Automated Hybrid Troubleshooting Experience

Update: the hybrid troubleshooter as mentioned in this post does not exist anymore as a separate application; we have done a lot of work to make the HCW experience problem free and help you troubleshoot any problems with data within HCW. The below post is here for historical reasons  only.

One of the more popular deployment options for Office 365, and more specifically Exchange Online, is the Exchange Hybrid Configuration. This deployment option gives customers a way to move some of their mailboxes to Exchange Online, while keeping some on-premises. Our goal with an Exchange Hybrid configuration is to make the two physically separate environments operate as if they were one. Features such as Mail Flow, Free/Busy, MailTips, and compliance features like eDiscovery searches work seamlessly even for mailboxes in different environments. While all of this automation is great, there are some tradeoffs. When something goes wrong with the Hybrid Configuration Wizard (HCW), what do you do? We’ve heard complaints like, “This thing is a black box!” and “Why do the errors have to be so vague?” While we are proud of the work we’ve done with the HCW, we agree that troubleshooting some of the problems can be difficult.

Announcing a New Automated Troubleshooting Experience

The first version of the new automated troubleshooting experience is quite simple. You run a troubleshooter (https://aka.ms/HCWCheck) from the same server on which HCW failed (Internet Explorer only at this time). This will collect the HCW logs and parse them for you. If you are experiencing a known issue, there will be a message that tells you what went wrong and then provide you with a link to an article that contains the solution.

Added Benefit

The troubleshooter has predetermined sets of patterns it looks for in the HCW logs to determine the conclusion. Whether it finds a conclusion or not, the HCW logs are uploaded to our datacenter and made available to a support professional in the event that you open a case. This can dramatically reduce the amount of time it takes for your issue to get resolved.

Moving forward

We plan on adding more complex checks and diagnostic results to this troubleshooter. We are working on a series of troubleshooters that will automate troubleshooting and data collection efforts for things like Migrations, Free/Busy, and OAUTH issues.

Got feedback?

We would love to hear any feedback you have; please file your feedback within the HCW! Kudos goes to the following folks that made this possible: Saidivya Velagapudi, Caius Preda, Scott Roberts, Nikhil Chinchwade, Karl Buhariwala, Timothy Heeney, Jeremy Kelly, Wei Wu, Cathy Westman, Gabriel Popescu, and numerous others The Exchange Hybrid Team