンスの詳細については、Office 365 セキュリティ センターをご確認ください。

—Rudra Mitra (Office 365 情報保護チーム、プログラム マネジメント担当パートナー ディレクター)

※ 本情報の内容（添付文書、リンク先などを含む）は、作成日時点でのものであり、予告なく変更される場合があります。

Exchange Online默认为用户提供了管理员审计日志功能，该功能可以审计出凡是拥有管理员权限的用户在Exchange层面所做的操作。通过管理员审计日志我们可以方便的跟踪对于Exchange Online的更改以满足组织的遵从性的要求，这一点在较大的组织且有较多管理员。

在默认情况下，Office 365的管理员审计日志是被开启的，这为我们提供了很大的便捷，不会再出现问题已经发生了但却没有日志可看。但需要知道的是，管理员对Exchange层面所产生的任何有改动的设置是会被记录下的。换句话说当管理员执行Get、Test这类命令是不会被记录的。另外，默认情况下管理员审计日志会在服务器端保留90天，这个天数是可以被调整的。

有关具体信息，请参考如下文档：

管理员审核日志记录

https://technet.microsoft.com/zh-cn/library/dd335144(v=exchg.150).aspx

例如，您可以运行如下命令搜索管理员对某一个用户进行的更改，您这里将username更改为实际被修改的对象，例如用户名：

Search-AdminAuditLog -objectids username -StartDate 01/01/2015 -EndDate 10/02/2016

根据这里的返回结果，您可以在下图中看到管理员（Caller）在时间（RunDate）执行的操作（CmdletName）和改命令的参数（CmdletParameters）：

对于管理员审计日志的设置，您也可以通过如下命令检查全局设置，在这里可以定义是否启用、日志保留的天数、哪些命令和参数会被审计等全局设置：

Get-AdminAuditLogConfig

此外，您也可以通过如下链接去通过GUI搜索管理员审计日志：

Https://protection.office.com/#/unifiedauditlog

Exchange的管理员审计日志保存在一个特殊的系统邮箱(arbitration mailbox)中，但该邮箱不可以被直接访问。您需要查看时必须通过图形化或命令行进行查找。

一般情况下，审计人员搜索管理员审计日志最关心的是找出是谁在何时做了什么操作以及操作的参数。这些信息直接可以在管理员审计日中返回。但也有些场景需要审计出所修改的值，对类这种情况，Exchange Team Blog中给出了一种做法，即是通过将查找日志的输出结果放置到Array中然后对Array中的条目分隔进行细化查看。这里您可以参看该文档中的命令来实现：

Parsing the Admin Audit Logs with PowerShell

http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2015/06/15/parsing-the-admin-audit-logs-with-powershell.aspx

We have new updates for Surface Pro 4, Surface Book and Surface Pro 3 devices.

Starting this month, you may also notice a new file naming structure for these updates. With more and more customers choosing Surface for their organizations, we’re making this change to provide a consistent customer experience across multiple release mechanisms (like Windows Update and DLC).
You’ll start to notice this name change this month on some devices, with others to follow in the coming weeks.

Click the headings below to go to the specific location for your device on the Download Center. At the Download Center, click Details then click + More to see all available downloads for the device. For all devices you can follow the similar deployment process that is used for Surface Pro 3 described at Surface TechCenter.

As always, these updates may also be made available via the Windows Update service. When Surface updates are provided via the Windows Update service, they are delivered in stages to Surface customers. As a result, not every Surface will receive the update at the same time, but the update will be delivered to all devices.

Thanks,

Surface IT Pro Marketing team

We have new updates for Surface 3 devices.

Starting this month, you may also notice a new file naming structure for these updates. With more and more customers choosing Surface for their organizations, we’re making this change to provide a consistent customer experience across multiple release mechanisms (like Windows Update and DLC). You’ll start to notice this name change this month on some devices, with others to follow in the coming weeks.

Click the headings below to go to the specific location for your device on the Download Center. At the Download Center, click Details then click + More to see all available downloads for the device. For all devices you can follow the similar deployment process that is used for Surface Pro 3 described at Surface TechCenter.

As always, these updates may also be made available via the Windows Update service. When Surface updates are provided via the Windows Update service, they are delivered in stages to Surface customers. As a result, not every Surface will receive the update at the same time, but the update will be delivered to all devices.

Thanks,

Surface IT Pro Marketing team

With the release of Office 365 E5 and Skype for Business PSTN services in December there has been a lot of excitement and interest.  There is also a lot of new info to navigate.   Tomorrow marks the availability of PSTN services through the channel via our Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program.

If you recall, when we released the product in December through the channel  (CSP) it was without PSTN Conferencing and lacked the ability to add PSTN Calling.   With that limitation going away tomorrow, I wanted to make certain you all knew the appropriate steps to configure PSTN Conferencing on Office 365 E5 tenants or those that add the service to other Office 365 plans.

The process is fairly straight forward.  The best walk through I have seen is Matt Soseman’s blog post on TechNet, How To Enable Cloud PSTN Conferencing in Office365 in Skype for Business Online .  He takes you step by step through the Skype for Business node on the Office 365 Admin center first assigning a Bridge number to a user and testing it out!

If you have additional questions on Office 365 E5/ Skype for Business Online Dial-in Conferencing, the best place to start is the comprehensive FAQ on Microsoft’s Support Site.  In addition detailing the most common questions, the FAQ also contrasts our PSTN Conferencing offering with 3rd party offerings already available (and that can still be used).

The FAQ is great level set to prepare you for questions your customers are bound to ask in conversations you will have in the future.  I recommend giving it a once over before your next sales call on Office 365 and please distribute it to your cloud selling teams so they have it handy should that questions arise.

Lastly please check out the other blog posts on the TS2 blog that discuss Office 365 E5 and Skype for Business Online w/ PSTN Calling and Conferencing.

Happy Selling!

Woody

Woody Walton

As we discussed previously, Surface is in a class of devices that uses Modern Standby to give you instant sleep and faster resume times, while using far less power than the traditional S3 sleep used by most PCs. This ability keep devices protected by installing latest Windows Updates even when users are on the move and the device is in standby.

If you experience unexpected power consumption issues, it’s likely that your Surface device will have been interrupted from its lowest power state, DRIPS, more frequently than is usual.

If this happens and you are the person in charge of managing desktops on behalf of your users, Senior Program Manager, Joao Botto returns to show you how to troubleshoot and pinpoint issues by creating and analyzing sleep-study and energy reports for the affected device.

We hope that you find today’s overview useful. Keep checking back here on this blog and on Microsoft Mechanics for the latest on Surface management and engineering. Follow us @MSFTMechanics.

Mar.

1

Script Download:  
The script is available for download from https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/How-to-get-the-memory-a5b9b093. You can also use  Microsoft Script Browser for Windows PowerShell ISE to download the sample with one button click from within your scripting environment. 

This T-SQL script is used to get SQL Server buffer pool usage of a specified database or all the databases in an instance. 

You can find more All-In-One Script Framework script samples at http://aka.ms/onescriptingallery