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Delegate365 changelog version 7.0-Office 365 Groups, Alias addresses, Logging and more

We have been busy during summer time and we have been developing and testing our new Delegate365 version 7. We added new features like the support for Office 365 Groups and further useful extensions and made a technical refresh behind the scenes. So, the latest version of Delegate365 is available now and ready for updates. See the details described here.

Delegate v7 is the successor of version 6.6. Besides new features, this is a major update since this version takes advantage of using new Microsoft APIs. So, here's the news:

  • User Mobile Phone number fix: When a user's Mobile phone number was modified or deleted in the additional details of a user, the changes were not visible instantly. This was caused by the Microsoft interface that the mobile phone number is an Exchange property that needs to be synced in the background. So, changes of that specific property sometimes took minutes or was lost. This has bee fixed in the latest Delegate365 version by using a new Microsoft interface.
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    Now, any modifications of the user's Mobile phone number property are visible instantly.
  • Office 365 Groups: Delegate365 now can manage Office 365 groups (historically also named Unified groups sometimes) as well. You can find the Office 365 groups management in the groups menu. The module works exactly as the other group types, each Office 365 group is assigned to one OU in Delegate365. Hint: Office 365 Groups fully exist only in Office 365 and are shown as distribution groups in Exchange on premises.
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    If one Office 365 group is selected, Admins can modify the members and owners, as in the existing group types modules. This allows Delegate365 Administrators to create and manage the new Office 365 Groups easily.
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    The general box allows to set Display name, the group Alias email address (with the assigned domains), the description, the Privacy level (Public or Private), if copies of group conversations shall be sent and if sender authentication is required or not.
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    For modifying, click Save changes.
    If a new Office 365 group is created, the Alias is automatically prefilled in an email-safe way (as used in Delegate365).
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    If the email Alias is not available in the Office 365 tenant, the Admin gets a warning...
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    ...and the Alias must be modified to an unique email address as here (project-a2).
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    The creation of an Office 365 group takes just some seconds. The new Office 365 group is created in Azure Active Directory, a SharePoint site is triggered to been provisioned, the email address is created in Exchange Online and members and permissions are added. So, there's a lot of things happening in the background, but Admins can continue to work with Delegate365 right after the process.
    Info for Portal Admins: Of course, Office 365 Groups can be (un)assigned manually in administration / organizational units as the other group types...
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    ...and there are rules for automatic OU-assignments in administration / sync / sync rules as well.
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  • Users E-Mail address options: Administrators can manage and add Alias addresses for their users (if permitted). After a user is selected, the EMail address menu opens the email management pane.
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    In here, the addresses can be modified, added or deleted. There's a new switch for SMTP addresses: Set as primary defines if the current email shall be the primary one or not.
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    When the changes are saved, the primary email address is bold and SMTP is in upper case (otherwise in lower case).
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    Modifications are done in Exchange Online. So, it can take some minutes, till they are active in Exchange.
  • Daily notifications for Admins: Admins in Delegate365 can now get daily notifications about their manages users and groups. When clicking the user menu in the top right corner and the Properties, the user properties opens. In the new Notifications box, each Admin can switch Daily Notifications to Yes or No and set the desired email address for the notifications.
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    This means, that Admins receive a daily email with the numbers of objects managed in Delegate365 and if less than 10% of Office 365 licenses are available (or the licenses limit is exceeded). The email delivers an overview about all managed OU's and looks as follows: Text in orange means warning, Text in red means limit reached or exceeded.
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    Each user can define if he wants to get the notification or not. By default this switch is set to No.
    Info for Portal Admins: These settings are the same as in the manage administrators admin properties, so they could be set not just by the Admin himself, but also by Portal Admins for their Admins if needed.
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    Warning notifications are sent if Office 365 licenses are ordered within Delegate365, or if license limits are exceeded or Delegate365 licenses are exceeded.
  • Logging extended: As described in Delegate365-Working with Audit Logs, Delegate365 stores logs on a daily and monthly basis. With version 7, there now is an additional logging to a summarized log with the name AuditLogSearch. Storage in the cloud is expandable as needed, so we thought, it's easier to work with one single log table instead of working with monthly logs. To simply the reporting in external tools, the Power-BI file works with this single table log.
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    So, we recommend to use the AuditLogSearch (red box) table for dashboards and reports (so does the Power-BI file) while the monthly logs logYYYYMM (blue box) are to search for specific actions that happened in that month and the last 7 day logs logYYYMMDD (green box) for actions by day (these are deleted automatically if older than 7 days). The following picture shows Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer connected to a Delegate365 log.
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    See Delegate365-Working with Audit Logs for more info.
    Also, the logging itself has been extended to log all user Exchange properties modifications.
  • Upgrade from version 6.4 (if necessary): If your existing Delegate365 version is less than 6.5, it is necessary to re-run the Delegate365 setup once because of required app permissions to read the Office 365 service status shown on the Delegate365 dashboard. We will inform you about the planned update date and the steps to update your Delegate365 app as described in Delegate365 changelog version 6.5 and in Delegate365-(Re)run the setup.

All existing productive Delegate365 tenants will be updated starting mid of October. New Delegate365 trials will automatically be available in the latest version.

We hope you enjoy the new features of Delegate365! More features are about to come this year!

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