Microsoft Hybrid Agent Preview Update
As you are aware, we released the Microsoft Hybrid Agent for Exchange Server as a preview on Feb. 5 th , 2019. The blog post for that release is located here. We have been busy working on a few improvements for the Hybrid Agent over that past two months and wanted to let you know of some new features now available in the latest build of the Hybrid Configuration Wizard. The three enhancements for the Hybrid Agent are: Multi Agent installation and configuration Agent status views Registration/Usage of a load balancer for the internal URL instead of a specific Exchange Client Access Server Multi Agent Deployment Option 1 – Use the Hybrid Configuration Wizard to install additional agents For existing Hybrid Agent preview customers who would like to install additional Hybrid Agents for redundancy, simply download the latest version of the Hybrid Configuration Wizard (HCW) and open the application on the machine where you would like to install an additional Hybrid Agent. Like previous HCW runs, start the application, select Next. Select a desired server to execute against, select Next. Provide credentials to sign into your Office 365 tenant, select Next. The HCW will gather configuration information, select Next when complete. Select the default option provided for either Full or Minimal, select Next. Select Exchange Modern Hybrid Topology, Next. Agree to the Terms, Next. A new page will be shown that will provide you with the status of your existing / previously installed agent. Make sure the status of the existing agent is accurate before proceeding to the next step. Select Install and additional agent option, Next. Example: The HCW will install the additional Hybrid Agent. When the installation is complete, you can open the Microsoft Windows Services console from the machine and verify the service / agent is installed and running (look for Microsoft Hybrid Service - mshybridsvc). At that point, you can either re-run HCW if you wish to make further changes to your hybrid config, or simply cancel the wizard. You can repeat this step on each machine where you would like an additional Hybrid Agent installed. Option 2 – Manually download & install additional agents A second option for installing additional agents is outside the HCW itself and is done by downloading and manually installing the agent on the desired machine. Go to https://aka.ms/hybridagentinstaller. Save the MSHybridService.msi to a location on your machine. From that machine, open a Windows Command console as Administrator and run: Msiexec /i MSHybridService.msi to install the hybrid agent. You will be prompted for your tenant Global Admin credentials. After the installation is complete, you can open the Microsoft Windows Services console from the machine and verify the service / agent is installed and running. You can repeat this step on each machine where you would like an additional Hybrid Agent installed. Checking the Status of Your Hybrid Agents Option 1 – Get status via the Hybrid Configuration Wizard (HCW) Start the HCW application, select Next. Select a server in your Exchange org, select Next. Provide credentials to sign into your Office 365 tenant, select Next. The HCW will gather configuration information, select Next when complete. Select default option provided for either Full or Minimal, select Next. Select Exchange Modern Hybrid Topology, Next. Agree to the Terms, Next. A new page will be shown that will provide you with the status of your existing installed agents. Cancel the HCW app when you are done. Option 2 – Get status via the Hybrid Management PowerShell Module With each installation of the Hybrid Agent, we install the Hybrid Management PowerShell module in the directory …\Program Files\Microsoft Hybrid Service\ on the machine where the agent is installed. By default, this module is not imported and so you will need to import it before you can use it. This module also requires the Azure module for PowerShell if not already installed. Please install the PackageManagement modules first and then see this article for how to install the Azure module. To import the Hybrid Management module, run the following from a Windows PowerShell prompt as Administrator: Import-module .\HybridManagement.psm1 After that you can run: Get-HybridAgent -credential (get-credential) to view agent status: Note: the ‘id’ value provided in the above snip is the agent identity and not your unique tenant guid assigned to the route. Directing your Hybrid Agent(s) to the load balancer instead of a specific server If you would like your Hybrid Agent(s) to direct requests to your load balancer instead of a specific Exchange Client Access Server, this can be done with the Hybrid Management PowerShell module. In preview, the Hybrid Agent supports routing requests to the load balancer for Exchange Server 2013 – 2019 Client Access Servers. You cannot use this if you only have Exchange Server 2010 CAS deployed. Follow the steps above to import the Hybrid Management module for PowerShell. From PowerShell, then simply use the Update-HybridApplication cmdlet to change the value of the internalURL (targetURI parameter) from a specific server to your load balancer endpoint. Before running this cmdlet you will need to get the unique guid value (e.g. 12345678-1234-1234-1234-1111111111111) of your tenant’s endpoint from either your MRS configuration or the Organization Relationship object (TargetSharingEPR). Example: PS C:\PowerShell> Get-OrganizationRelationship ((Get-OnPremisesOrganization).OrganizationRelationship) | Select-Object TargetSharingEpr TargetSharingEpr ---------------- https://e399b770-3b66-407b-a71a-96ef80a67714.resource.mailboxmigration.his.msappproxy.net/EWS/Exchange.asmx Or PS C:\PowerShell> Get-MigrationEndpoint "Hybrid Migration Endpoint - EWS (Default Web Site)" | Select-Object RemoteServer RemoteServer ------------ e399b770-3b66-407b-a71a-96ef80a67714.resource.mailboxmigration.his.msappproxy.net To be clear, the ID parameter required in this cmdlet is not the agent ID, but the guid listed in your custom registered endpoint retrieved using the method above. Example: We really hope you are enjoying and benefitting from using the Hybrid Agent. We see a lot of usage and we’re working hard to improve it all the time. Thank you! Exchange Hybrid TeamMicrosoft Ignite 2018 - The Recap
Microsoft Ignite 2018 ended a few weeks ago, and what a great event it was. It was great to see so many of our customers, partners and friends there – thank you for coming to our sessions, thank you for coming to the booth, thank you for hanging out with us whenever the opportunity arose and thank you for giving us great feedback on what we’re doing. We’re still recovering but we heard you and are focused on doing a better job because of it. All of the sessions were recorded this year, and so here’s a handy reference to all the sessions in the Exchange and Outlook track, and some others we think you’ll find interesting, so you can refer back here whenever you want to find one. You will need an account in Tech Community to access them, but that’s something you should have anyway. So here’s a long list of sessions, in no particular order but grouped by technology as much as possible. Exchange Welcome to Exchange 2019! Panel discussion: Microsoft Exchange/Calendar/OWA Hybrid Exchange – Making it easier and faster to move to the cloud Scott Schnoll's Exchange and Office 365 Tips & Tricks Securing Exchange Online from Modern Threats So long and thanks for all the (email) phish Email Search in a Flash! Accelerating Exchange 2019 with SSDs Turbo charge your Exchange on-premises and Hybrid environment – Notes from the field How to add MFA to your Exchange On-Prem/Online mailboxes in 20 minutes or less Preparing to Move (or remove) Those Public Folders to the Cloud Why do we need to keep an Exchange Server on-premises when we move to the cloud? Making the best of the cloud: How Exchange Online is different from Exchange on-premises Azure Information Protection and Exchange Online - better together Securing your Office 365 environment from advanced phishing campaigns with Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection Outlook Deep dive into what’s new and coming soon to Outlook for Windows and Mac Outlook mobile in the Enterprise Deploying Outlook mobile securely in the enterprise What's Amazing and New in Calendaring in Outlook! Outlook on the web - What's new and why you should care! The Best (Outlook driven) Day of Your Life Success through people with LinkedIn and Microsoft 365 What's New in groups in Outlook Panel discussion: Microsoft Outlook (Windows, Mac, and Mobile) Let the intelligence built into Outlook help you to make time for what really matters Simple room booking in Outlook using new built-in Intelligence The Power of People in Outlook Security made real with Outlook mobile in-app experiences Outlook on the web: Don’t block your users, restrict them with conditional access/limited access! Adaptive Cards in Teams, Windows, Outlook and your own applications Create engaging, powerful new business processes in Microsoft Outlook with Adaptive Cards Office 365 Notes from the field: how we moved a large global bank to Office 365 Office 365 – Marriages, Divorces and Adoptions Getting stuff done: Solving Office 365 problems with PowerShell How to be an author and write about Office 365 Real-world best practices for managing Office 365 groups Embrace Office 365 Groups: What's new and how to get started Office 365 Groups automation inside-out Delivering Office 365 as an evergreen service: What to do, and more importantly, what not to do Understanding how Microsoft Information Protection capabilities work together to protect sensitive information across devices, apps, and services Secure enterprise productivity with Office 365 threat protection services including EOP, ATP, and Threat Intelligence Strategies for building effective, optimal and future proof connectivity to Office 365 that will delight your users Implementing a modern network architecture to get the most out of Office 365 Addressing global data residency needs with Multi-Geo in Office 365 Podcasts/Broadcasts Ross Smith IV & Greg Taylor on theCUBE Scott Schnoll & Jeff Mealiffe on theCUBE Ross Smith IV on Channel 9 talking about Outlook mobile Greg Taylor on Channel 9 talking about Exchange Server 2019 Greg Taylor, Tony Redmond and Paul Robichaux – Office 365 Exposed talking about random stuff It’s possible we missed a session you think we should have included (there were 750 or more after all), if so, add it to the comments section so people can find it. Thanks! Happy watching! And see you next year for more of the same. Microsoft Ignite 2019 here we come! Greg Taylor Director of Product Marketing Exchange Server and OnlineTAP: Outlook mobile support for Exchange on-premises with Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security
Update - 4/2/18: Hybrid modern authentication for Outlook mobile with Exchange on-premises mailboxes is now generally available. For more information see the A new architecture for Exchange hybrid customers enables Outlook mobile and security. Ross Smith IV Principal Program Manager Office 365 Customer ExperienceCalCheck - The Outlook Calendar Checking Tool
Over the past year or so I have been working on this tool - adding functionality and checks based off my experience as an Outlook engineer, and from suggestions given by other engineers. Well, this February the tool has been released so that all our customers can download and use it to check for potential problems in their calendars - which will hopefully be a real time saver when you encounter a problem with your Outlook Calendar - or with a user’s Outlook Calendar in your organization. Installation Download CalCheck from the Microsoft Download Center. Documentation: Information about the Calendar Checking Tool for Outlook (CalCheck) - Outlook | Microsoft Learn. Important: The 64-bit version of this tool is only for use with the 64-bit version of Microsoft Outlook 2010. The download is a ZIP file - just unzip it in an empty directory, open a command window in that directory, and run it. What CalCheck does The Calendar Checking Tool for Outlook (CalCheck) is a command-line program that checks Microsoft Outlook Calendars for problems. The tool opens an Outlook profile to access the Outlook Calendar. It performs various checks, such as permissions, free/busy publishing, delegate configuration, and automatic booking. Then each item in the calendar folder is checked for known problems that can cause unexpected behavior, such as meetings that appear to be missing. As CalCheck goes through this process, it generates a report that can be used to help diagnose problem items or identify trends. Checks performed The following Calendar-specific checks are performed and logged in the report: Permissions on the Calendar Delegates on the Calendar Free/Busy publishing information Direct Booking settings for the Mailbox or Calendar Total number of items in the Calendar folder The following item-level checks are performed and logged in the report: No Organizer email address No Sender email address No dispidRecurring property (causes an item to not show in the Day/Week/Month view) Time existence of the dispidApptStartWhole and dispidApptEndWhole properties No Subject for meetings that occur in the the future or for recurring meetings (a warning is logged) Message Class check (a warning is logged) dispidApptRecur (recurrence blob) is checked for time on overall start and end times, not for exceptions Check for Conflict items in the Calendar Check for duplicate items, based on certain MAPI properties Check if over 1250 recurring meetings (a warning is logged) and 1300 recurring meetings (an error is reported); 1300 is the limit Check if you are an attendee and you became the Organizer of a meeting Check meeting exception data to ensure it is the correct size Server Mode You also have the option to run CalCheck in Server Mode. In Server Mode, CalCheck attempts to open all mailboxes on the Exchange server and perform the checks listed in the "Checks Performed" section of this article. Server Mode generates a CalCheckSvr.log file, which lists the mailboxes that have errors. Additionally, CalCheck generates a separate CalCheck__.log file for each mailbox. This log file shows more mailbox-specific detail. To use Server Mode, you must use a messaging profile associated with an account that has permissions to all of the mailboxes on the specified Exchange server. To run server mode, use the “-S” command-line switch. Example Running to check a single mailbox/calendar: If you don’t specify a profile on the command line - then you will be prompted to choose a profile as in the above screenshot. Once you have chosen your profile - the tool will run - and you will see similar output as long as everything is successful: Looking at this window shows you that there is a CalCheck.log, and where to go and find it. Opening that will show some info like the following: 02/17/2012 05:09:20PM Calendar Checking Tool - Version 1.0 02/17/2012 05:09:20PM ==================================== 02/17/2012 05:13:45PM Opening mailbox: Mailbox 02/17/2012 05:13:45PM /O=Org/OU=OU/cn=Recipients/cn=Mailbox 02/17/2012 05:13:45PM Local time zone: Eastern Standard Time 02/17/2012 05:13:45PM Successfully opened the Calendar folder. 02/17/2012 05:13:45PM Processing calendar for Mailbox 02/17/2012 05:13:46PM Successfully located and opened the local free busy message for this mailbox. 02/17/2012 05:13:47PM Publishing 2 month(s) of free/busy data on the server. 02/17/2012 05:13:47PM Resource Scheduling / Automatically accept meeting requests is disabled. 02/17/2012 05:13:47PM ==================================== 02/17/2012 05:13:47PM Delegates for this mailbox: 02/17/2012 05:13:47PM =========================== 02/17/2012 05:13:47PM No delegates are set. 02/17/2012 05:13:47PM =========================== 02/17/2012 05:13:47PM Permissions on this Calendar: 02/17/2012 05:13:47PM ============================= 02/17/2012 05:13:47PM Default: None 02/17/2012 05:13:47PM Manager: Reviewer 02/17/2012 05:13:47PM Coworker1: None 02/17/2012 05:13:47PM Coworker2: Reviewer 02/17/2012 05:13:47PM Coworker3: Reviewer 02/17/2012 05:13:47PM ============================= 02/17/2012 05:13:48PM Found 1404 items in the Calendar. Processing... 02/17/2012 05:13:48PM WARNING: No Subject on this item. You may want to add a Subject to this item. 02/17/2012 05:13:48PM Properties to help investigate this reported item: 02/17/2012 05:13:48PM Subject: Location: No subject on recurring item Start Time: 01/11/2011 10:00:00PM End Time: 01/11/2011 10:30:00PM Last Modifier: Mailbox Last Modified Time: 02/04/2011 02:48:08PM Is a recurring appointment: true Sender Name: Mailbox Sender Address: /o=Org/ou=OU/cn=recipients/cn=Mailbox Organizer Name: Mailbox Organizer Address: /o=Org/ou=OU/cn=recipients/cn=Mailbox Recurrence Start: 12:00:00.000 AM 1/11/2011 Recurrence End: 12:00:00.000 AM 2/1/2011 Recurrence End Type: End After X Occurrences Number of Exceptions: 0x0000 02/17/2012 05:13:50PM ERROR: Detected a duplicate item in the Calendar. Please check this item. 02/17/2012 05:13:50PM Properties to help investigate this reported item: 02/17/2012 05:13:50PM Subject: Doctor appointment Location: Doctor’s Office Start Time: 03/04/2012 04:30:00PM End Time: 03/04/2012 06:00:00PM Last Modifier: Mailbox Last Modified Time: 08/01/2011 06:29:05PM Is a recurring appointment: false Sender Name: Mailbox Sender Address: /o=Org/ou=OU/cn=recipients/cn=Mailbox Organizer Name: Mailbox Organizer Address: /o=Org/ou=OU/cn=recipients/cn=Mailbox For problem items that are found - the report gives you information you can use to go and find the problem items so you can remove it, recreate it, or if possible - fix it, etc. Command Switches - and what they do CalCheck [-P ] [-M ] [-S ] [-A] [-F] [-R] [-V] [-No] CalCheck -? -P Profile name (If this parameter is not specified, the tool prompts you for a profile) -M Mailbox DN (If this parameter is specified, only process the mailbox that is specified) -S Server name (Process the complete server unless a mailbox is specified) -A All calendar items are output to CALCHECK.CSV -F Create a CalCheck folder, and move flagged error items to the folder -R Put a Report message that contains the CalCheck.log file in the Inbox -V Verbose output to the Command Prompt window -No To omit a calendar item test The No parameter works with "org" to omit the “Attendee becomes Organizer” test and works with "dup" to omit duplicate item detection -? Print this message Some additional tips about specific switches: “-M” You must use the legacyExchangeDN for the mailbox, and the profile you use must be for a mailbox that has permission to open that other mailbox. “-A” Will create a CSV file that includes all calendar items - one in each row. There will be several properties listed for each item that can be used to look for problems not detected by the tool: You can view all items in the Calendar by opening the CSV in Excel. You can sort and filter items based on things like start time, subject, recurring items, etc. This can be useful for finding problems that can’t be detected by CalCheck, or that currently aren’t looked for by CalCheck. If you find a problem item in the CSV, you can open the Calendar and put it into Category view to get a similar view of the Calendar in Outlook. To do this, in Outlook click the View tab, click the Change View drop down, and choose By Category. This will give a view of the Calendar like the following: This view shows all the items in the Calendar as a list - similar to looking at emails in the Inbox folder. You can sort on things here like Subject, Location, Start, and End. This can be used to find the problem item in the Calendar folder when it is difficult or impossible to find in the normal Calendar view. “-F” Will create a CalCheck folder in your folder list, and will move items marked as an Error to that folder: Items can easily be moved back to the Calendar, or can be deleted from here if not needed, or corrected if possible and then placed back in the Calendar. The general rule of thumb would be to recreate the item and delete the item that was moved out to the CalCheck folder. “-R” Will create a mail message in the Inbox folder with the CalCheck.log file attached to it. This is useful when running the tool in Server mode - as each user will get their report in their Inbox: “-No” There are two of these: “-No org” and “-No dup”: The “-No org” will omit the check for the “attendee becomes the organizer of the meeting” check. Part of this check uses the legacyExchangeDN of the mailbox. If the legacyExchangeDN has changed for any reason - like a migration - then this test will give errors for items that may not really be in error. The error that is logged by CalCheck will show both DNs. Here is an example: 12/21/2011 05:27:25PM ERROR: dispidApptStateFlags is 1, but the address for this mailbox does not match the organizer address. 12/21/2011 05:27:25PM Check to ensure the Organizer Address is correct, and whether or not this user should be the organizer. 12/21/2011 05:27:25PM Organizer Address: /o=Org1/ou=admin group 1/cn=recipients/cn=user1 12/21/2011 05:27:25PM DN for this user: /o=Org2/ou=admin group 2/cn=recipients/cn=user1 12/21/2011 05:27:25PM See KB 2563324 for additional information: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;2563324 12/21/2011 05:27:25PM Properties to help investigate this reported item: 12/21/2011 05:27:25PM Subject: Test The mailbox here is the same actual mailbox - but because the legacyExchangeDN changed - it is marked as an error. The “-No dup” will omit the duplicate item detection - as this test creates an in-memory list of items and tests each item against that list. This can slow the process down a bit due to the extra processing and memory usage. What CalCheck does not do CalCheck is a reporting tool only. It will not automatically modify or “fix” any items. It will move items detected as error items to the CalCheck folder if the “-F” switch is used, but otherwise no changes will be made to any items. CalCheck only works against Calendars located on an Exchange server. It will not work against other servers, such as IMAP or POP3, etc. CalCheck can’t find every kind of corruption that can possibly happen to a Calendar item. However - it can find many known problems that can be knocked out without having to spend time combing through a Calendar and/or contacting a help desk. Feedback Tool official documentation: Information about the Calendar Checking Tool for Outlook (CalCheck) - Outlook | Microsoft Learn Thanks - and I hope this will help save time in diagnosing and resolving calendar issues for you! Randy Topken Senior Escalation Engineer Outlook team
