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In Delegate365 version 6.2 update we added an important feature to save Delegate365 licenses. With this Delegate365 version, there comes a new, powerful feature for more Office 365 automation. The new version number is 6.4. No worries, you have not missed version 6.3, since this was an internal version for adding the new user license assignment feature, testing and fixes. Delegate365 version 6.4 will be rolled out in the next two weeks. So, what does this update do? ...

Delegate365 version 6.2 comes with some updates and improvements. See the new features described here. License counting update: Delegate365 is licensed per user that shall be managed. There comes just one peculiarity with that: shared mailboxes and resources are delivered from the Office 365 interface as users. This causes that D365 counts such users (but only) if they are assigned to an OU as well although they do not need to have an Office 365 license. So, this can lead to uncertainty, why licensing in D365 can be different from Office 365. Again, this is only the case if the user objects are assigned to an OU in D365. For more information about that topic pls. see Delegate365 license information (Q&A 4 to 6). With the new feature this behavior can be compensated and is obsolete. The following graphics shows such a scenario where a shared mailbox “support” is assigned to an OU in D365 (and counts as a D365 user license). We wanted to simplify that licensing in D365 to make it equal to Office 365 licensing in that specific case. With this D365 update, there come two new switches “Ignore shared mailbox users” and “Ignore resource users” in the administration / sync / sync options user region. By default, these two switches are set to “No”. This means, existing users for shared mailboxes and resources stay in the users list, as it was before. If set to “Yes”, this means that shared mailboxes and resources are ignored as “user” in D365. Such user objects that were existing in the users list will be removed from the users list. (No worries, nothing bad happens, they just no longer show up – and are not counted for D365 user licenses.) After the next SyncOp (of course, with “Use user sync options” switch to “Yes”), these user objects will no longer shown in the users list. The shared mailbox “support” is gone from the users list. Of course, the object is still manageable in the more / shared mailboxes list and can be managed there. The same goes for the resources. Our recommendation: Set both new switches to “Yes”. Usually there is no need to manage a shared mailbox or a resource in the same way as a user. With “Ignore shared mailbox users” and “Ignore resource users” activated, this saves D365 licenses. ...

Since the beginning, Delegate365 developed to an extensive cloud solution for Microsoft Office 365. This article delivers a short overview about the components of Delegate365 in the Microsoft Cloud. The following graphics shows the involved Azure services that are used in D365. Delegate365 is using Platform-as-a-Service components that are maintenance-free. In detail, Delegate365 consists of the following Azure services. Web App – this hosts the Delegeate365 portal website. Jobs – these are tasks that run automatically in the background, currently these are the Synchronization Job, the License Aggregator Job, the Log Sink Job and the Sync Notifications. ...

At the end of last year, Delegate365 version 6 was announced. We added a bunch of features and before updating all tenants, we wanted to improve some functionality. So it took some time to develop and test new features. Now it’s time to update all existing Delegate365 tenants to the latest version 6.1. See the most relevant news at a glance here! Important: Some customers are already using Delegate365 version 6. All D365 tenants will be upgraded to version 6.1 in the next days. All customers will also receive an email notification about the exact upgrade time. If you have any reservation against the D365 tenant upgrade time please contact us at support@atwork.at. ...

With Delegate365 version 6 there comes a slightly restructured menu. See the differences here. The existing left menu got a little bit disordered, so we reorganized it with groups to make it easier for admins to find related features. Enlarge the following graphics to see all menus and their new position. The left side (gray) shows the menu of D365 version 5, the right side (green) shows the new menu D365 version 6. ...

Large tenants and many operations can produce large audit logs in Delegate365 since every operation and every sync jobs is protocolled. To optimize the logging and to offer export and further use of the operations data, the audit logging changes with this version. See the details here. Previous versions: Let’s have a look back into the logging in the past. In the early versions of Delegate365, the logging was done in a database which blew up the database (unnecessarily). So, with version 2, we changed the logging to simple text files in CSV format to make it very easy to work with the protocolled data, for example, in Microsoft Excel. This format is used up to Delegate365 version 5.x. ...

As posted in September at Delegate365 announcement about upcoming changes in version 6, we will update Delegate365 to version 6 shortly. Actually, we wanted to update all Delegate365 tenants already this November, but we have been very busy, so this update comes a little bit delayed. See the details here. Delegate365 stays as it is. We just figured out some things we can improve and add to the existing functionality. So, no worries, Delegate365 will stay as it is, but you can benefit from improved and new features. ...

Delegate365 will receive a major update in October. This will be Delegate365 version 6 and will include a change in the audit logging system, a new license history and a preview for more custom automation features. Read the first details here. Change of logging: With the next update to version 6, the audit logging will be changed. There is a switch implemented which allows D365 to store logged data in various spaces and formats. The following graphics shows an overview at a glance about the planned features. Data will no longer be stored in the Web in CSV format, but in the D365 database for up to 90 days and in Azure storage in JSON format forever. Direct Access of Azure storage: Besides of the almost unlimited space in Azure storage, data in that storage can be accessed directly (if you have the permissions). This allows Portal Admins to generate a URL with a token with an expiration date to download the produced log files. The token is issued by D365, as tool you can download the logs with the cost free Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer. Daily Office 365 license statistics: To see the real usage of licenses per OU and per day, week, month or year, D365 stores daily data from now on. This data will be available for further usage. More Automation: We got a lot of feedback about implementing custom actions in D365, for example setting specific user properties, assigning custom licenses for specific users, setting Skype for Business policies for users in OU’s and so on. To avoid a cost intensive customization we decided to go another way: We are implementing scripts (like “Macros”) with a powerful editor with intellisense that can execute… PowerShell! Yes, you read correctly. D365 will support PowerShell commands and whole scripts for fulfilling custom tasks in Office 365! We are currently developing and testing and plan to update D365 with this module in mid to late October. The working title for this feature is “D365 Automation”. Any other suggestions? More: Improvements in the Sync operation, fixes and some more features… You see there are cool features coming to Delegate365 version 6. Stay tuned! ...

Delegate365 can send notifications for specific operations. Here’s a short overview of roles and in which situations notifications are sent. Who can get notifications? In Delegate365 we have these roles a user can have for using the portal. Portal Admins: They have full access to all features and can configure D365. Scope Admins: They have administrative management features for “their” users, licenses and groups. The difference between Portal and Scope Admins is simply the switch “Is Portal Admin” in the administration / manage administrators and Edit admin feature (see the full screenshot below). License Admins: This can be Portal Admins or Scope Admins. They are defined in the administration / manage administrators and Edit admin feature with the switch “License Administrator” (see the full screenshot below). They can manage license requests. Users: Standard users who can use the D365 Self service password reset feature (SSPR). All user types can receive emails (or SMS) from D365, but their email notification must be configured. ...

Summertime (and holiday season) is almost over and we were busy to advance Delegate365. In the last weeks we concentrated on smaller fixes which resulted in Delegate365 version 5.3.2. Major updates will follow in fall time. So here’s a list of the current fixes: Auditing: When selecting and downloading multiple log files in the administration / auditing menu, there was an issue if the Excel format was created. Then the name of the sheets in the Excel file were too long (since the created filenames were extended with the instance name in previous versions). Therefore the creation of the download package did not work. We fixed that with version 5.3.1 and later versions. Pls. remember that the logfiles can be extensive and the creation of the ZIP or XLSX files can take a while. We recommend not to select too many files in one step but to select only a handful of files to download. We are working on an automation of logfile downloads which will be available in future. ...