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Hi, all in this episode we have a Fireside chat on Emergency Services in Teams, with our very own resident experts Dino Caputo and Michael LaMontagne.

What do we have to think about for Emergency services, as we continue to work from home, and plan for return to work?

In this episode, the team discusses what is the Microsoft release methodology when it comes to Microsoft 365 and Office. Where are the locations to manage this functionality, what they mean, and how to get into insider- pre-release programs.

Launch of Microsoft Teams preview experience and alignment with Microsoft 365 deployment channels

Set up the Standard or Targeted release options

In this episode, the team goes deeper into the discussion about Microsoft Teams templates.

  • Types of templates
  • Managing templates
  • Governance
  • Development

In this episode, the team talks about Power Platform Sr. Platform Evangelist at Microsoft Jon Levesque

In this Episode, a follow up to Episode 71. The teams walks through the process of running Microsoft 365 DSC in Azure Automation.

What is MicrosoftDSC?

Microsoft365DSC is an Open-Source initiative hosted on GitHub, lead by Microsoft engineers and maintained by the community. It allows you to write a definition for how your Microsoft 365 tenant should be configured, automate the deployment of that configuration, and ensures the monitoring of the defined configuration, notifying and acting on detected configuration drifts. It also allows you to extract a full-fidelity configuration out of any existing Microsoft 365 tenant. The tool covers all major Microsoft 365 workloads such as Exchange Online, Teams, Power Platforms, SharePoint and Security and Compliance.

Why automate MicrosoftDSC using a runbook?

Ordinarily, you would need to run MicrosoftDSC manually or setup an “agent” on a server to monitor changes in your tenant (tenant drift) which can be cumbersome and not always practical for some environments.

Azure Automation is a service in Azure that allows you to automate your Azure management tasks and to orchestrate actions across external systems from right within Azure.

The following guide shows you what how to setup Microsoft DSC as an Azure runbook.  The runbook will monitor for changes in your Office 365 tenant an alert you when any changes do occur.

Getting everything setup in your Azure Tenant

Running MicrosoftDSC requires many prerequisite PowerShell Modules and dependencies to be installed into your Azure Tenant.  This quite a cumbersome process so we have created a script to simplify this. **Shout out to fellow MVP Barbara Forbes for the inspiration for this code - https://twitter.com/Ba4bes**

M365DSCRunBookInstall

Before running this you will need to do the following things:

  1. Get your Tenantid.  (use https://www.whatismytenantid.com/)
  2. Find your Azure SubscriptionID from the Azure Portal
  3. Create an Azure Automation Account - QuickStart Ref
  4. Create an Azure Resource Account
  5. Copy the script below into your a PowerShell window (as Administrator)

This will install all the required Microsoft 365 DSC Prerequisites PowerShell Modules to use within your automation RunBook.

install-module az.accounts
install-module az.automation

#Update the values below specific to your tenant!
$tenantID = "YOUR TENANTID HERE"
$subscriptionID = "YOUR SUBSCRIPTION ID HERE"
$automationAccount = "Your M365Automation Account Here"
$resourceGroup = "Your Azure Resource Group Here"

$moduleName = "Microsoft365dsc"
Connect-AzAccount -SubscriptionId $subscriptionID -Tenant $tenantID 

Function Get-Dependency {
#Function modifed from: https://4bes.nl/2019/09/05/script-update-all-powershell-modules-in-your-automation-account/
    param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
        [string] $ModuleName    
    )

    $OrderedModules = [System.Collections.ArrayList]@()
    
    # Getting dependencies from the gallery
    Write-Verbose "Checking dependencies for $ModuleName"
     $ModuleUri = "https://www.powershellgallery.com/api/v2/Search()?`$filter={1}&searchTerm=%27{0}%27&targetFramework=%27%27&includePrerelease=false&`$skip=0&`$top=40"
    $CurrentModuleUrl = $ModuleUri -f $ModuleName, 'IsLatestVersion'
    $SearchResult = Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get -Uri $CurrentModuleUrl -UseBasicParsing | Where-Object { $_.title.InnerText -eq $ModuleName }

    if ($null -eq $SearchResult) {
        Write-Output "Could not find module $ModuleName in PowerShell Gallery."
        Continue
    }
    $ModuleInformation = (Invoke-RestMethod -Method Get -UseBasicParsing -Uri $SearchResult.id)

    #Creating Variables to get an object
    $ModuleVersion = $ModuleInformation.entry.properties.version
    $Dependencies = $ModuleInformation.entry.properties.dependencies
    $DependencyReadable = $Dependencies -split ":\|"

    $ModuleObject = [PSCustomObject]@{
        ModuleName    = $ModuleName
        ModuleVersion = $ModuleVersion
    }
    
    # If no dependencies are found, the module is added to the list
    if (![string]::IsNullOrEmpty($Dependencies) ) {
        foreach ($dependency in $DependencyReadable){
            $DepenencyObject = [PSCustomObject]@{
                ModuleName    = $($dependency.split(':')[0])
                ModuleVersion = $($dependency.split(':')[1].substring(1).split(',')[0])
            }
            $OrderedModules.Add($DepenencyObject) | Out-Null
        }
    }

    $OrderedModules.Add($ModuleObject) | Out-Null

    return $OrderedModules
}

$ModulesAndDependencies = Get-Dependency -moduleName $moduleName
#$ModulesAndDependencies

write-output "Installing $($ModulesAndDependencies | ConvertTo-Json)"

#Install Module and Dependencies into Automation Account
foreach($module in $ModulesAndDependencies){
    $CheckInstalled = get-AzAutomationModule -AutomationAccountName $automationAccount -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroup -Name $($module.modulename) -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
    if($CheckInstalled.ProvisioningState -eq "Succeeded" -and $CheckInstalled.Version -ge $module.ModuleVersion){
        write-output "$($module.modulename) existing: v$($CheckInstalled.Version), required: v$($module.moduleVersion)"
    }
    else{
        New-AzAutomationModule -AutomationAccountName $automationAccount -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroup -Name $($module.modulename) -ContentLinkUri "https://www.powershellgallery.com/api/v2/package/$($module.modulename)/$($module.moduleVersion)" -Verbose     
        While($(get-AzAutomationModule -AutomationAccountName $automationAccount -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroup -Name $($module.modulename)).ProvisioningState -eq 'Creating'){
            Write-output 'Importing $($module.modulename)...'
            start-sleep -Seconds 10
        }
    }
}

DSC PowerShell RunBook Sample

Here is the sample code as your Azure RunBook.  This can be scheduled to run on regular basis.

  1. Browse to your Azure Automation account.
  2. Under process automation, click Run Books.
  3. Create a new Azure RunBook, give it a name and make sure to select the runbook type asPowerShell.
  4. Edit the RunBook and copy the code below and paste it into your RunBook.
  5. In your Azure Automation Account, browse to shared resources -> credentials to add your credentials which will be used to execute the RunBook.
  6. Set the schedule for how often your Runbook executes
$creds = Get-AutomationPSCredential -Name "AutomationAccount"
$GitHubDSCConfig = 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/YOURGITHUB/m365dscsample/main/GoldStandardDSCConfig.ps1'

$path = "$env:TEMP" 
$Date = $(Get-Date -f yyyy-MMM-dd-HHMMtt)

write-output "Pulling DSC from Tenant $Date" 
Export-M365DSCConfiguration -Quiet -Workloads @("TEAMS") -GlobalAdminAccount $creds -path $path -filename "runbook_$date.ps1" *>&1 | out-null

write-output "Pulling DSC from GitHub" 
Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $GitHubDSCConfig -OutFile "$path\dscconfig_$date.ps1"

write-output "Generating Delta Report`r`n" 
New-m365dscdeltareport -source "$path\dscconfig_$date.ps1" -destination "$path\runbook_$date.ps1" -OutputPath "$path\DeltaNew_$date.HTML" *>&1 | out-null

$readfile = Get-Content -path "$path\DeltaNew_$date.HTML"
write-output $readfile

write-output "Send Email"

$sendMailParams = @{
    Credential = $Creds
    From = $($Creds.username)
    To = 'habib@mydomain.com', 'michael@mydomain.com','dino@mydomain.com','curtis@mydomain.com'
    Subject = "DSC Delta Report - $Date"
    Body = "This is the delta report between your tenant and the Baseline Configuration $readfile"
    BodyasHtml = $true
    Attachments = "$path\DeltaNew_$date.HTML"
    SMTPServer = 'smtp.office365.com'
    Port = 587
    UseSsl = $true    
    DeliveryNotificationOption = 'OnFailure','OnSuccess'    
    Encoding = 'UTF8'
    Priority = 'High'
    EA = 'Stop'
}

Send-MailMessage @sendMailParams

In this episode, the team discusses our Microsoft Ignite favorite announcements that we are excited and interested about.

https://t.co/lLm47W2ry7?amp=1

https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/partners/news/article/modern-work-and-security-news-at-microsoft-ignite

Ignite 2020 Book of News (microsoft.com)

In this episode, we have a good chat with the guys who are coordinating Teamsfest. They give us a rundown about the 1-day event that is jam-packed with a star-studded lineup with sessions related to Microsoft Teams.

Registration Link for the event: TeamsFest 2020 (sessionize.com)

In this episode the team discusses the new highly impactful end-user changes, these features are large enough that would require changes to documentation or end-user adoption and training.

  • New meeting pre-join experience
  • New meeting experience
  • Breakout rooms
  • Meeting options
  • Channel Info (I)
  • Moved Channel Meeting in top Corner (Meet Now in Channel)
  • New file share experience
  • Planner /todo /tasks
  • Microsoft Lists
  • Network Device Interface - NDI
  • Updated Notification Experience
  • New Message Actions (Integrations with Power Automate )
  • New Templates (create a Team from a Template)
  • Updates to MTR (Coordinated Meetings and WebEX Direct Guest)
  • Merge Phone Calls
  • New Phone UI Change

 

 

In this episode, the team talks with CEO Matt Landis, of Landis Technologies who are are one of the Microsoft Teams Certified Contact Center & Compliance Cloud recording partners.

We discuss their products:

  • Business Focus
  • Product differentiator
  • Product Architecture
  • Advanced and challenging scenarios
  • Microsoft Certification & validation process of their product.

In this episode, the team talks with PM Evan Kahan from Numonix , who are are one of the Microsoft Teams Certified Compliance Cloud recording partners.

We discuss their IX Cloud product:

  • Business Focus
  • Product differentiator
  • Product Architecture
  • Advanced and challenging scenarios
  • Microsoft Certification & validation process of their product.