Have you ever thought about customizing Microsoft 365 with your organization’s branding? If not, you’re probably not the only one. After all, as an IT admin, you do have a lot of things there to keep you busy. However, Microsoft 365 branding isn’t just a marketing matter – it might even impact your organization’s security. Read on to learn why you should not ignore it and how to deal with it as a Microsoft 365 administrator. Why brand your Microsoft 365? Before getting down to the configuration, let me explain why you should care about branding your Microsoft 365 tenant with the company logo ..read more

AI, or Artificial Intelligence in full, is a hot topic these days – no matter if we speak about personal or professional context. The popular Microsoft 365 offering from Microsoft has been AI-enabled at the end of 2023 through the introduction of Copilot, a solution to boost end-users’ productivity. Let’s have a closer look at Microsoft 365 Copilot, since, as an admin, you might face the task to set up this technology in your organization’s tenant any time soon. What’s Copilot in Microsoft 365? On the surface, it’s a chatbot that you can instruct to do multiple tasks for you in different Micr ..read more

Here’s a deep dive into generative AI with Szymon Szczesniak (CodeTwo CEO) & Tony Redmond (Microsoft MVP since 2004). Watch the podcast below to find out more about Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft 365, new edition of Exchange on-prem, and tackling everyday challenges of an IT admin. Should we keep calm and ignore AI? Pssst… You’ll find the transcript for the podcast below the video. Podcast transcript Szymon Szczesniak: Hello and welcome to the first, and hopefully not the last, episode. Today we are at ESPC 23 in Amsterdam, and our guest is Tony Redmond. Tony Redmond: Hello! Szymon Szczesni ..read more

This is the complete guide to automatic email forwarding in Microsoft 365. I’ll explain what email forwarding is, how it differs from email redirecting, and how to configure it for various scenarios. What is email forwarding? Why auto forward emails? How to auto forward emails in Microsoft 365? Exchange admin center: mailboxes Exchange admin center: mail flow rules Automatic email forwarding in Outlook Advanced auto forwarding Example of use: auto forward invoices to Finance Problem Solution How to set it up Other automatic forwarding use cases Blocking auto forwarding to external addr ..read more

Conditional Access Policies (CAP) and Continuous access evaluation (CAE) are mechanisms introduced to Entra ID (Azure AD) to help organizations control access to their Microsoft 365 tenant. They make Client Access Rules obsolete. Read on to learn what you need to set up Conditional Access and how to configure your policies to, for example, block PowerShell access to your company for non-admin users. Before you start There are two crucial pieces of information you need to know before you start playing with Conditional Access in Entra ID. First, Conditional Access is a powerful tool that you ca ..read more

The frustration of not being able to recall a mistaken/embarrassing/unfinished email is probably a well-known feeling to many Outlook users. The absurd message: ‘X would like to recall the message, Y’ can drive everyone mad. But here comes the good news – Microsoft has finally addressed those experiences, releasing a completely redesigned message recalling feature. This time, it uses the power of the cloud. What’s new in the message recalling in Microsoft 365? What stays unchanged? How to set up the new email recalling feature? How to recall an email in Outlook for Windows? How to configure ..read more

With thousands of emails exchanged every day even in a single medium-sized organization, user’s mailboxes might quickly get full. In Exchange Online, you can try to overcome this problem by enabling archive mailboxes and telling users to move old items to them. Unfortunately, the human factor can be the weak link in the process. This is where Microsoft 365 archive policies come into play, offering you a centralized and automated way to keep your users’ primary mailboxes below the cap. A short introduction to archive mailboxes Create retention tags (rules for email archiving) Configure your a ..read more

The new Outlook for Windows has been available in preview for some time now. It’s high time to see how it came into existence and how it’s different from the classic Outlook experience. How to test the new Outlook for Windows The Try the new Outlook toggle lets any Microsoft 365 user enable a separate (new) Outlook version. You can launch either version from the start menu. They have the same name, so the only quick way to distinguish them is to look at the icon: The new Outlook has the Pre annotation, at least for the time being: New Outlook for Windows release roadmap Here are some dates r ..read more

Microsoft Viva was launched on February 4, 2021 and has been constantly evolving ever since. In this article, I discussed configuration of the first 4 Viva apps (Connections, Insights, Learning, and Topics) from a Microsoft 365 admin perspective. Since that time, Microsoft has launched 3 new ones: Engage, Goals, and Sales, which I’m going to present to you this time. Microsoft Viva explained… once again Licensing and prices How to configure Microsoft Viva Viva Engage Viva Goals Viva Sales Other ways to enhance your employee experience Microsoft Viva explained… once again Viva is a set of ..read more

YubiKey is one of the most popular security keys on the market. A security key is a small device that lets you authenticate yourself when you sign in to a service (e.g. Google, Facebook, email clients, etc.) using a multifactor authentication (MFA, 2FA). It can support multiple authentication standards, also in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, and is far safer than, for example, the SMS code verification. Security key types What are the benefits of using YubiKey devices? What are the YubiKey-supported authentication standards? How to set up YubiKey in Microsoft 365? Preliminary requirement ..read more