There’s a few Office 365 features that were released only for Business customers; there’s a nice list of all the Office 365 Features and what subscription they sit under on Technet. The good news is that they’re coming to Enterprise customers too!
The first service to be available is called Bookings which lets you build a booking system for your customers to use. There’s actually a lot to it – you can set rates, who’s available, what times to book, what sort of appointments customers can choose.. I can see it being a big benefit to a small business to have a very easy to configure and professional booking system.
I can see why Microsoft originally didn’t let Enterprise customers have this product – it’s not going to work well if you have 1000 staff that can be booked using it, and have more complex requirements.
Regardless, I’m sure many Enterprise customers want to at least have a look at a new free addon that’s part of their subscription.
There’s a few steps to getting access to Bookings, and it’s different to other products such as Teams. Again, Microsoft have a Technet Guide on getting Bookings but here’s the abbreviated version;
In Office 365 Admin, go to Billing > Purchase Services. Find Business Apps (it’s near the bottom), and follow the bouncing ball from the ‘Buy Now’ button which shows up when you hover over or click the Business Apps tile. It’s a bit strange to go through a purchase process for an E3/E5 subscription.
Although there’s an option to “Automatically assign to all of your users with no licenses” I found that at the end of the process, nobody actually had the license applied. You’ll need to follow your normal license allocation procedure (which at the basic level, can be choosing a user from the admin console, going to Product Licenses, finding ‘Business Apps’ and changing the switch to ‘on’).
I also hit an issue when going through the purchase process when choosing to pay. I had the message ‘Sign-in required For security reasons, please try signing in again. If you receive this notification again, a specific browser setting is preventing you from utilizing this page. Please follow this support article to fix the issue.’ Trying again ended up going in a loop to see that message. Google Chrome I couldn’t resolve this; Internet Explorer however, set your browser settings as per the support article but then completely close all IE windows, or it doesn’t seem to work.
Once you’ve purchased, it only takes a minute or less for the licenses to appear. As above, make sure you’ve then checked and applied the license to an account you plan to test on. The app itself may take longer to show up in the dots menu, but you can go direct to bookings.office.com and you will hopefully see a page like this:
From there, you can start to check out settings and configure it up!
Deploying a network printer via Group Policy is pretty easy. In Group Policy Management Editor, you go to User Configuration > Preferences > Control Panel Settings > Printers and right click to create a new Shared Printer. Configure the options which are pretty straight forward.
Something doesn’t go right though, if you use the option ‘set this printer as the default printer’. The printer won’t actually be set as default for the first login. As it’s set to Update though, this will get fixed next time Group Policy runs.
However, if you have the Action set to ‘Create’, it only gets one chance to set the default printer – at the time of creation. That fails, and it doesn’t get a chance to set the default printer again.
Why does it fail to set the default printer at first logon? You’ll see an event viewer application error like this:
The user ‘HP Printer’ preference item in the ‘Define Printers {XXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX}’ Group Policy object did not apply because it failed with error code ‘0x80070709 The printer name is invalid.’ This error was suppressed.
There’s a clear Microsoft Support Article that explains why – in summary, Windows isn’t ready yet to change something on the printer between the time it creates the printer, and then tries to make it default as they’re two separate actions.
However, we can work around this by deploying a registry entry that sets the default printer. This 11 year old article is still correct in that it shows the registry value to change:
Setting this via registry as an ‘Apply once and do not reapply’ with any other logic matching your printer deployment policy, should end up with the printer as a default on first logon.
This is a problem that’s been around for many years, but the first time I’ve hit it!
Also, if you’re wondering what the ‘Ne04’ part means, it seems to be some sort of counter which goes up for each time you install a printer.
I’m still new to Exchange Online and Office 365 mailbox management, but got stuck on this scenario for a bit.
After testing an E-mail Address Policy, I wanted to remove what the policy had done. I’d already discovered that taking an address off a policy itself doesn’t remove it from the accounts, and run this simple script to remove the unwanted SMTP record off each account. However, accounts that had been migrated to Office 365 didn’t change and still had the unwanted SMTP record.
I checked on Exchange Online itself, and the address I’d added hadn’t flowed through. I believe this was because it was using a domain that Office 365 didn’t know about – but that also meant that I had no records to change at that end. I could however go into the mailbox itself via the Exchange console and remove the unwanted record.
It turns out, that I had to use the ‘Get-RemoteMailbox’ and ‘Set-RemoteMailbox’ command in place of the ‘Get-Mailbox’ command. Although I was working with Exchange PowerShell on-premises, the mailbox type is “RemoteUserMailbox’. ‘Get-Mailbox’ against any migrated item will not find those objects that live in the cloud.
If you want to see which Exchange objects have a particular SMTP record in Exchange 2010, regardless of what mailbox type they are or where it lives, there’s an easy way.
Make sure the ‘Recipient Configuration’ tree option in the Exchange Console is selected, and filter with E-Mail Addresses > Contains > your unwanted SMTP record:
This will make sure all object types (including groups, contacts etc) don’t have the unwanted SMTP record.
In September 2017, I presented at the user group I co-own with Brett Moffett on the topic of Office 365 Extra Feature Overview. I wanted to show some of the key parts of Office 365 beyond Exchange, SharePoint and Skype for Business. Here’s a recording of that presentation:
Forms is still my favorite ‘quick win’ feature, which I previously covered along with a sample form and results.
In 2016, the first Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Yoga (which I reviewed) was released in the ThinkPad lineup. It was my pick of laptops, being a solid all-rounder.
It’s 2017 now, and the second generation of this laptop has been out for a few months now. You can buy it straight from Lenovo or other suppliers… but is it still as good, and what’s changed in this latest generation?
Yoga hinge, 360 degree / Laptop, tent, stand and tablet
Pen
ThinkPad Pen Pro
Graphics
Intel HD Graphics 620 in processor only, supports external digital monitor via HDMI or USB Type-C; supports 3 x independent displays; max. resolution: 4096×2304@60Hz (USB Type-C), 4096×2160@24Hz (HDMI)
Adaptor (optional)
HDMI to VGA adaptor
USB-C to VGA adaptor
USB-C to DisplayPort adaptor
Memory
8GB / 16GB, LPDDR3 1866MHz, soldered to systemboard
Webcam
HD 720p resolution, fixed focus
IR camera and HD 720p camera (option is available on models with narrow bezel FHD panel only)
Intel Tri-Band Wireless-AC 18265, 2×2, WiGig™ + Wi-Fi + Bluetooth® 4.1, M.2 Card (available only on models configured with vPro processor)
Wireless WAN
Sierra EM 7430 (optional)
SIM card slot
Micro-SIM card slot (models with 4G card only)
NFC
None
Ports
2 x Intel Thunderbolt 3
3 x USB 3.0 (1 x AlwaysOn)
HDMI
microSD
microSIM (models with 4G card only)
Processor wise, we’ve jumped a generation too, now on the 7th Gen Intel series of CPUs. Pretty standard there. The 8th Gen has already started releasing Q4 2017, but that’s early days with both series being released in the same year, and companies like Lenovo need time to incorporate these into their products.
The display options are good too, the two resolutions I’m happy to pick from. OLED is supposed to be available, but I have personally not seen one in real life, nor can I find any information in Lenovo’s tech specs on it, so you’ll have to read some other reviews to get a take on that. From everything I’ve read though, it’s highly praised. Hopefully I’ll get to see one soon!
Touchscreen, 360 degree hinges and the stylus are standard again, which makes this device particularly versatile. It’s still my preferred style of hybrid laptop/tablet as no functionality is lost in laptop mode, and you don’t need to undock/dock and worry about where half the device gets stored.
Graphics is still on board, which these days is more than enough unless you’re doing high end graphic design or gaming. Having a full HDMI port is nice too, instead of finding adapters or the right cable when outputting video – full size HDMI is today’s standard.
RAM wise, 8GB and 16GB options are all you need, again unless you’re doing some real high end work, or trying to run several virtual machines at once. Storage is the same as last year, no complaints there.
The size of the newer Yoga is identical to last year’s, apart from this new one being thicker. THICKER? Yep, a little, 0.25mm. It’s also heavier by 6 grams. I don’t think you’re going to notice either of these changes though, here’s then Gen 1 and Gen 2 stacked together:
X1 Yoga Gen 2 on top of a X1 Yoga Gen 1
You might be wondering why the newer one is slightly thicker and heavier, and I believe this is because of the keyboard.
It’s called a ‘Wave Keyboard’ and it rises and falls with the opening and closing of the screen. The idea of this is to protect the keys from damage when in tablet mode:
I like it, and the keyboard itself still feels normal despite having this extra ability.
Battery life has been improved again, and quite drastically – a claim of 4-5 hours more than the previous generation. Quite impressive!
Here’s a full photo of the keyboard:
After using this for a while, I have no faults to pick. Caps Lock is where it should be, as well as page navigation buttons (such as home and page up). The keys are nice to use, trackpad is a great size and has the physical mouse buttons if you prefer. There’s also a fingerprint reader that works great with Windows 10 Hello for almost instant logins.
If you’re trying to identify a X1 Yoga Gen1 vs a X1 Yoga Gen2 (beyond checking the side for USB-C!) it’s easy to see via the keyboard. For one, the PrtSc (print screen) button is different:
X1 Yoga Gen 1 PrtSc
X1 Yoga Gen 2 PrtSc
Or, you can look at the F12 button, the newer Yoga has a star:
X1 Yoga Gen 1 F12
X1 Yoga Gen 2 F12
Let’s have a look at the sides of the laptop:
Left Side: USB-C in, USB-C out, USB 3, USB 3 with power out (can charge a phone without powering on laptop)
Right Side: Stylus, Power, 3.5mm Headphone Jack, Ethernet adapter port, USB 3, Full Size HDMI
Back – Hinges, Protected Slot for SD and SIM
As you may have noticed, the old rectangle power cable port has gone, replaced by USB-C. This is the new industry standard, and it’s good to see Lenovo be a part of that. USB-C charges quickly, and if you have a phone with the same port, can be used to charge that too. The rapid charge claims to get to 80% charge in 60 minutes which I’m very happy with, and experienced similar charge times in real life.
Also there’s no full size network port – the laptop would have to be thicker because of this, so I can live with a dongle on that. Most of the time the laptop is being used portable on Wifi, or at a workstation and using a dock, so this isn’t a dealbreaker.
Speaking of docks, that’s what the USB-C out port is for. My experience so far with those docks has been much better than the older USB 3 models which seemed to lock up occasionally, and there’s the added bonus of running power and data over 1 cable!
I haven’t picked on this year’s X1 Yoga because there’s really that little to pick at. The 7th Gen CPU only supports Windows 10, so you can’t use Windows 8.1 or 7, but that’s an Intel CPU/Microsoft limitation across all laptops and desktops now. Beyond that, I really like this laptop – even more than last year’s. At my work, this is our standard laptop purchase now, which is why I’ve been able to review it, tied into a Windows 10 rollout (It wasn’t given to me by Lenovo).
I can honestly say that I believe this is the right time to upgrade if you’re thinking about it. This laptop will last many years, incorporates all the new features and connections that I think are worth considering, and doesn’t leave anything behind. You won’t be disappointed with this laptop!
Here’s a video review of the laptop from MobileTechReview:
X1 Yoga Gen 1 F12
X1 Yoga Gen 2 F12
Left Side: USB-C in, USB-C out, USB 3, USB 3 with power out (can charge a phone without powering on laptop)
Right Side: Stylus, Power, 3.5mm Headphone Jack, Ethernet adapter port, USB 3, Full Size HDMI
Back – Hinges, Protected Slot for SD and SIM