Next changes in Microsoft Certifications

Microsoft is planning a massive change in some of their certifications, so the aim of this post is to explain and extract some of that information.

• Changes for Microsoft 365 Certified: Modern Desktop Administrator Associate (MD-100+MD-101)
  • The following exams (MD-100 & MD-101) are going to be retired next July, this certification would be consolidated into a single exam (MD-102)
  • We have until July 2023 to obtain both exams and obtain the competency (if we only obtain one exam, is useless)
  • From May 2023 a beta exam of MD-102 will be launched
  • If we already have the MD-100 & MD-101 certifications, the only thing that we need to do is to be aware of our renovations dates and have active the certifications.

• Changes for Microsoft 365 Certified: Enterprise Administrator Expert (MS-100+MS-101)
  • The following exams (MS-100 & MS-101) are going to be retired next July, this certification would be consolidated into a single exam (MD-102)
  • We have until July 2023 to obtain both exams and obtain the competency (if we only obtain one exam, is useless)
  • From May 2023 a beta exam of MS-102 will be launched
  • If we already have the MS-100 & MS-101 certifications, the only thing that we need to do is to be aware of our renovations dates and have active the certifications.

• Changes for Microsoft 365 Certified: Teams Voice Engineer Expert (MS-720)
  • In June this certification will be deprecated
  • From March a new beta exam will be available (MS-721)
  • If we do not have the certification and we’re evaluating to obtain it, I Will recommend waiting until the new (or beta) certification will be launched, meanwhile, prepare the certification

• Changes for Microsoft 365 Certified: Teams Application Developer Associate (MS-600)
  • The certification Will be retired next December.
  • By today, there aren’t more news about what Will be next.

• Changes for Microsoft 365 Certified: Security Administrator Associate (MS-500)
  • The certification Will be deprecated in June.
  • The content this certification Will be divided into SC-200, SC-300 y SC-400

If you need more info about it, check out the official post: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-learn-blog/evolving-microsoft-365-certifications-help-keep-you-in-sync-with/ba-p/3719265

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Creating a Disaster Recovery Strategy

When you’re creating a disaster recovery strategy, there are two main criteria that you need to consider: your Restore Point Objectives (RPOs) and your Restore Time Objectives (RTOs). Although these acronyms sound complex, the idea behind them is fairly straightforward. Let’s have a closer look at how your RPOs and RTOs affect your DR strategies.

Determining RPOs

To better understand what your RPO is you should ask yourself “How much data can I afford to lose if a disaster occurs?” Your RPO represents the amount of data loss that your organization is able to sustain in the event of a disaster. This can vary between organizations as well as applications. Some businesses have zero tolerance for data loss, other, can tolerate a couple days’ worth of data loss and can therefore afford to have a much higher RPO.

Determining Your RTOs

Similarly, to understand what your RTO is you should ask yourself “How long can I can afford to be without service if a disaster occurs?” They might be able to work manually for days by temporarily substituting manual paper-based actions for their normal computerized operations? It’s up to you

Building Your DR Strategy

The DR strategy you build, needs to consider the organization’s and applications’ RPOs and RTOs. The right answer for RPOs and RTOs depends on the nature of the business, the workload, and its value to the business. As you can imagine, solutions that provide low RPOs and RTOs are also typically much more costly than solutions with that allow for higher RPOs and RTOS.

In some ways, the DR strategy for a smaller business is even more important than for an enterprise. While a larger organization might be able to sustain a significant outage and pick back up again, a lengthy outage for a smaller organization might put it out of business permanently. Basing your DR strategy on your businesses RPOs and RTOs ensures that you can be up and running after a disaster with a minimum of cost.

How to force Windows 10 to download the Fall Creators Update

Since last week it has been weird at the office, while my colleagues were downloading the new Update which allows to use the new features of OneDrive On Demand, I was complaining of how impossible it was to receive the Falls Creator Update on ithe computer.

I know that it is a gradual rollout, so not everyone will get the update on day one (as it can be seen). As far as we know, Microsoft will slowly ramp up the release, but if you don’t want to wait (like me 🙂 ), you can get the latest and greatest update by forcing it.

If you want to force the update, you can visit the following link: https://www.microsoft.com/es-es/software-download/windows10 and click the button update now. Then a verification process will begin to check if you’re system is ready to receive the new update, If it is ready, the download process will begin.

I want to give a piece of advise fefore starting updating your system, the update process take soooooo long, so be patient 😉

 

Skype to Teams Roadmap

Yesterday was announced in the Techcommunity the roadmap for Microsoft Teams.

I want to highlight the integration between the Skype For Business client and the Microsoft Teams client. With this integration we will be able to share the presence, contacts between this two applications and even to call between this two applications. In a near future, we will have the PSTN calling plans for Teams and more features yet to come.

If you want more information about this, visit the following link: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/Roadmap-for-Skype-for-Business-capabilities-coming-to-Microsoft/bc-p/120002#M340

SPO and O4B Per Group Sharing Controls

This new feature – which hits first release tenants in June 2017 – will give extra control over who and how information can be shared with external/third party users in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business.

This control allows to limit the share with external users based on an specific AD security group, providing the ability to configure more than 1 security group to that control.

In order to configure this feature, we have to take into account that provides 2 options:

• Users in selected security groups share with authenticated external users: Only users in the assigned security groups will be able to share with external users. If you are not included in these groups you cannot share with an external user who is not in your organization.

• Users in selected security groups share with authenticated external users and using anonymous links: Users will be able to share with external users and also create anonymous links.

An important thing to note about this new sharing control is that the site collection policy will always take precedence. So, If the anonymous sharing is disabled at site colletion level (wether it is SPO or OneDrive personal site), users in the security group that will not be able to do so in that site collection.

O365 admin center

This is a reminder for myself, sometimes I need to access to the admin portal of each product, but I’m not able to remember all those URL’s, so with this post I’ll try to keep this url’s on my mind.

Online Admin Tool	URL
Exchange admin center	https://outlook.office365.com/ecp
Skype for Business admin center	https://admin2a.online.lync.com/lscp
SharePoint admin center	https://tenantname-admin.sharepoint.com
OneDrive admin center	https://admin.onedrive.com/
Yammer admin center	https://www.yammer.com/tenantdomain.com/admin
PowerApps admin center	https://admin.powerapps.com/environments
Flow admin center	https://admin.flow.microsoft.com/environments
Security and Compliance center	https://protection.office.com/homepage
Azure – Active Directory, SSO, Conditional Access, Intune, etc.	https://portal.azure.com/@tenant-domain
Cloud App Security	https://tenantname.portal.cloudappsecurity.com

Hopet it helps!

Skype For Business VS Microsoft Teams features

Recently I found on Technet a very interesting article written by the user LucaVitali

This article is a comparison table between Skype for Business and Teams, where the information comes from various sources. In adition to that, Luca will try to update the file and add new features.

https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/lync/Skype-for-Business-and-aa1c8daa

Enjoy it!

Unable to discover PowerShell endpoing URI error

While I was trying to connect to the S4B Online admin center by PowerShell I received the following error: “Unable to discover PowerShell endpoing URI”

I used the following PowerShell commands to connect to the admincenter:

So, as you can see the only method allowed to connect to the S4B admin center is by explicity using the domain:

$cssession = New-CsOnlineSession –Credential $credential –OverrideAdminDomain “domainname.onmicrosoft.com”

It is very straightforward to solve the error, but I hope that it will help someone

MyAdvisor – self-service guide and toolset for planning and managing Teams and Skype for Business Online for operational success

Martin Boam's Microsoft Blog

From reading Guidance on moving from SfB to Microsoft Teams as information and urls come out of Ignite im reading and learning whats coming and changing. I suspect there will be more info coming but heres some first looks to what im finding.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/MicrosoftTeams/prepare-teams

as part of the planning it refers to MyAdvisor and notes the following so ive looked into this and found some very useful information.

MyAdvisor looks key for Planning so dont miss out on this.

My Advisor

Throughout your journey, we recommend the practical guidance you’ll find in My Advisor. My Advisor is a comprehensive, self-service guide and toolset for planning and managing Teams and Skype for Business Online for operational success.

I wanted to try it out and see what i find.

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The Skype Operations Framework (SOF) provided guidance to help customers and partners roll out and operate Cloud Voice capabilities. This framework…

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Copy of Lync Connectivity Analyzer Download link

Great tool to test OnPremise deployments

Martin Boam's Microsoft Blog

A fairly recent announcement was that the Lync Connectivity Analyzer tool has been retired noted below and in a blog post from Microsoft here

https://1drv.ms/f/s!AvBNRjYUuhsvjbtI7W-J2JRe7MtaPw

Ive added the documentation from TechNet below just in case it disappears as well

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj907302(v=ocs.15).aspx

NextHop Blog Post on it as well here

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/nexthop/2013/02/05/the-new-lync-connectivity-analyzer/

Using Lync Connectivity Analyzer in Lync Server 2013

Lync Server 2013

Topic Last Modified: 2014-02-11

Microsoft Lync Connectivity Analyzer helps Lync administrators determine whether the deployment and configuration of their Office 365 or on-premises Lync Server environment meets the requirements to support connections from Lync Windows Store app and Lync apps on mobile devices.

Lync Connectivity Analyzer attempts to connect to Lync Server on-premises or Lync Online by using the same services and protocols that are used by Lync Windows Store app and Lync mobile apps. You can perform the connection tests over your internal network or over an external network…

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