Kerio Mail Contacts and Office 365 Migration

Our latest version of Kerio migration code adds two options to the XML file to deal with autocomplete contacts.

• Set the ‘migratesuggestedcontacts’ switch to FALSE if you don’t want to migrate them.
• If 'migratesuggestedcontacts’  is TRUE, the contact subfolder named in the migratesuggestedcontacts_o365foldername will be created (if it doesn’t exist) and those contacts added to the folder.

 

 

BusyMac and Kerio Bugs and Migration to Office 365

We found some weird calendar stuff in Kerio when using BusyCal. 

RRULE;X-BUSYMAC-REGENERATE=TRASH:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=12;BYMONTHDAY=16

This (really weird) addition to the iCalendar format was causing us some problems with the recurrence pattern until we coded around it.

Apparently it's been reported as a bug in in their forum since December 2020.  https://github.com/jens-maus/node-ical/issues/67

But rather than waiting for someone to fix a moribund client to moribund server we coded around it to make it easier for folks to get into Office 365.

Turning off EWS Throttling in Office 365

Microsoft must have realized this was an issue – they finally made it easier to temporarily change EWS Throttling under admin control.

And by "easier" I mean it is "possible if you know exactly what you are looking for."

So to remove EWS Throttling

Login to Exchange Admin 

Click Support and follow with New service requests.

In the search field, search for Increase EWS Throttling Policy. 

Select that from the list

Click Run Tests – it will first tell you are throttled (big surprise)

Click Changing EWS Settings – select 30/60/90 days

Run Tests again.  – Should now be good to go.

Multiple Domains in a Kerio Calendar Migration

You know how it is -- you've had your legacy system for YEARS and sometime in there you changed domains from say OLDCOMPANY.com to NEWCOMPANY.com or something like that.

And now as you are migrating into Office 365 you wonder if you can take all that over and have it work in calendars the way it used to.

Have no fear -- you can do that.  Just put both in as in the screen shot on your configuration page.

 

Kerio Calendar Data Weirdness

 One of those things we always worry about is data integrity.

We've seen weird stuff.

And now it's Kerio's turn to provide us with weird.

Take a look at this raw ICS file from some recent field data:

I'll cut to the chase.  The END date (line 14) of this recurring appointment is later than the UNTIL date in the RRULE (line 15).  So trying to insert this Microsoft Exchange Web Services called us very bad do-bees.   

Not hard to generate odd situations with a variety of clients on a technologically moribund server.

Block Mail to Recipients Outside of your Organization

We recently announced that we've started work on a  Kerio Server Migration to Office 365.  One of our clients gave us test data from a few departed/terminated users to test our code.  It's easy to test in our Exchange on-prem sandbox to ensure no "external" email gets sent to their users -- we unplug the Ethernet connection to the Router. It's a little more complicated in Office 365, but not all that difficult.  Here are the steps:

In the Exchange Admin Center, under Mail Flow, Rules, click the "+" sign to create a new rule.

• Name the rule.  We called it "Block Mail sent to External Email"
• Select the option from Apply this rule pulldown: "The Recipient is Located...."
• Select the option "Outside The Organization" from the subsequent pulldown that the recipient is located 
• Select "Reject the message with the explanation" from the pulldown "Do the Following..."
• Enter a message (optional):  We entered "The message was not sent. The Recipient is located outside the company."
• We chose to Enforce the rule, and finally
• Saved it

  Here is a screen shot:

So now let's say a user tries to send email outside your domain.  They will be informed that is an unsanctioned action with this message:

Kerio Connect Migration to Office 365

So we got a request for a Kerio Connect to Office 365 calendar migration from someone who we discovered was an old pal from the early days of group scheduling.

How could we say no?

So we've got that under development now -- anyone else interested in testing it out please drop us a line.

We've got full-state calendar migrations going, as well as contacts and tasks.  

Notes become tasks (because Microsoft's EWS API does not allow us to create Notes). 

A few of the recurrence patterns do not transfer to Office 365 so we insert them and flag them as problem children.  Biggest example: Last weekday or weekend day of the month is supported on Kerio but not in Office 365.  

Of course we include our UNDO functionality for testing and remediation. 

Sender-recipient pair receiving limits in Microsoft Office 365

 Got this in the mail today from our friends in Redmond, Washington:

We are updating our receiving limits in Exchange to help prevent attacks on your mail flow experience. Earlier this year in (February MC239262) we announced a stricter enforcement of our mailbox receiving limits. Taking your feedback into consideration, we are releasing an additional limit to block single-sender mail storms and deter DoS attacks. Our mailbox receiving limits, as previously stated, apply to the messages received by a Microsoft Office 365 mailbox. If volume exceeds 3,600 messages in a given 60-minute window, the mailbox will no longer accept messages from the Internet, from other tenants, or from on-premises senders. Starting in September 2021, we are adding a limit on sender-recipient pairs (SRP). This feature will apply to the messages received by a Microsoft Office 365 mailbox from each specific sender. If a single sender sends over 33% of the threshold (3,600 per rolling hour) to a specific recipient, the SRP limit will kick in, and the mailbox will no longer accept messages from that sender. The mailbox will continue accepting messages from other senders. Note: If the identified sender is from a Microsoft Office 365 mailbox in the same tenant, messages will be allowed even after the limit is exceeded. If the identified sender is from an on-premises mailbox, a Microsoft Office 365 in a separate tenant, or outside of Microsoft Office 365, messages will be blocked. This change helps prevent a malicious user from blocking mail flow to a Microsoft Office 365 mailbox, as part of our continuing efforts to improve your Exchange Online experience. Key Points: Timing: September 2021 Action: review and assess How this will affect your organization: Rollout of the mailbox receiving limit as detailed in (February MC239262) is ongoing. We are continuing to lower the threshold over the next few months until we reach 3,600. Rollout of the SRP limit will begin in September 2021. This limit is set to 33% of the mailbox receiving limit. Note: Most users are not likely to be impacted by this, as only a small percentage of mailboxes are currently hitting SRP limits. If a mailbox exceeds the SRP limit, messages to that mailbox from the identified sender will be throttled. Affected mailboxes will receive an email informing them of the throttling, while the identified sender will receive a non-delivery report under response code 5.2.121. Emails from that sender will be throttled until the limit resets one hour from when the threshold was exceeded. Administrators will be able to view users that exceed their SRP limit through the “Mailbox exceeding receiving limits” report in the Exchange Admin Center. Please contact affected users to understand why they are receiving so many messages from particular senders. What you need to do to prepare: No direct action is required on your part, though it is recommended that you review the new limits and update training and documentation as appropriate. Review the published receiving limits at Exchange Online limits - Service Descriptions | Microsoft Docs Review our NDR documentation at Email non-delivery reports in Exchange Online for 5.2.121, sender-recipient pair throttling View this message in the Microsoft 365 admin center

This is not going to have an effect on any of our calendar migrations unless you are a multi-domain tenant (we had one of those in the last year) or we've managed to so optimize the batch operations we've exceeded Microsoft's limits AND you have massive current meetings.

Travel Time for Outlook / OWA

OK folks, we have an updated version of our Travel Time add-in for you.

Documentation

• Uses Outlook API (destined for decomissioning in November 2022 but who are we kidding?  It'll go way beyond that!) and Office JavaScript.
• Will work with OWA or Outlook 2016/2019 on Windows 10 and needs an Office 365 account .  Need other platforms, please let us know.
• It’s not (yet) in the Microsoft Store, so you’ll need to side-load the application.  This link tells you how if you do not know.

Privacy and Permissions

We hate spyware. Sumatra’s Travel Time Outlook addin does do not collect ANY of your calendar information, passwords, usernames, etc.   Only you know what you’re using this for.  We will rely on you to let us know what you think.  

This applications runs only on your machine, and only if you are logged into Office 365. You do not need your administrator to modify your company’s server permissions.  BUT, this add-in requires read-write access to your mailbox (otherwise we can’t create new appointments).

You will need to side-load with this address:

 https: // sumatra.com/tt/ SumatraTravelTimeManifest.xml

Migrating to Office 365? Hint: Disable Throttling

Throttling is a wonderful feature to get rid of during a migration.  You have the need -- the need for speed.  Throttling can sometimes be the annoying speed bump or rumble strip that at best slows you down and at worst halts your migration.

Fortunately there's a good guide to how to disable using the user interface on Office 365:  Disable EWS throttling in Office 365 – Exchange Online

We don't re-do work that's already been done -- this is a good, straight-forward guide.

If your interface does not have this option, open "Help" and type in "Increase EWS Throttling Policy."  Should bring up this page and you're good to go.

Contact Migration now Supported Apple Calendar to Office 365

Migrating from Apple iCalendar to Office 365? Use GUIDs.

If you're migrating from Apple's calendar offering, you need to map the user GUIDs to target email address in Office 365 / Microsoft Exchange. 

Your mapping text file should look like:

------------------------------------------------------

DB9F0913-DC4A-41CA-8017-6EF5814F01CD, jimi.hendrix@xxx.onmicrosoft.com

FB5CA163-99B8-4436-A906-CC72000E931D, janis.joplin@xxx.onmicrosoft.com

....

------------------------------------------------------

How do you GET the GUIDs?

Via an LDAP Query is most convenient.

https://krypted.com/mac-os-x/export-data-open-directory-migrating-users-groups/

and

https://github.com/krypted/swift-ldif-csv/blob/master/ldif_to_csv.swift

Go to it!

Travel Time for Outlook / OWA

What can we say?  We're market-driven.

We didn't get much response the first time we did a travel time add-in for Outlook / OWA, but in the last few months our volume on this has improved so we re-wrote the code.

Our thinking is that we'll keep the version we currently have available for free (it's based on version 1.4 of the Outlook JavaScript API) while we work on a more full-featured version for the enterprise..

Want to try it out -- contact us.

 

Sumatra Calendar Insight prototype available online

Calendar-minded folks,

We've been working on something we call Sumatra Calendar Insight -- and we'd like you to try it out.

Where are we going with this?

Frankly, we’re looking for direction.  Over years of migrating legacy calendar servers into Exchange we’ve often done analysis on the data and approached mining it in several different ways (usually for resource availability and effectiveness).  

Microsoft MyAnalytics does a good, simple job of helping you get focus time every week or so, and Microsoft Productivity Score promises to give your admin some insight on your global productivity on some schedule with a single score, but missing in all of this is on-demand access to the kinds of detailed statistics power managers and enterprise watchdogs need.  And of course, everything Microsoft does has ignored resources – maybe not an issue now but the pandemic will not last forever.  

Sumatra Calendar Insight is a proof of concept demo – we can get at this data and deliver it to you on demand.  

So we’re asking: what kinds of data do you want to get at?  And why?

Let us know.

Looking for test sites for a new calendar app for Office 365

 Folks,

Having been locked in our houses / apartments / cells / space ships for a few months we started working on a new application that analyzes calendar data for users on Office 365.

We think that calendar analysis should be more detailed than asking "do you think you have enough time set aside for doing real work?"

We're thinking more like "Wonder how your team is spending their time?” and “Too much video and not enough work?” and "We've got a Zoom contract, what're these Teams video meetings doing here?"

Of course we can also do this server-side in Exchange and look at group aggregate statistics,which we think is a lot more interesting in a corporate environment.

A few screenshots follow.

Anybody want to try it out in a beta version please let us know -- we like listening to people.

Work from Home’s Impact on Calendaring/Email and IT’s budget

A consulting company with 100 employees was running a legacy version of Exchange using a VPN to their work from home users.  Their VPN expense average cost was $200/mo/user.  They tested the “free” Microsoft migration tools.  Moving email would take a month.  They considered migrating PSTs in bulk, but the bulk upload turn-around was ten days.  Losing ten days was unacceptable. HYBRID deployment?  Too complicated and arduous for them to even get through the manual.

Free was not an acceptable solution.

What did Sumatra do? 

• We completed the cut-over from Exchange 2010 to Office 365 during a twelve-hour outage window.  
• For email, we used imapsync to migrate about 500GB of email. Two weeks before cut-over, we synchronized email between the legacy and Office 365 and then managed a continuous sync to keep their email up-to-date. This reduced server loads, and ensured all email migrated during the cut-over window.   
• For Calendars, tasks, contacts, we used a Sumatra’s eCalReader to migrate calendars, contacts, and tasks.  All was accomplished during the Friday-night cut-over.

The bottom line:  Sumatra migrated 100 users in eight hours -- with little involvement from IT.  The customer said Sumatra saved them $100,000/year in expense.

The uncertainty around Covid changed the Sumatra’s customers support their end users. It was a nightmare when IT reconfigured everything so end users could work from home (WFH).  For non Office365 customers, costs included VPN connections at $50-$200/month/user.  Their CFOs realized a Microsoft Office365 license ($12.50-$20.00/month) would save thousands!

There are five themes that run through the inquiries we’ve received and what we've l;earned from our customers in the last few months. 

1. Cost: The VPN expense is killing IT budgets.  CFOs want to migrate to Office 365 ASAP.
2. WFH Timeframe: Customers expect employees will WFH for the next six to 12 months.  
3. Legacy servers and VPN are an expensive way to support WFH.  They both have to go.
4. Microsoft Office 365’s “Free” migration tools take weeks to complete.  They leave current email/calendar data behind!  
5. Third party solutions are expensive and don’t move calendars!!

What are customers asking for? Everyone who calls us for help wants:

• Migration done over a weekend not a month;
• Migrate ALL CURRENT DATA.  And not just email.  Calendars, contacts, and tasks from legacy(*) on-premises Exchange 2Kxx calendaring and collaboration solutions to Office 365.   
• The migration cut-over outage limited to overnight or at most during a weekend.:

* Legacy products are pretty much anything except Microsoft Office 365 at this point.  Google calendar is a dark horse, but our experience is anyone who's already gone for Google doesn't want to actually pay to move out.

The other thing we've learned is that imapsync is excellent at the sort of last minute touch-up work that invariably needs to get done: synchronizing a few folders or mailboxes.

 

DAVical to Office 365 calendar migration in beta stage

You guys might remember our earlier posting on DAVical migration to Exchange / Office 365.

Well, we went ahead and started it based on a request from Europe.  

If there's anyone else out there who's looking for this please drop us a line.

Corporate Meeting Resources in Office 365 in the Age of Social Distancing

So in the soda straw view of the world we see in calendaring, it was only a while before COVID-19 reared its protein-based heads in our direction.  (and yours, we assume!)

Specifically: how can we make sure we promulgate COVID-19 safety rules to personnel if we (when we) are allowed to authorize them to return to work in our physical locations?

Simplest way we came up with that does not involve any coding or need to involve your Office 365 Administrator is to create a Rule for your Resources, as shown in this screen capture.

The meeting organizer (and ONLY the meeting organizer) will then get an email directly from the resource in your standardized corporate language reminding them to observe safe meeting practices, as the following details show: 

This is the detail from Conference Room 222:

Easy-peasy.  And as you see it works whether you have your conference rooms as auto-accept or managed.

Do you have a zillion rooms?  This is script-able through Exchange Shell.  If you create a solution, please post it here and share it to benefit others!  

How much time is your group / department / division / enterprise spending in Zoom working at home?

After reading How My Boss Monitors Me While I Work From Home in the New York Times I sort of shuddered at the degree of surveillance you can put on someone's machine.

Putting on my calendar geek hat I could see how you could extract this kind of "how I spend my time" information from on Office 365 / Microsoft Exchange server without having to load possibly vulnerable code on a laptop or desktop.

Drop us a line if there's interest in this.

SOGo calendar and contact migration into Office 365

We have migration from SOGo calendar and contacts to Office 365 working in  our lab.

As usual, drop us a line if you're interested.