Help me see when my Teams Room is booked more clearly

By Chris Schultz in Microsoft, Teams 0 Comment

Microsoft Teams Rooms devices have a useful standby screen, showing a calendar of upcoming meetings for the room.

However, the visual hierarchy does not make it clear how long each booking is for, or how much available time there is before the next meeting starts. While it makes sense to highlight the current time period, the size of the boxes should match the periods of each booking. This would be consistent with other calendars, e.g. Outlook.

❌ Figure: There is a large “Available” box, even though the room is only free for 30 minutes

Suggestion:
– Change the calendar boxes to match the time period of each booking/availability
– Add a time period next to each title, e.g. change from Available to Available (30 mins).

Dynamics 365 – Help me delete appointments from Outlook

By Chris Schultz in Dynamics, Microsoft 0 Comment

The Microsoft Dynamics 365 App for Outlook is a really useful tool for integrating Dynamics 365 and Outlook, especially for tracking appointments. However, it could be improved to make it even better!

Cancelling an appointment in Outlook should delete the appointment in Dynamics 365

If an appointment is tracked to Dynamics 365, there are 2 steps required to remove it:
– Untrack and delete from the Dynamics 365 App
– Cancel the appointment

There should be a way to delete the appointment in Dynamics 365 when it is cancelled – either as a popup each time you cancel in Outlook, or as a global setting in Dynamics 365.

This would potentially solve another issue – currently, it is not possible to track/untrack single occurrences of a series of appointments. If cancelling an appointment in Outlook also deleted it from Dynamics 365, then a single occurrence could also be deleted that way.

Figure: Outlook | Dynamics 365 App | “Recurring appointment occurrence cannot be tracked”

Help me keep Passwordless sign-in as my default method

By Chris Schultz in Azure AD, Microsoft 0 Comment

Passwordless sign-in with the Microsoft Authenticator app is a great solution for signing in with MFA, while removing our reliance on passwords – as per: Do you use MFA instead of typing a password?

However, occasionally something goes wrong with Passwordless sign-in, and a password needs to be entered. When this happens, the default sign-in method switches to using a password and the Authenticator app, and users don’t bother to (or don’t know how to) change it back.

There should be a way to set Passwordless as the default sign-in method, so that even if a password is entered once, the next time a sign-in happens it goes back to using Passwordless.

Figure: Nowhere to set a default sign-in method

Help me see when a patch has failed

By Chris Schultz in ManageEngine, Patch Manager Plus 0 Comment

Patch Manager Plus is a great product, saving time and improving security by automatically installing updates for Windows and third-party applications. Read more about it here: Do you automate update and patch management?

Each time an automatic deployment is run, an email notification is sent with a report of the patches installed. However, it can be easy to miss if there have been any failed patches since there is nothing to make them stand out. Additionally, there is no way to edit the email template that is used.

❌ Figure: Bad example – The failed patch does not stand out at all

If the text was red and a ❌ emoji was added, it would make it clearer that a patch has failed:

✅ Figure: Good example – it’s obvious that a patch has failed, and action is required.

Azure DevOps – Show Display Name from Azure AD

By Chris Schultz in Azure, Azure AD, Azure DevOps 0 Comment

We have Azure DevOps connected to Azure AD so that our users can log in with their Azure AD credentials.
Currently, DevOps does not show our users’ Display Name that is set in Azure AD.

Users can change their own name here, but this is not a fix. For the sake of consistency, display names should match the display names used in Azure AD.

Figure: Display Name in Azure AD (with [SSW])
Figure: Display Name in Azure Devops (missing [SSW])

Azure – app registration secret/certificate logs cannot be forwarded to Azure Monitor

By Chris Schultz in Azure, Azure AD 0 Comment

Azure AD Audit Logs are very helpful when diagnosing issues. Similarly, sending these logs to Azure Monitor is very useful for storing logs, and for setting up alerts on certain events.

In Audit Logs, we can see when an app registration secret or certificate is created or deleted.

Figure: Azure AD | Audit Logs app registration secret/certificate logs

However, there is no way to send these logs through to Azure Monitor so that we can set up alerts on these events.

Figure: no option for app registration secret/certificate logs

Outlook – All-Day Events from another time zone do not display consistently

By Chris Schultz in Outlook 0 Comment

If I view an all-day event in my Outlook calendar that:

  • Was created in a different time zone
  • Goes for multiple days
  • Has all-day event ticked

The event will show as one day shorter than the actual event. The hover preview shows the same (incorrect) number of days. If I open the event, it displays correctly.

Please fix this inconsistency.

Figure: Test event, created in a different time zone for Monday to Thursday – shows as Monday to Wednesday
Figure: The same event (correctly) shows as Monday to Thursday when opened

Help me see changes in the Audit logs for distribution groups

By Chris Schultz in Azure AD 0 Comment

Say you add user to a group… you should be able to see this change in the Azure AD Audit logs.

Figure: New user added to a distribution group

The Audit log details work great for users. For example, when you make a change to a user in AD and sync with Azure AD (using AAD Connect), you get great visibility of what was changed.

✅ Figure: Good example: Azure AD | [user] | Audit logs | Audit Log Details with Old Value & New Value

Sadly you can’t see who changed it.

When you make a change to a distribution group in AD (e.g. add a new member) and sync, there are no details at all

❌ Figure: Bad example – Azure AD | [group] | Audit logs | Audit Log Details shows no details (you can’t see that a new user was added to the distribution group)

Suggestion: Please add the details of who changed what for both users and distribution groups in the Audit logs.

Help me find the Team’s email address on the UI (not the channel’s)

By Chris Schultz in Teams 0 Comment

When you create a Microsoft Team, the Team has an email address associated with it. However, there is no way to see this email address from within Teams.

Note: There are Channel email addresses that you can view, but these are different.

Microsoft Teams should show the Team email address on the UI – like it does in Outlook.

Figure: Team Channels have an email address that can be viewed from Teams ✔️
Figure: Missing – The Team also have an email address, but this cannot be seen ❌
Figure: This is useful – you can see the Team email address in Outlook | Left nav | Groups | Team name