Today, we are happy to announce the latest release of Hybrid Configuration Wizard (HCW). As we announced in the Exchange Server Roadmap Update blog post, this new version of HCW allows you to explicitly decide on which configurations should be performed by the wizard when it is re-run (the first run of HCW still needs to be a full run).
Up to now, re-running the HCW could be challenging for organizations who have customized some of the settings that were made initially by the HCW (because HCW might reset these settings to the default if it is re-run).
With the new “Choose Exchange Hybrid Configuration” option, this is now a thing of the past as HCW allows you to pick what it should configure. This is especially useful for reoccurring tasks like certificate management.
With the new version of HCW, we also added a new configuration action called Update Secure Mail Certificate for connectors. You can find it in the Configure Mail Flow section.
You can use this task when you’ve renewed or replaced the TLS certificate which is used to secure the mail flow between Exchange Server and Exchange Online.
Once you have renewed or replaced the TLS certificate, simply run HCW, check the action (don’t check any other connector-related configuration action like Outbound Connector in M365 Organization if you don’t want to perform additional configurations beside replacing the transport certificate) and click Update to let HCW do what is needed to properly configure the connectors. That’s it!
The updated HCW documentation provides more context about the latest changes and the scenarios in which the new “Choose Exchange Hybrid Configuration” feature can be used. You can find the documentation here.
We have also adjusted the permissions required to perform hybrid configurations in Microsoft 365. These adjustments drastically reduce the scenarios in which Global Admin permissions are required when running HCW to perform changes to an existing hybrid configuration. Organization Management permissions in Exchange on-premises and Exchange Online are now sufficient for the most common scenarios (note that for an initial hybrid setup, Global Admin permissions in Microsoft 365 are still required).
We have updated the documentation to cover the permission changes. You can find the documentation here.
Please let us know in the comments section if you find the new feature helpful and provide us with feedback. This will help us to drive the improvement of the HCW further.
The Exchange Team