Introduction to Microsoft Universal Print

Microsoft have released a cloud based print solution called Microsoft Universal Print. The idea of this print solution is to replace the traditional print server and be able to deploy your printers through the cloud.

Universal Print runs entirely on Microsoft Azure. When it’s deployed with Universal Print–compatible printers, it doesn’t require any on-premises infrastructure.

This is available on some Microsoft 365 plans. Currently as of August 2020 it is available in Microsoft 365 E5 and A5 subscriptions, but others are going to become available in the not too distant future.

It is scheduled to come to E3/A3 and Microsoft 365 Business Premium plans during 2020.

Deploying Microsoft Universal Print is pretty straight forward the basic steps are:

  • Add Universal Print to your plan
  • Install the Universal Print Connector
  • Register your printers into Microsoft Universal Print
  • Share & set your permissions to the printers ( this is done in the Azure Portal)
  • Add the printers to Windows – The computer that your adding the printer to needs to be connected to Azure AD.

Follow this video to see how to configure Universal Print and how to register & deploy the printers through Universal Print.

From my testing it looks like a pretty good solution for businesses who are running on a cloud first model & do not have an on premis print server.

Documentation is available for Microsoft Universal Print and shows you how to setup and configure Microsoft Universal Print.

Some things to note about Microsoft Universal Print are:

  • Your client computers need to be joined to Azure Active Directory
  • Some printers are going to come with support for Microsoft Universal Print embedded on the device
  • If your printer does not support native Microsoft Universal Print functionality you can still configure a Universal Print Connector that will forward print jobs to your printer
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Error 80180014 when joining Azure AD

So I had the problem when I tried to Join Azure AD on a new Microsoft 365 Tenant I got the following error

Something went wrong.
This feature is not supported. Contact your system administrator with the error code 80180014.
Additional problem information:
Server error code: 80180014
Correlation ID: Not available
Timestamp <date>
Server message: Not available
More information: https://www.microsoft.com/mdmerrors

So firstly I went to the web page that was listed in the error, but that wasn’t much help, all it told me was that the device was not supported.

How to fix 80180014 error when joining Azure Active Directory

This issue is caused by not having permissions to enroll personal devices into Microsoft Intune.

  1. So log into the Enpoint Manager Portal – https://endpoint.microsoft.com/
  2. Select Devices option in the left hand menu
  3. Click All users under the Device Type Restrictions in the center of the page
  4. Go to the Properties tab
  5. Click the Edit button to edit the platform restrictions
  6. Then change the personally owned devices from blocked to allowed.

This will now set users in your tenant to be able to Join Azure Active directory without them needing to be setup in the Endpoint Manager first.

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So I make this video as a guide for people who are new to IT. If you are new to an IT role this video will help you get your head around Microsoft 365.

Timestamps:
0:58 – How to login to Microsoft 365
2:03 – Navigating the admin center & customising the admin dashboard
2:32 – Viewing the service health of your Microsoft 365 service
3:20 – Customising the admin dashboard
4:00 – Viewing the full menu on the Microsoft 365 Admin Center
4:40 – Adding & changing users
10:10 – Changing licenses on a user account
10:36 – What is an automatic reply and email forwarding on an exchange mailbox (is useful when a person leaves the organisation)
12:29 – Multi-factor Authentication
13:34 – Explaining office 365 groups and explaining groups associated with Microsoft teams
15:20 – Creating an office 365 group and further explanation of groups
18:20 – Adding members into office 365 groups or distribution groups
19:08 – Explaining shared mailboxes – You can use this for archiving email accounts if needed
21:38 – Converting a user to a shared mailbox
22:40 – Adding custom domain name to Microsoft 365
24:16 – Exchange Admin Center
27:00 – Malware and spam filtering in Exchange Admin Center

29:27 – Advance Threat Protection in Exchange Admin Center
30:53 – Setting up mail relays & using connectors
32:33 – Connecting Office 365 to an outlook desktop

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Out putting folder sizes to CSV with PowerShell

I wanted a way to track trends of some file shares on a server over time so I have written this powershell script to monitor them and put the data into a .csv file. This will also create the CSV file if it doesn’t exist already.

My plan is to pump the CSV into PowerBI and be able to monitor the growth trends of the folders and then use the data for planning.

Edit – 13/05/2020 – I have changed part of the script to stop an error I was having when I would run this on folders that are empty. It was resolved by adding the -File flag to the Get-ChildItem.

<#
.Author
Jake Gardner

.Notes
This will break if another folder is added. This still needs further developement so it doesn't break


.Version
1.0
1.1 
- Added -File flag and $folder.fullname to the $folderSize, this makes it work when it is running on a different drive & also stops error that occurs when running on an empty folder by only measuring files.

#>

#Set the CSV file that you will be using to record the data
$loggingFile = 'shareStats.csv'
$loggingFilePath = 'C:\StatsFolder\'

$fullLoggingFile = $loggingFilePath + $loggingFile

#<----set the root folder of the folders you want to track - Just used xammp folder for testing. Change it ----> 
$rootFolder = 'C:\xampp'

#<---Declare and set variables --->

$folders = Get-ChildItem $rootFolder -Directory
$allSizes = (get-date).ToString()
$allFolders = 'Date Time'


#this loop writes the folders and the folder sizes into the allSizes and allFolders arrays
foreach ($Folder in $folders)
{
$folderSize = "{0:N2}" -f ((Get-ChildItem $folder.FullName -Recurse -File | Measure-Object -Property Length -Sum -ErrorAction Stop).Sum / 1MB) 
$folderPath = $Folder.FullName

$allFolders = $allFolders + ',' + $folderPath
$allSizes = $allSizes + ',' + $folderSize
}


#<--- Check if the CSV file exists --->

$doesFileExist = Test-Path $fullLoggingFile

if ($doesFileExist -eq $false) {
$doesFilePathExist = Test-Path $loggingFilePath

    if ($doesFilePathExist -eq $false) {
    mkdir $loggingFilePath
    }

'SEP=,' >> "$fullLoggingFile"
$allFolders >> "$fullLoggingFile"

}

$allSizes >> "$fullLoggingFile"

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So basically people sometimes call & say something about not receiving an email from someone or they think that emails are getting blocked by spam.

So wrote a small script that will connect to Exchange Online & then prompt for the amount of days back you want to check for spam and also which user. 

The script then exports it to a CSV file & opens it for you so you can view it.

 

#You need the ExchangeOnlineManagmenet module installed in powershell 
#Install-Module -Name ExchangeOnlineManagement


#Import exchange
Import-Module ExchangeOnlineManagement
Connect-ExchangeOnline

#set todays date and the amount of time to seach back
$today = Get-Date
$DaysBack = Read-Host -Prompt 'Input the days you want to go back'

#set the amount of days you want to go back 
$yesterday = (get-date).AddDays(-$DaysBack) 

# set who's mailbox you want to check
$recipient = Read-Host -Prompt 'Enter users email'

#mark status you want to search for
$Status = "FilteredAsSpam" 


Get-MessageTrace -StartDate $yesterday -EndDate $today -RecipientAddress $recipient -Status $Status | Select MessageID,Received,*Address,*IP,Subject,Status,Size | Format-Table

Invoke-Item C:\Temp\SpamResults.csv
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Vault cannot be deleted as there are existing resources within the vault – Azure

If you get the following error:

Error Description: Vault cannot be deleted as there are existing resources within the vault. : xxxx.xxxxx.xxxxx Unregister all containers from the vault and then retry to delete vault. For instructions, see https://aka.ms/AB-AA4ecq5 Code: ServiceResourceNotEmptyWithContainerDetails
To make it so you can delete the Recovery Services Vault. Open the Storage Accounts under “Backup Infrastructure” by navigating to, Recovery Vault >- Backup Infrastructure -> Storage Accounts
Then hit the three dots & select delete. Now you will be able to delete the vault that you were trying to delete.

 

 

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A common data breach method that I have seen on emails is leveraging client forwarding rules to forward every email received to a third party.

Basically a “hacker” will gain access into a mailbox (usually through social engineering) and then setup forwarding rules on the mailbox so all of the emails will be received by the intended recipient as well as forwarding the email to the malicious third party.

This risk can be mitigated by disabling client forwarding rules to external domains. This means that your email server will not allow auto-forwarding of emails to domains that are not part of your organisation.

How to disable client forwarding rules to external domains in office 365 or Exchange Server

If you have an enterprise SKU of Office 365 you can use the secure score function to automatically create the rule, just go to https://securescore.office.com/ and enable Client Forwarding Rules Block.

Manually setting a rule to block autoforwarding

If you do not have an enterprise SKU on office 365 (or if you have an on premise exchange server) you will need to manually create the mail flow rule to block auto forward emails.

You will need to go to the exchange admin center an under rules select new rule & then follow the video above that has the instructions on setting up the rule.

 

Some other useful informaiton around securing your email environment:

How to Setup Outbound Spam notifications on Office 365 or Exchange

Setup MFA on Office 365

 

 

 

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Having the correct screen resolution configured in your Windows computer is very important, it helps with clarity of image and a better display. The higher the resolution settings the sharper the images and content is on your PC. While Windows will automatically choose what it thinks the best resolution is you may want to change them from the default.

Changing the Screen Resolution in Windows 10

  1. Right click the desktop with your mouse and click on Display Settings
  2. Scroll down and choose Advanced display settings
  3. Choose which setting you think is correct in the Resolution drop down box
  4. If you want to keep the settings click Keep Changes, if not then select Revert
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How to Setup Outbound Spam notifications on Office 365 or Exchange

It is good practice to monitor outbound spam, if a computer gets infected with a virus or your exchange passwords are compromised the attacker can use your exchange or office 365 mailbox to send out spam.

Once this is setup if the server detects and blocks outbound spam it will send a notification email to you (or the admin) then you can investigate why this is happening.

The setup process is basically the same in both office 365 or Exchange on Premis.

How to setup the outbound spam notifications

  • Go to EAC
  • Open Protection
  • Click outbound spam
  • Open the default policy (or any other policy)
  • Select Outbound spam preferences
  • Tick the Send notification to the following email address or addresses when a sender is blocked for sending outbound spam.
  • Enter the email you want the notification to go to.

Now if any of your mailboxes are sending out spam you will know about it!!

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