Install printers from AD printserver on AAD joined computers

When you go from a traditional IT operation model to modern based on Azure AD and Endpoint Manager, you will have a migration period with resources in both camps. Typically, endpoints first go to the cloud while well-established services lag behind. 

This does not have to tie the endpoints to the ground. You can move your computers to pure Azure AD join, and still have access to on-premises services in Active Directory as long as the identities are hybrid. 

Some tend to use Hybrid Azure AD Join (HAADJ) since they have some legacy traditions of device and application management. HAADJ can thus be tempting, but in the long run it will give more headache than pleasure. The best approach is to move the endpoints to pure Azure AD Join devices and then put more effort into adapting to the new operational environment offered by Microsoft Endpoint Manager.

Printers and print servers are one example of services that tends to be strongly attached to the premises, even though there are great alternatives in the cloud with Microsoft Universal Print or 3rd parties like Printix. With the hybrid identity signed in to the Azure AD joined Windows device, you can also use the existing Active Directory joined print server. I have created a Powershell script which can be used with Microsoft Endpoint Manager to distribute printers on a print server to Azure AD joined computers. This can be a great approach to make the move to the cloud more resilient, even though you will lose much of the borderless functions from a pure cloud-based print solution.

The script is available on my GitHub. 

Corporate Headshots - Social Media for Business

First impressions will always be important, but now that we conduct so many of our initial interactions online, virtual personal branding has become as important as the firm handshake once was in introducing yourself to the world. Hence a corporate headshot is an opportunity to portray a brand image to potential customers.

In business we spend a lot of money on branding across logos, websites, literature, packaging and premises. Is the photographic representation of you and your coworkers the place to scrimp on branding? Probably not. Whether you are posting your headshot on you Companys website, or want to post it on social media pages, you are always representing your business in one way or another. A professional headshot will put confidence into you business and make your clients more willing to deal with you.

Think about it for a moment - if you were searching for a new supplier and found that a certain company was a very viable supplier, but the corporate headshots had an unprofessional style - would you be willing to deal with this company? If you want to get the most out of your digital presence, a professional corporate headshot will allow you and your colleges to achieve a good appearance.

Getting the most from your head shot

If you decide to make corporate headshots of you and your company, you will have to deal with a lot of questions related to dress codes, style of the images etc. You need to book a photographer and put up a schedule for your co-workers to get photographed.

Me doing corporate headshots of  a company

Pictures received - now what?

Once the photo session is finished you will receive a portfolio of pictures from the photographer. Now you need a plan how to distribute and use these pictures in order to give the best return of Investment.

Corporate Headshost received - time to distribute and use the pictures

Social Media has been a large consumer of headshots for a long time. We have also seen headshots as impersonators in corporate software for a while. The challenge now will be to utilize the new portfolio of headshots over the wide array of software og systems supporting personal portraits.

Active Directory, Exchange and Skype for Business

Portraits can be added to each user account in Active Directory as a thumbnail. There are several tools available for this operation out on the wild internet. We have preferred a PowerShell script to deal with this operation. Pictures are being adjusted and exported to a folder in the format of sAMAccountName.jpg. The Powershell script will then add the corporate headshot to the correct person in Active Directory. The debut of Exchange 2010 and Outlook 2010 made the portrait from AD available in Exchange Global Address list. All out of sudden the new headshots are available in the Outlook clients to all employees in the company.

Corporate Headshots available in Exchange and Outlook

The thumbnails uploaded to Active Directory will also be visible for colleagues in Skype for Business:

Corporate Headshots as viewed in Skype for Business

AD-integrated thumbnails in Skype for Business will only be visible to internal users. Federated users will not have read access to the picture stored in Active Directory. In order to make your thumbnail portrait visible to federated partners you need to tweak your Skype for Business to allow pictures from a website. With this option available we can pick a portrait available on the Internet as a thumbnail photo in Skype for Business.
In order to have a streamlined distribution of the corporate headshots, we have created a website on the Skype for Business server with all headshots available in correct format. The website is populated with images from the same Powershell script populating AD with thumbnail photos. This will give all users a Skype for Business uniform corporate portrait visible to everyone - internally and externally!

Example of Skype for Business meeting where pictures of federated users are missing

3rd party systems

The Powershell script used for distribution of the corporate headshots can easily be customized to distribute pictures to other 3rd party systems. The following list contains examples of 3rd party systems where the powershell script has been used for picture distribution.

Trio Enterprise

Trio Enterprise has options to have corporate headshots for each individual person registered in Company Directory. Company Directory can be set to synchronize with Active Directory, but the thumbnail photo from AD can't be directly synced to Company Directory. By customizing the PowerShell script for distributing the corporate headshots, we have managed to incorporate Trio Enterprise into the automated picture distribution. Here are some examples of pictures as they appear in Trio Enterprise:

Corporate Headshot in Trio Enterprise Attendant

Corporate Headshot in Trio Enterprise Web Assistant

Corporate Headshot in Trio Enterprise Web Assistant

Web based solutions

The pictures has also been distributed to 3rd party web based solutions with information based on AD giving phone lists, employee lists, organization charts, doorsigns etc. These are handy tools for new coworkers in the company to match names and faces. Some screenshots just as an example:

Organization Chart with headshots

Department list with headshots

Title list with headshots

User information with headshot

Doorsign template with headshot

Contact Card VCF file

The best way to distribute your contact card in a digital way, is by use of VCF Contact Cards. These cards can in fact also contain a portrait. This will effectively distribute the new portraits and updated personal details to your contact persons outlook and mobile phones. The PowerShell script used to distribute the Corporate Headshots can also distribute pictures to be used in a VCF Contact Card routine. I have earlier described a routine for setting the Outlook Auto Signature based on details in AD. This has in some circumstances been extended to give a shortcut to an downloadable VCF file with appropriate updated contact details - included a fresh user portrait!.

Outlook AutoSignature with shortcut to updated VCF file



VCF file with updated details and corporate headshot

Windows 10 Profile Picture

Some fantasy and creative use of PowerShell and Group Policy can also automatically distribute the Corporate Headshots from AD as profile picture in Microsoft Windows 10.

Corporate Headshot as profile picture in Windows 10. ScreenLock background is also centrally managed.

Corporate Headshot picture in Windows 10

Office365

Microsoft Office 365 has Corporate Headshots heavily integrated in all services and modules. We have expanded the Powershell script to distribute the corporate headshots also to this platform. This gives the platform an extra social profile.

An example of corporate headshots in Delve from Microsoft Office 365

Corporate Headshots and other graphical branding through scripting

Scripting and customization of your standard products used by your employees on a day to day basis can take your branding interests to a higher level. This blog post has focused on corporate headshots. It could have been considerable longer if I did include other graphical branding possibilities available in your standard products in use at the office. 

A security concern!

Please do remember - these are small steps helping you increase your security since it will give your services a branded look which differs from standard solutions!

I would love to help you with these concerns! Please comment if you have a good story, some needs or experience related to this topic!

MSIgnite 2016, Day3

Three days has passed at MSIgnite 2016. Still two more to go, but first a wrap up of some notes to my self from this day stuffed with exciting sessions.

After breakfast I found time to do a spark portrait. As usual I had a sharp eye on the technology. Pretty interesting to see and even hear all the shutters released at the same time for a photo nerd like me. The result:

Session number one was the "Troubleshoot new Skype for Business offerings" held by Jason Collier and Ricardo Garcia. This was a really good deep dive into how to troubleshoot the new SfB offerings. The experienced speakers did share a wealth of information from the nuts and bolts of the most common scenarios. They did also show helpfull tips and tricks through the tools of troubleshooting SfB. A much appreciated session stuffed with valuable technical information. The slide deck will be studied and the session replayed more than once.

Jason, Ricardo and Bryan from yesterdays SOF session

Start with a structured approach for troubleshooting

Gather as much details as possible from the error situation

Classify the issue from the details

Common causes to problems. Note that the Client also needs patching to keep up with the pace of the Cloud

Session number two this wednesday was by William L. Looney: "Troubleshoot Operations with Skype Call Quality Management". Unfortunately he had some demo syndroms, but the essence of the topic was good - this topic has also been mentioned in other sessions so far during this Ignite week.

William Looney on stage

Tool overview for Call Quality management

As my third session today I did choose the "Migrate to Exchange Online via Exchange Hybrid" held by Timothy Heeney and Michael Van Horenbeeck. It's a pleassure to experience such highly related sessions according to my current running projects held by such vital and knowledgeable people. This session did answer quite a few questions. It was a thrill listening to Timothys stories from development spiced with sweet humor. Both speakers had a good flow and high speed. Appreciated!

Thomas Murphy Ballroom was a great arena for som superior speakers

With help of Twitter I got noticed to join the "Plan for Cloud PBX deployment" session held by Jamie Stark. This was also a really good session held by an inspiring and captivating speaker with mint presentation skills, knowledge to the subject and superb flow. The session did cover an overview of all the features of Cloud PBX - from administration capabilities to interoperability to end-user features. Jamie did also have a good live demo of the Cloud PBX admin interfaces.

Jamie Stark getting ready to start his session

Cloud UC presented as the fourth communication era in a credible way (listen to the session on-demand!)

As a final session this day I did enjoy Thomas Poett at the MVP Hub Talk where he gave a good session related to "moving forward with Office 365 and Skype for Business". A dedicated speaker describing some techy SfB stuff from projects.

Poett describes large voice enabled O365 implementations with several SBCs in different parts of the world

It is hard to put one session up against another in order to say if one is better than another. The speakers at Ignite are the best available within their subject. As long as I pick sessions with subjects of my interests, they tend to fit like a glove.

On the Expo floor today I explored more new technologies surrounding Skype for Business and got a chance to tamper with some cool stuff like phones from Yealink, the new meeting room experience from Logitech Smart Dock, Attendant Pro from Landis etc. I even got a chance to explore the Nano server through a pair of Microsoft Hololense!


Yealink T48G. They will come with a T49 with cam as well(!)

 

So far during my Ignite journey I have tended to attend mainly at UC sessions. Seems like my planned schedule for the rest of my week at Ignite will have even more UC sessions. Oh what a joy!

Today was a special good day at Ignite whit a lot of knowledge captured that will become handy already at Monday. I even got myself a lunch today!

MSIgnite 2016, Day2

I am back at the hotel room after day two at Microsoft Ignite 2016 in Atlanta. Better knowledge to the buildings and a looser schedule gave a lower number on the pedometer related to day one. A day full of impressions deserves some notes along with my "photographic" memory.

It was crowdy in the hallways after breakfast. Some people was smart enough to take the outside promenade between the buildings. Unfortunately I was stuck in the queue for a while.


Nice weather and noe queue outside... but I was walking inside today

I had picked several sessions for this morning that collided in time. The choice felt on the panel discussion "Improve Office 365 Adoption: top 10 ways" since I recognized one of the speakers from a session on day 1. The discussion gave some good ideas which I hope can be useful in coming projects.

Panel discussion about top 10 ways to improve Office 365 adoption

My second session was "Dive into Project Rigel and the Skype for Business Meeting Device Portfolio" by Group Manager for Skype for Meeting Devices in Microsoft - Ilya Bukshteyn. This was a very interesting session on the new possibilities in the Skype Meeting Experience. We got the historical backdrop for the project, a detailed walkthrough of the process towards the new system and presentation of all partners involved in the project. There was performed a live demo of the impressive and intuitive system (one-click-join experience, attached presentations in meeting invite added to presentation bucket, connect local computer to present or project, easy to start adhoc meetings/calls etc) I hope to be able to see and work with a lot of these technologies in the meeting rooms in the near future - from small huddle rooms all the way to large conference rooms.

Ilya had a huge number of equipment on stage for his live demo

 

My third session today was called "Migrate to the Cloud - Skype for Business Online". The presenters Sean Wilson and William Haberkon did cover workloads to move, how to connect an on-premises deployment to the cloud and new features in moving to the cloud like meeting migrations or managing tenants that span multiple regions to ensure the highest media quality.

Migration paths to Skype for Business Online covered in this session.

Skype for Business online now supports the new Multi-Region enabled state

set-msoluser -PreferredDataLocation was demonstrated live in the session

My fourth session at Ignite 2016 Day 2 was named "Introduce Windows Server 2016 into your environment" held by Jeffrey Woolsey. A level 200 session that rushed through many of the new features spanning from better Time Server, more secure DNS, improved sign-on experience, stronger authentication, stronger ID protection, shielded VMs, Containers, Nano servers, software defined networking/storage and even more. A nice overview of the new server from an inspiring speaker.

More details from Microsoft on the new server can be found here.


Jeffrey Woolsey talking about the new Windows Server 2016

TimeSync - a small, but important component in multi-site/national companies

A phased approach related to Time Server when implementing WinServer 2016
Remember to sync the Time server with a trusted source

Containers was presented in different scenes and variations

My last session for the day was named "Dig into the Skype Operations Framwork". This session was held by Bryan Nyce, a great speaker. SOF is a comprehensive guide and toolset for implementing and managing a reliable and cost-effective communication service based on Skype for Business. The framework is pretty fresh (presented at WPC earlier this year), but are continuously evolving. I can't wait to start study the SOF from microSOFt.

One main quotation from this presentation

During the day I got notified through twitter that I had missed a great Skype for Business session held by Andrew Bybee on the topic "Build native cloud apps for Skype for Business: Skype Developer platform overview". It is not directly related to my operations, but there was given interesting information and demonstrations on the new Trusted Application API for the cloud. I guess this means that third party applications providers pretty soon can start develop their solutions for cloud pbx integrations (callcenter and switchboard providers like Trio Enterprise, Competela and likewise). These inputs combined with other inputs so far in this conference (day 2:5) makes a clear picture on where things should be run in the future. Thanks to Matt Landis for twittering the news from this session!

At the end of the day I had some time in the large EXPO hall where I did consult some expertise related to ongoing projects. It is really appreciated that Microsoft puts people with knowledge, experience and influence into their showcase area! Today I got precise and accurate answers to a couple of projects of mine involving hybrid configurations between on premises installations and cloud. I even got a pretty interesting talk with D'Arcy Salzmann from the Hololens strategy and product team which described a pretty interesting use of the Hololens together with Skype that would have been fun to test with a customer.

Polycom PTZ camera and Control screen (prototype) for the Skype Room System

Crestron Control screen (prototype) for the Skype Room System

Exploring the Surface Hub. Would love to have these for a huddle room at work...
...even though I am a mobile worker.

My phone did decharge pretty quick today as well. I had a powerbank, but that didn't last long. Long time experienced surviver made me improvise with the stuff I had and found that my Surface did provide power through the USB port even though it wasn't running. This gave me the following hack of my Microsoft Ignite bag:

Charge cable through headphone port of the Microsoft bag made the surface a giant UPS for my phone.

No giveaways today - only pure knowledge!
And by the way - I did remember lunch today, but it was to late - they were empty...

Now it's time to catchup with the mailbox with my dual-monitor-hotel-room-system based on Surface, iPad and duet display!

MSIgnite 2016, Day1

The first official day at Microsoft Ignite 2016 in Atlanta, Georgia is over. It's been 14 hours since I left the hotel room. It's time to charge the batteries and put down some notes from the day.

Because of the time zone travel I was early awake and got the first shuttle bus from the hotel to the conference center. Kind of heavy traffic on the highway in to Atlanta.


5 lines of queue

With the early arrival, there were no queue at the breakfast in the C-building and we got a marvelous welcome from the Microsoft personell. Lucky me!

Breakfast done and I found my fastest way to the Phillips Arena by walking outside the buildings in the great weather.

Nice weather in Atlanta

With no queue at the Phillips Arena, the security check went fast, and I found a perfect seating in the middle of the huge stage.

The Keynote was a great experience with a lot of inspirational information from leading personells at Microsoft like Julia White, Scott Guthrie, Satya Nadella and many more.

BMW was one of many companies presented as heavy users of Microsoft Cloud technologies

New Office 365 applications and hardware was demonstrated
https://www.stormboard.com/ on surface hub

Techy people like me are also interested in the behind-the-scenes views from the stage production

Microsoft Ignite 2016 has 1417 sessions to chose from, and I had picked the Cloud Voice session with Gurdeep Singh Pall as my second session on this first day. I did however not expect the jam in the hallways when moving from the Phillips Arena to building B. 23.000 participants where on the move. Not all did know where to move, and a lot of people where restricted from moving because of security. Luckily I did find a good spot to join the "Move all your communications to Skype for Business" session.

We had a lot of good information and news during this session related to Skype for Business client for Mac, thight iOS callkit integration, Microsoft Meeting Room system, Logitech Smart Dock for Skype Room Systems, Crestron Skype Room Systems, Polycom RealConnect for Skype for Business, Cloud PBX news with exciting powershell demos, Analytics Dashboard, Skype Operations Framwork (SOF) and more.

The new Skype for Business innovations are described here.



Delanda Coleman demonstrating new Skype for Business client for Mac and iPhone

Ilya Bukshteyn and Gurdeep Singh demonstrating the new meeting capabilities with a lot of exciting news.

A really good session was over and it was time to find the next stage from my carefully picked schedule. I started to realize that my schedule was to tight - the hallways was to long and crowdy - the floor maps were to poor - the escalators regulations was annoying and my mobile phone battery was empty. I did however have good shoes.

After som back and forwards between the buildings and levels I learned that the Theatre sessions was hard to find. I did however got my self to the "Meet Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016" session hold by Mike Neil and other impact full speakers. Here they actually announced the release of Microsoft Windows Server 2016 and explained many of the new features!

Just enough and just-in time administration

A lot of demos with PowerShell during the Windows Server 2016 session

I gave a visit to the Exhibit Hall before the next planned session. A lot of exciting stuff to see in this large area, a lot of giveaways to collect and actually some places to charge my phone.

Logitech Equipment for the Skype for Business Room experience

Logitech equipment for Skype for Business Room experience
Read more about Logitech SmartDock

The MVP Hub Talk session had a lot of great sessions - this was related to PowerShell

Ståle Hansen Talking about Skype for Business

Kanwal Khipple had a great session related to the many modules in Office365

At the end of the day I was entering the Skype for Business area of the giant Microsoft Showcase in the Exhibit hall. It turned out that a part of the Skype for Business design team was actually hanging out there discussing their system with the Ignite attendees - the same persons that was on stage together with Gurdeep earlier today. Interesting to hear their workflow and plans for Skype for Business and especially the unofficial information related to support for third party applications like call centers and switchboards in the cloud based Skype for Business. I did also meet a couple of Skype for Business friends from Norway and Sweden at this spot.


Ilya Bukshteyn was walking through the new Skype for Business Room system.

Surface4 and Windows10 as foundation. Windows Store delivers updates to the SfB Room System App.

Time to find the shuttle buss for the hotel. Traffic jam also this time because of a concert in town by Beyonce.


One truck for the Beyonce "The Formation World Tour" spotted yesterday...

Finally at the hotel room it's time to empty the bag, charge some batteries, summarize the day and revise the plans for tomorrow (I need to make space for a session by Ilya which he made me aware of).

Who mentioned food? Must have forgotten that today...