BJG

Random question, but, from my time in schools I resisted these because of the extra IT admin support for batteries, breakages, missing dongles and security considerations. Now in an office with grown-ups, old habits die hard, and I'm still inclined to say no, but feeling like a dinosaur. Is it time to open my heart to them now?

Basic question - how do people approach time sync now that on-prem servers no longer rule the roost...?

We're looking to replace the old WiFi box in our office building; just a simple setup. I've been asked to look for a segregated WPA3 device where we can have separate staff/guest access. We're also considering putting the same thing in a different area, so potentially two identical boxes on separate floors (no overlap), and wondering if these should be unified/managed. Any thoughts/recommendations appreciated.

What do people do about time servers in a modern agile network these days? On-prem DC? Internet time server? Local clock?

We just introduced Entra Private Access to replace the VPN in our organisation and it's looking good so far. Licenced via 365 Business Premium IIRC.

Thanks...interested to read the comment on that page, "Note: As video experiences are enhanced in SharePoint Online as part of the new version of Microsoft Stream, Asset Libraries will not be used. Enhanced video experiences will be available for any video file uploaded to a normal document library in SharePoint, in Microsoft Teams, Yammer, or OneDrive." https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/stream/streamnew/new-stream

Having moved personal on-prem folders to OneDrive, we're now looking at the best way to deal with the shared folders. There's a core of office-based staff, but access is mainly remote now. We're about to replace our VPN with Entra Private Access. We've made a start with Sharepoint Online, though there's also still a large amount in Sharepoint 2016 on-prem. But we're thinking that for some of the content sitting in departmental folders on our local file server, Sharepoint might not be the best option anyway...? Things like image libraries and videos. So, we're not sure what to do with it. I just started looking at Azure Files, and Wasabi Cloud NAS. Any thoughts...?

I want to create a new CV from scratch. Any recommendations for online tools or templates...?

(...now sorted, blocking the Store and populating Company Portal instead is just the ticket...)

What's the best approach to managing Apps and access to the Microsoft Store via Intune...? Do you just block it, and if so what's the simplest way to do that...? And then assign Apps to users/clients...? Ideally what I'd like is a "self-service" approach which lets users install a curated selection of Apps themselves; currently looking at "Company Portal". Is that useful/relevant...? I've also been looking at this link which discusses a feature in "Microsoft Store for Business and Education" that sounds like it might be useful, but I'm slightly put off by the way it sounds like it's on the verge of being deprecated. (?) Maybe "Company Portal" is the replacement for that... https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-store/distribute-apps-from-your-private-store Thanks!

...currently trying to get some facts together on Wasabi cloud hosting for a meeting tomorrow. We're moving to Veeam backup based on cloud storage. (Late to the party.) I've been sent an estimate of about £1500 annual for 25TB of "Reserved Capacity Hot Cloud Storage Commercial". I was wondering if someone with experience of these matters could give me a quick reality check... - What kind of cloud storage capacity would be a sensible starting point for, say, 6TB of on-prem data, VMs etc...? (Depends on backup strategy obvs, but as a starting point.) - How flexible is it to buy this kind of storage in terms of the increments (can you go up by 1TB, or 5TB, or whatever you like) - What if you were three months in and wanted to scale up...? - Does "Reserved capacity hot cloud storage" sound like a good bet for VMs/data...? - Is it going to cost the same whoever sells it to me...? Thanks!

I've recently started looking at custom Powershell scripts to manage Azure/365; eg I'm currently looking at a script to report users without MFA enabled. ChatGPT is helpful for this kind of stuff, and it's very powerful, but also slightly terrifying running Powershell scripts on our live system, wherever they've come from. I was wondering if anyone had set up an Azure test environment for this kind of thing, and how to do it...?

Basically when you start typing someone's name it pulls up a list of suggestions from the "nicknames cache". Some organisations disable this to reduce the chance of people emailing the wrong recipient by mistake. The setting could previously be found under File...Options...Mail...Send ("Use Auto-complete List to suggest names"), but I can't find it in the new Outlook.

...done!

When we upgraded users from Office 2019 to 365 we got complained at by management because the policy to turn off autosuggest in Outlook (for security reasons) stopped working. It took a lot of digging to re-enable it again. In the end the only thing that worked was targeting HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Settings\Data\global_Mail_SendAutoSug... https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2471304-cannot-disable-auto-complete-in-office-365-outlook-client ...and even that doesn't prevent users temporarily turning it on again. (Trust me, I've read/tried everything on this topic.) Once we finally managed to suppress it, we then got complained at by the users who railed against the policy of turning it off. Anyway, now people are starting to switch to the ghastly "New Outlook"...and it's back. We never figured out how to turn it off in the web version either. So now I'm back to ransacking the Internet for ways to get rid of it again. Grr.

The current network has been a bit of a baptism of fire with regards to Sharepoint; some members of the IT Dept are very keen and have been using it as the basis of various types of document storage and associated workflows for years. I'm still trying to get my head around it. One of the current projects is moving stuff to the cloud. Personal network folders are going to OneDrive, and shared departmental folders are going to Sharepoint Online. There's discussion of Microsoft concepts such as "The world is flat"...traditional hierarchical folder structures are out, and everything gets moved to a single space, tagged with metadata in order to be able to create customisable views. This is all tied up with Teams, the move to agile working, etc. I get the theory, but it's hard work. Has anyone gone down this route? I'd be interested in any general thoughts.

OK! Got a plan now. Thanks for the info.

...really...? Via 2016..? OK, thanks! I'm thinking especially of the DCs; I've heard bad things can happen if you try reverting to snapshots on those. https://www.itprotoday.com/server-virtualization/never-snapshot-domain-controller-here-s-why

Most of the network here including the DCs is still based on 2012R2, so I just wanted a quick reality check on the best way to move forward... 1) The plan was to move to 2019. Is that still sensible or should we be looking at 2022...? I'm thinking 2019 might be a sensible intermediate step in any case...? 2) Can I move the domain from 2012R2 to 2019 via in-place upgrades or would it be more sensible to introduce a new 2019 server, at least initially...?

In the past I've always told people that the desktop should be used for shortcuts, and not for files and folders, but of course no-one takes any notice. In my current network, desktop folders have never been redirected, so users' desktop files sit on local drives. (It's not a school, and users have individual machines.) Anyway, we're making the switch from personal network folders to OneDrive, and I'm wondering whether to include the option to sync the desktop to OneDrive too. I'm inclined to leave well alone and simply continue to tell users not to use the desktop except for shortcuts and temporary stuff, but what do other people do...?

We recently started upgrading clients from 2019 to 365, and one of the changes was that the previous policy to disable autocomplete for email addresses stopped working. I wasn't concerned about this as I didn't know why it had been disabled anyway, but apparently this was for security concerns, and as some previous audit recommendation, to prevent people accidentally sending potentially confidential information to the wrong person. I was curious to know general thoughts on this. There's a time and a place for protecting people against their own stupidity but it seems a bit OTT to me. Is it common practice to turn it off for this reason?

Great, thanks.

Do you mean you'd have the full VM backup with both drives, and a separate data backup for the D:\ drive...? (Or would Veeam work in such a way that you could pull individual files out of the full VM backup...?)

We're currently overhauling our backup arrangements with a view to putting in a Veaam/cloud-based system and I was wondering about a basic question. Say you have a virtual file server with a C:\ system drive and a large D:\ data drive, would you take a full VM backup including both of these drives as well as a separate data backup for the folders on D:\...? Or do you just backup the data and have a VM backup that includes the system drive but wouldn't include the data drive...? (I'm thinking in terms of managing cloud backup storage costs, but maybe it's a non-issue.)

Now that we've moved clients to WUfB, I'm looking for something to handle the servers, which are still on WSUS. I was flipping through some info on Azure Update Management earlier, which looks interesting, but I didn't get far enough through the jargon to see if it would cost anything. I think we might have to pay for Azure Arc to go this route...? (We're not education.) Or maybe it's in preview...? I'm getting dangerously hooked on free previews, like Defender for Business Servers and Endpoint Privilege Management; it'll probably come back to bite me at some point.