Microsoft Alerts

Microsoft announced the general availability of Lifecycle Workflows, a new feature intended to help organizations automate some aspects of the joiner/mover/leaver process. Like everything, there are great things about the feature, and some "gotchas" you need to be aware of.

Check out this "First look at Microsoft Entra’s Lifecycle Workflows" article by Vasil Michev for:

• access to a free 30-days trial of Microsoft Entra ID Governance
• a quick understanding of what the feature does
• a good look at how it's licensed
• details about what happens to workflows if your license expires

September 30, 2023 is a big day for Microsoft customers. Three legacy PowerShell modules (Azure AD,Azure AD Preview, and MS Online) are being deprecated on that date. It also marks the completion of a 3-year notice period for deprecation of Azure ADGraph, kicking off the retirement cycle for Azure AD Graph APIs.

• The legacy licensing assignment PowerShell cmdlets (Set-AzureADUserLicense, Set-MsolUserLicense, -LicenseAssignment or -LicenseOptions parameters of New-MsolUser) and Azure AD Graph API (assignLicense) are retired
• For customers who were provided an extension for these cmdlets and API, migrations to Microsoft Graph licensing APIs/PowerShell must be completed by September 30, 2023. Some legacy PowerShell modules/scenarios are not yet available in Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK. For those, the deprecation date has been postponed to March 30, 2024.

Even before the June 2023 deprecation of the full module (see alert below), Microsoft announced it will be deprecating the license assignment APIs and cmdlets, such as Set-MsolUserLicense, Set-AzureADUserLicense on March 31, 2023. To minimize disruption, IT teams should begin immediately switching to license assignment APIs from Microsoft Graph.

Microsoft has provided a few important articles to help:

Start here to connect to Microsoft Graph PowerShell

• Download and install the Microsoft Graph PowerShell module
• Connect to Microsoft Graph PowerShell
• PowerShell script to automatically install and connect to MS Graph (Recommended)
• Microsoft Graph PowerShell commands
• Migrate scripts from Azure AD PowerShell to Microsoft Graph
• Update and Uninstall Microsoft Graph SDK

You can also get the upgraded our earlier Office 365 license management script to adopt MS Graph cmdlets here.
With this All-in-One PowerShell script, admins can perform license assignments, license removals, bulk license management, license reporting and more.

Microsoft has announced the deprecation of RPS protocol for Exchange Online connections starting June 1, 2023, with a complete block for all tenants by July 1, 2023. This change aims to provide a more secure and reliable experience for customers by shifting to the v3 module with REST cmdlets.

Watch this informative on-demand webinar and learn the top five considerations for managing this transition. Watch now.

Affected users include those using New-PSSession, Exchange Online PowerShell v1 and v2 modules, or newer versions with the -UseRPSSession parameter.

Note that some new features and minor breaking changes are present in the v3 module; please consider them while testing your scripts. Security & Compliance cmdlets (Connect-IPPSSession) remain RPS-based and are unaffected by this deprecation. However, REST-based cmdlets for Connect-IPPSSession are in development and will be released when ready.

Stay updated on this change and prepare your organization for a more secure and performant environment. Here are additional articles to help you along the way:

• Remove user from all Microsoft 365 Groups
• Report on (recursive) group membership via Exchange PowerShell
• Script to generate a report of all group owners in Microsoft 365
• Report on Azure AD group members via the Graph API
• Immediately revoke access to Microsoft 365 applications
• Report on Microsoft 365 mailbox forwarding (all methods) via PowerShell

If you are making improvements to the Exchange RBAC model, here are additional articles to help:

• Limiting application access
• Support for administrative units
• Limiting access in CBA scenarios

We have seen tremendous AI momentum across Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and the Power Platform, including the next generation of AI capabilities in Microsoft Teams, the collaboration platform for work with more than 280 million monthly active users; Viva Sales, which helps sellers by bringing a sales copilot to their flow of work in Microsoft 365; and Power Apps, enabling citizen developers to write code using natural language.

Find out what CoreView is doing to unlock the power of AI for their customers with CoreView AI Assistant, while ensuring that data privacy and security aren’t impacted: www.coreview.com/technology/ai-assistant

Experience AI magic for yourself! Check out this Chat GPT primer, which includes helpful descriptions of prompts, example scripts to use and more.

On January 25, 2023, Microsoft experienced an outage that impacted thousands of users worldwide, rendering services like Teams and Outlook inaccessible. The company has since investigated the issue and addressed it for all customers.

The cause of the outage was a configuration glitch, which resulted in Microsoft's Exchange Online service going offline for several hours. The glitch caused a failure in Microsoft's infrastructure, leading to the service outage.

Microsoft's technical teams resolved the issue and services were restored for all customers.

We know Microsoft 365 outages can have a big impact on your business. Any time there is any outage or data issue, rest assured that CoreView experts are already working with our customers and, in many cases, directly with Microsoft to achieve the best performance.

Microsoft has announced a change to its Office 365 licensing policy, allowing for the assignment of multiple Exchange Online licenses to a single Azure Active Directory (AAD) user. This change is meant to address situations where a user may have legitimately required duplicate licenses, which previously would have caused an error.

SharePoint Online and Teams already supported duplicate licenses. The higher-level license will take precedence in the event of any conflict between service levels. While the announcement was made on January 20, 2023, no effective date has been specified, and this change is part of a broader initiative. More details may be forthcoming as this change is implemented.

Microsoft will raise Cloud product pricing in three European markets effective April 1, 2023.

The following increases have been announced:  

• 9% for the British pound
• 11% for the euro
• 15% for the Swedish krona

This is part of a larger effort for Microsoft to unify pricing across currencies globally. Microsoft has pledged to review per-currency pricing annually going forward in order to account for price fluctuations and aim for greater consistency.