Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Tony Redmond

Tony Redmond

@office365itpros.com

1.4K followers 27 following 520 posts

Commentator and writer about #Microsoft365. Always looking for insight about how things work... Articles posted at https://office365itpros.com and https://practical365.com. And the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook at https://gum.co/O365IT/

office365itpros.com

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 13h

We've released update #17 for the Automating #Microsoft365 with #PowerShell eBook. Subscribers for the book and subscribers for the #Office365 for IT Pros eBook can download the new PDF and EPUB files from Gumroad.com.
office365itpros.com/2025/10/21/a...

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 1d

The #Microsoft365 usage report APIs are good at giving admins a picture of user activity per workload. The APIs are so much better when combined together with #PowerShell to generate a holistic view of what people do in a tenant.
practical365.com/holistic-usa...

Practical Graph: Creating a Multi-Workload User Activity Report

Microsoft 365 comes with many usage report APIs for different workloads. This article explains how to use PowerShell to extract usage data for multiple workloads to combine together to create a holist...

practical365.com

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 1d

#MicrosoftTeams is introducing audio-only meeting recordings. This doesn't mean that people turn off cameras during meetings. Instead, the video feed is suppressed and not captured in the recording file. When you think about it, this is a good idea.
office365itpros.com/2025/10/20/a...
#Microsoft365

New Audio-Only Recording Option for Teams Meetings

A new audio-only recording option for Teams meeting suppresses the video feed from meeting participants to generate the MP4 file for the meeting recording.

office365itpros.com

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 4d

#Outlook gets agenda auto-draft capabilities for meetings (if you have #Copilot for #Microsoft365 licenses). The feature creates a brief agenda from the meeting subject. Kind of interesting, but not a make-or-break feature.
office365itpros.com/2025/10/17/a...

Agenda Auto-Draft Comes to OWA and the New Outlook

Agenda auto-draft is a new feature for OWA and the new Outlook to help meeting organizers create a draft meeting agenda with an introduction and some points.

office365itpros.com

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 5d

The compliance Connect-IPPSSession #PowerShell cmdlet doesn't support managed identities. Secret management is a good way to secure usernames and passwords. Here's how to store the data in Azure Key Vault and use it for automation runbooks
office365itpros.com/2025/10/16/s...

Use Secret Management to Manage Azure Automation Credentials

Resources are the easiest way to manage credentials for Azure Automation runbooks. The Secret Management module is an alternative, and it's best for shared

office365itpros.com

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 6d

The AzureAD and AzureADPreview #PowerShell modules are about to retire techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microso... It's time to move scripts to the Microsoft Graph. #PowerShell SDK. Need help? Here's a book for you: o365itpros.gumroad.com/l/M365PS

Important Update: AzureAD PowerShell retirement | Microsoft Community Hub

Learn about the latest information and timelines for the retirement of the deprecated AzureAD PowerShell module.

techcommunity.microsoft.com

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 6d

#Entra and #Microsoft365 are formed from many apps. A recent update exposes additional Microsoft 1st party apps for Conditional Access policies. Most are linked to the My Sign-Ins portal. Here's what's happening:
office365itpros.com/2025/10/15/m...

The My Sign-Ins Portal, Applications, and Conditional Access

A recent change has exposed the apps used by the My Sign-ins portal for use by conditional access policies. Here's how to find out about the apps.

office365itpros.com

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 7d

How long can a user go without reauthenticating access to a document or message protected by a sensitivity label with encryption? It depends... office365itpros.com/2025/10/14/o...
#Microsoft365

Change the Offline Access Period for Sensitivity Labels

One of the settings for sensitivity labels governs how long items protected by a label remain accessible (including offline access) before reauthentication.

office365itpros.com

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 8d

The OpenAI connector for #SharePoint now allows complete sites to be synchronized for ChatGPT reasoning. This doesn't seem like a great approach for #Microsoft365 tenants due to lack of visibility, compliance, etc. Thoughts?
office365itpros.com/2025/10/13/s...

Enterprise SharePoint Connector Launched by OpenAI

OpenAI has launched a ChatGPT enterprise SharePoint Connector that allows organizations to synchronize files from SharePoint Online to ChatGPT.

office365itpros.com

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 11d

The #Copilot usage reports Graph API is now GA, which is nice (if you use Copilot)... but what can you do with the data? This article explains how to use the API to mix and match Copilot data with other #Microsoft365 info.
office365itpros.com/2025/10/10/c...

Microsoft 365 Copilot Usage Report API General Availability

The Copilot usage report Graph API is now generally available. Like the report APIs for the other workloads, the Copilot usage API helps to understand usage

office365itpros.com

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 12d

Several interesting events are happening in the world of #Exchange. It's time to get over to SE, Microsoft is laying the foundation to move the SOA for objects, and Exchange Online gets auto-archiving based on mailbox size.
office365itpros.com/2025/10/09/e...
#Microsoft365

Exchange SE The Only Option as Exchange 2019 Reaches EOL

On Oct 18, 2025, Exchange 2019 and 2016 reach end-of-life and Exchange SE becomes the only supported on-premises Exchange server.

office365itpros.com

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 13d

#MicrosoftTeams will soon gain the ability to use emojis in section names (used to organize chats and channels). Apparently it's a Slack thing. Am I impressed? Underwhelmed perhaps...
office365itpros.com/2025/10/08/t...
#Microsoft365

Teams Chat Section Names Support for Emojis

Teams users can use emojis to create or rename chat section names. By doing so, they create "visual anchors" to help navigate through Teams messages.

office365itpros.com

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 14d

Microsoft's Alex Simons gave a great talk at the #TEC2025 conference last week and discussed Entra agents. I was a little underwhelmed. I know these agents are preview, but I think they could exploit more available data to make an impact.
practical365.com/entra-agents...
#Microsoft365

Entra Agents are Promising but Could do More

Microsoft's Alex Simons came to the TEC 2025 conference to talk about the future of Entra ID, a lot of which hangs on the use of AI in components like the Entra agents that are now in preview. The ide...

practical365.com

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 14d

Chromium 141 updates arrived for Edge, Chrome, and Brave (all I tested) yesterday. There's a change coming that will require #Microsoft365 tenants to update policies to make sure that #SharePoint and #OneDrive continue to work smoothly. Details here: office365itpros.com/2025/10/07/c...

Chromium 141 Update Can Affect SharePoint and OneDrive

An update for Chromium 141 can affect the ability of SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business to access offline content, including files and lists.

office365itpros.com

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 15d

What’s the best way to find SharePoint sites with the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK? Is the Get-MgAllSite cmdlet best or should you use the Get-MgSite cmdlet? Does it matter if you’re looking for one site or many sites? Explored here...
office365itpros.com/2025/10/06/g...
#Microsoft365 #PowerShell

Using the Get-MgAllSite and Get-MgSite cmdlets

What's the best way to find SharePoint sites with PowerShell? Is the Get-MgAllSite best or should you use Get-MgSite? We explore the issue in this article.

office365itpros.com

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 18d

#EntraID conditional access policies can now be recovered from a soft-deleted state. Here's how to find and recover deleted policies, and how to permanently remove a CA policy if that's what you need to do. All with #PowerShell, naturally...
office365itpros.com/2025/10/03/r...
#Microsoft365

How to Restore a Conditional Access Policy with PowerShell

A new Graph API allows Entra administrators to restore a conditional access policy with a Graph request. This article explains how to do the job with PowerShell

office365itpros.com

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 19d

#MicrosoftTeams is introducing "trust indicators" to mark communications from external people, like guest accounts and federated contacts. Sounds good. But controlling external access might be even better.. Discuss!
office365itpros.com/2025/10/02/t...
#Microsoft365

Teams Stamps External Users with Trust Indicators

Attackers might attempt to use social engineering to trick Teams users in compromise. Trust indicators help users understand the status of external users.

office365itpros.com

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 20d

The October 2025 Update for the #Office365 for IT Pros eBook is available for download by subscribers. Please fetch the updated EPUB and PDF files to make sure that you're not using outdated information.
office365itpros.com/2025/10/01/o...
#Microsoft365

Office 365 for IT Pros October 2025 Update

Monthly update #124 for the Office 365 for IT Pros (2026 ediition) eBook is now available for current subscribers to download.

office365itpros.com

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 21d

Having fun (!!!) explaining why Azure Automation is a good choice for processing #Microsoft365 data with #PowerShell at TEC 2025.

#TEC2025

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 21d

If you're a frequent traveler, you've probably used #Outlook's ability to create events from email like airline reservation confirmations. Things are changing and some disruption is likely from January 2026 when Outlook insists on more structured data.
office365itpros.com/2025/09/30/e...

Outlook Events from Email Changes from January 2026

Microsoft says that the Outlook events from email feature changes from January 31, 2026 so that events will only be created if notifications support schema.org.

office365itpros.com

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 22d

Using a #Microsoft365 #Copilot Connector to bring external data into the Graph sounds like a big task. However, it's easy with the built-in connectors, like the enterprise website connector... Here's just how easy: office365itpros.com/2025/09/29/m...

Using the Enterprise Website Microsoft 365 Copilot Connector

Microsoft 365 Copilot Search can be extended by ingesting information from external sources through a Microsoft 365 Copilot Connector.

office365itpros.com

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 25d

It's good to have choice, but using Anthrophic AI models with #Microsoft365 #Copilot (even in a limited way) raises a bunch of security, data access, and compliance issues for tenants to work out. To their credit, Microsoft documents the issues
office365itpros.com/2025/09/26/a...

Use of Anthrophic Models Concerns Microsoft 365 Tenants

On September 24, Microsoft announced that Anthrophic LLMs could be used with the Copilot Researcher agent and to build agents with Copilot Studio.

office365itpros.com

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 26d

Last week Microsoft launched the #SharePoint Knowledge Agent. Sounds good, but my testing so far reveals a disappointing lack of any real AI magic. Am I being too hard? Is it just me? Or maybe it's a case of overhyped AI features.
office365itpros.com/2025/09/25/s...
#Microsoft365

SharePoint Knowledge Agent Available in Preview

With not a little hype, Microsoft launched the SharePoint Knowledge Agent on September 18. Getting some AI help to organize sites sounds good.

office365itpros.com

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 27d

Big and complex companies often can't get their act together to coordinate products. Microsoft certainly can't seem to make sure that all the #Microsoft365 #PowerShell modules avoid assembly clashes with each other. That's a pity and it needs to change.
office365itpros.com/2025/09/24/a...

Assembly Clashes Make Microsoft 365 PowerShell Frustrating

An assembly clash happens when a PowerShell module attempts to load a .NET assembly only to find that a different version is already loaded in the session.

office365itpros.com

Tony Redmond @office365itpros.com · 28d

The #EntraID user password and authentication report #PowerShell script had to be "fixed" because of a change in a Graph beta API. The learning is not to depend on a beta API. I should have known better...
office365itpros.com/2025/09/23/p...
#Microsoft365

Updating the User Password and Authentication Report Script

A change to a Graph beta API meant that some data in the user password and authentication report was no longer available. A script update was required.

office365itpros.com