maandag 30 juni 2014

How to Create an Office 365 Mailbox and Connect it to Microsoft Outlook

Create an Office 365 Mailbox


Creating a mailbox in Office 365 involves signing into your Office 365 account. The following steps assume your organization has already signed up for Office 365 through the MicrosoftOffice 365 Fast Track enrollment website.
1) Sign in to your Office 365 portal at http://portal.microsoftonline.com.
Office 365 log in
Office 365 log in
2) Click Go to Users and Groups.
Office 365 - Users and Groups
Office 365 - Users and Groups
3) Click the + sign to add a new user.
Add New Users
Add New Users
4) Fill in the appropriate details for the user being added. See the following example then click on Additional Details.
Adding details for users
Adding details for users
5) Fill in the appropriate details for the user being added. See the following example and click Next.
Continuing to add details for users
Continuing to add details for users
6) Determine if the user will be an administrator. If yes, choose the administrator type. Here are some detail to assist with the correct selection.
Setting admin level access
Setting admin level access
  • Billing Administrator – Helps make purchases, manage Office 365 subscriptions, oversee support tickets and monitor service heath. This role will not be available if Office 365 was not purchased directly through Microsoft.
  • Global Administrator – Will give access to all administrative features. Note the individual that enrolls Office 365 for your organization will also be a global administrator.
  • Password Administrator – Applies to those individuals that will need to reset a password, manage service requests, and monitor service health. This is great for a Helpdesk or an organization's Security Administrators.
  • Service Administrator – This role is great for managing service requests and monitoring service health. Also note, before this role can be assigned to a user, they much first have admin access to a service such as Exchange Online.
  • User Management Administrator – Another great option for help desk or security administrator access this role allows them to reset passwords, monitor service health, manage accounts, groups and requests. This role is unable manipulate other administrator accounts or create admins' roles.
7) For this example we are creating a Global Administrator in the United States. An alternate email address must be specified, then click Next.
Creating a Global Administrator
Creating a Global Administrator
8) Choose the appropriate licenses the account will need. This link provides better insight into the many licensing options. For this example we will choose all the products available within the Enterprise plan. Click Next after making the selections.
Assigning appropriate licenses
Assigning appropriate licenses
9) Provide an email address to email up to five users the temporary password for this account. The password will also appear on the screen after clicking Create if sending the email is an option that will not be pursued.
Send Results in Email screen
Send Results in Email screen
10) Click Create another user if there are more to be created or click Finish if there are not.

Email Results and Create another user screen
Email Results and Create another user screen

Connect an Office 365 Mailbox to Microsoft Outlook (Outlook 2007 or 2010)

This next step assumes that your workstation already has the full Outlook 2007 or 2010 client installed on the PC.
1) Open your web browser.
2) Go to the following website https://login.microsoftonline.com.
3) Enter your credentials and click Sign In.
Office 365 Sign-in Screen
Office 365 Sign-in Screen
4) If this is the first time the user is signing into the account then the password must be changed. Fill in the appropriate information and click Save.

Update Password Screen
Update Password Screen
5) Once signed in choose Settings from the upper right-hand corner.
Settings
Settings
6) Next, choose Office 365 Settings.

Choose Office 365 settings
Choose Office 365 settings
7) If this is the first time that account is being signed into, all of the information about the account should be reviewed. This will be the information that was entered by the account administrator in Step 6 in the "Create a Mailbox" section. Once the information is verified, scroll down and click Save.
8) On the left-hand side of your screen click Software.

Install and manage software
Install and manage software
9) On the left-hand side of your screen click Desktop Setup. Please note, this document assumes that the full Outlook Client is already installed.
Select desktop setup
Select desktop setup
10) Click Setup.
Click set up
Click set up
11) After you click setup the automatic configuration will start however, when prompted, fill in the password for the account being configured.

Microsoft Office 365 desktop setup
Microsoft Office 365 desktop setup
12) A setup wizard will startup.

Set up wizard
Setup wizard
13) In this case we will only choose Microsoft Outlook and uncheck the rest. Click Continue.

Configure desktop applications and install updates
Configure desktop applications and install updates
14) Next, Click Finish.
Click Finish to complete process
Click Finish to complete process
In this case the Wizard has determined that Manual Configuration will be required. In order to complete these processes, go to the section below which covers how to connect to the full Outlook 2013 Client. Also, if this wizard fails, please see the following troubleshooting document for additional information about the issue being seen.

Connect an Office 365 Mailbox to Microsoft Outlook 2013

This manual configuration can be used if the automatic configuration wizard determines your client requires a manual configuration for Outlook 2010 clients as well.
1) Open the Control Panel on the PC.
2) Double-click on the Mail applet in the Control Panel.
Mail appletMail applet
3) Choose Show Profiles.
Select Show Profiles
Select Show Profiles
4) Click the Add button.
Click the Add button
Click the Add button
5) Enter a profile name and Click OK.
Enter a profile name
Enter a profile name
6) Fill in the information for your Office 365 account. Please note, Internet access is required for this to work.
Add new account

Add new account

7) Once the account and password have been verified the screen will appear as shown below. Click Finish.
Click Finish
Click Finish
8) Open Outlook to start using your Office 365 account.

That's all there is to it! You are now embarking on a journey to email in the cloud with Microsoft Office 365.

woensdag 12 februari 2014

Why Your SharePoint 2013 Upgrade Could Fail!

There are many companies all over the world who are busy migrating from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013.  
What will you do differently this time? There is a brilliant banner on this subject.
How will your SharePoint business run tomorrow?  How is it running today?  Do you have good governance in place, a support team, efficient training.
Over and over again we hear how businesses won’t put anymore money into SharePoint because the 2007 version was a failure. 
The reason why SharePoint was bought in the first place is seldom for the right ones. At times licenses are free on the Enterprise Agreement businesses wil just take al the licences.
There are very seldom the right skills internally to manage a platform like SharePoint. IT Departments everywhere continue to treat SharePoint like any other software. 
 As a result, everything falls down.
Then a new version comes out, then they say the answer to all your problems is SharePoint 2013.  And so an upgrade is scheduled.
But refer back to the poster now.  What are you going to do differently with SharePoint 2013?  If you follow the same path you did in SharePoint 2010 without any changes to your strategy – what makes you think 2013 will succeed? It won’t.  It will just get worse, SharePoint is more powerful than ever before.
It is a bitter pill to swallow for the people with the cheque books, I get that, really; and it’s even harder for the people who have to write that motivation for the extra investment.
SharePoint has unbelievable capabilities that can offer business professionals endless ways to streamline their paperwork, communicate and share better.  But it takes a change in culture, someone actively driving it every single day to succeed, ongoing education and support of all the roles – and unfortunately that takes money.
The alternative is fail again.  So what changes do you need to make?  If you don’t know what to do, call in help what costs even more?  

vrijdag 7 februari 2014

4 Tips to improve you SEO for SharePoint!

Search engine optimization (SEO) can be an overwhelming task, however there are several tricks every business can do to increase their search engine presence. One way is to prepare a local search engine optimization strategy, which optimizes local profiles to increase organic rankings within major search engines and local directories."
Google Says:
"97% of consumers search for local businesses on Google, which is why it is so critical for businesses to ensure they are represented on a local level."
  
Here are a few tips that every business can use to improve LOCAL SEO performance

1. claiming local profiles in the major search engines and local directories

By claiming all of your business profiles in Google Places, Bing Local, Yelp, Yahoo Local, SuperPages, etc, you are letting search engines know your listing is an official business listing.

2. optimizing your local profiles

In order to properly optimize your profiles, you need to determine your most valuable keywords. These keywords should be terms that a consumer would enter into a search engine in order to find your business. This can often be services or products that you offer. Ensure that you are including your valuable keywords in all descriptions and tag lines within your local profile.

3. ensure your information is accurate and consistent

Each of your local profiles should be as accurate as possible and share the same information that is on your website. Keeping all information consistent makes it easier for search engines to index that information. The most important pieces of information are your business’s title, phone number, address, and website URL.

4. manage and monitor each listing

Search engines factor in comments and reviews when determining a local listings rank. The more comments and reviews that a listing has, the more valuable it appears to be to search engines. It is important to monitor comments and reviews made on your local profiles, respond to customer complaints, and attempt to combat negative reviews. This will not only help your standing in search engines, but as more and more consumers look to reviews to make purchase decisions, you need to make sure that you are putting your best foot forward.

dinsdag 3 december 2013

Optimizing SQL Server performance for Microsoft SharePoint 2010

Please consult a SQL Server Database Administrator and a SharePoint Administrator and discuss the settings before making any adjustments in your environment(s) – I can only give advice and not be responsible for any wrong configurations – remember that every environment is different!

90% of all data of a Microsoft SharePoint 2010/2013 farm is placed in the SQL Server databases, and every transaction from the users, all SharePoint services and SharePoint timer-jobs are working with these databases at the same time. SharePoint is depends on the performance of the web frontend servers and SQL servers. If the users should have the best experience of SharePoint, you need to optimize the resources that are used by SharePoint.

On the web frontend servers the Internet Information Server (IIS) delivers the content to the users. CPU and especially memory is important here as SharePoint uses the server memory to cache the information requested by the users. Usually this is not an issue as IT administrators can monitor these resources and do as a normal performance evaluation of Microsoft servers.

Fewer IT administrators or Database Administrators has knowledge of how SharePoint use the SQL Server and which components to optimize for delivering the best SharePoint end user experience. This article is about giving a little insight on this subject.

Physical or virtual servers?
Running the Windows Server and SQL Server directly on the hardware itself will give you the optimal performance. You will not have the advantages of the virtual environments such as failover, backup/restore and flexibility for the IT administrators. In my experiences a good virtual setup is as good as a physical one – and is the most chosen of my customers.

The SQL Server instance
On the SQL server we have some general best practices to follow and this means that the database administrators must change some default values to make the SQL server, and thereby also the applications, to perform better. SQL servers that host SharePoint databases are no exception, but certain settings should be changed to give even more power to the SharePoint servers. These settings can also have influence on other databases in the same SQL instance so it is advised to have a separate SQL Server for SharePoint – or at least a separate instance on an existing SQL Server.

If you choose to run multiple instances of SQL Server on a single Windows Server you need to control your CPU usage, minimum + maximum memory usage and database placement on disks. If the load on the databases and the SharePoint servers is small to medium you will achieve okay performance. But still, try to separate the SQL Servers to multiple Windows Servers as the used network bandwidth also has an effect on performance.

Memory is also used by the SQL Server for caching data requested by the applications. Therefore you should have plenty memory allocated to the SQL Server for best performance. It can be hard to evaluate how much memory is required as the SQL Server adjust the memory used depending on how much memory is available.

The CPU is used to perform calculations, queries and sorting the data. CPU usage can easily be monitored and evaluated if more CPU power is needed. Multiple processors with multiple cores is highly recommended as the SQL Server can take advantage of these.

The default file location of database and log should be set according to your needs (see the section Disk and file locations)

SQL Server version
The SQL Server should be a SQL Server 2008 (64 bit) with SP1 and CU 5 (or later version) installed even though former versions this edition of SQL Server is optimized for 64-bit and Microsoft SharePoint 2010/2013 can take advantage of the new functionality giving you’re a better overall performance. SharePoint will detect the SQL Server version and adjust the queries accordingly to the features available.

Memory limits
Add as much memory as possible on the Windows Server – the SQL Server will automatically allocate and cache based on the amount of RAM for the SQL Server instance.

The SQL Server will control the memory usage according to predefined rules in the SQL Server dynamic memory management.

If you only have one SQL Server instance on the server there’s not need to do memory adjustments!

If other applications or instances of SQL Server run on the same Windows Operating system then you need to adjust every SQL Server instance memory limits. By default the SQL Server dynamic memory management will use all available RAM on the operating system and release memory of this is required. Microsoft states this athttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms177455(v=sql.105).aspx

The minimum memory limit is set to a value that the SQL Server instance cannot go below if it passes this limit. This value should be set to avoid the server to avoid unnecessary release of memory resources that the serve

The maximum memory limit defines the maximum memory the SQL Server instance is allowed to use. If you have multiple instances on the same Windows Server then evaluate how much each SQL Server instance should be allowed to use and how much should be available to the operating system and other programs.

Disk and file locations
You have the possibility to set the default locations for the database and the database log files for each SQL Server instance on the Windows Server. It is advised to use separate physical disks as the requirements for database files and log files are different. Performance wise you should also evaluate the load of the different databases as some might require more resources than others. Log files requires good write performance and the database files most read and caching performance

It is advised to place non-SharePoint databases on separate physical drives because SharePoint is very database transaction intensive.

The optimal disk cluster size (is set during formatting the drive) is 64k. Using this recommended cluster size the server reads 64k at the time and can deliver larger chucks of data to the SQL Server.

For the best performance you can add additional transaction log files to separate disks (not disks you are using for database files) Create same sized files on separate disks for tempdb, Content and Search databases. Use the same number of files as physical processor socket on your SQL Server to take advantage of the CPU’s (e.g. 2 data files on a 2 socket machine, 4 data files on a 4 socket machine).

System databases and SharePoint
The Model database, “Model”, is a system database that defines how a new database is default created by administrators and SharePoint. Set the default size on the Model-database to what size the future databases should be. If is advised to set this to what size each of your content database is believed to be in 1½-2 years. You should set the size to one value before the SharePoint installation and change this to your future default content database size afterwards.

The default created size could differ from what settings you want on non-SharePoint databases and therefore it is advised to have a separate SQL Server or SQL Server instance for the SharePoint databases.

In my experience the growth rate is not adjusted on new databases with these are created by SharePoint – so please check the database file growth periodically

The Temp database, “Tempdb”, is also a system database and this is used in a special way by SharePoint. It is used only as a working area and do not contain data that is important. At every SQL Server reboot the Temp database is rebuild. We should set the recovery mode to SIMPLE as we do not need to recover any information in the tempdb database.

The Temp database should be placed on a very fast drive for best performance on sorting and filtering operations. Microsoft SharePoint views are never faster than the “tempdb” can deliver data.

Database settings
Microsoft SharePoint use different databases for different purposes. Some contain configuration data and others the actual content. Most databases are created during the installation of the SharePoint farm so you must have your SQL Server settings correct before installing the product if you want to avoid performance issues or reconfiguration.

To make sure that putting content in your SharePoint databases is fast I recommend you to pre-grow these. Set the Database and log-sizes to what you expect within a year. This will also help reducing fragmentation and performance impact.

You should evaluate the usage of every database and adjust the
Database and log files
Location (fast separate drives)
Size (~ what you expect within 1 years)
Growth (~ 25% of the db size)
Recovery Model (FULL recommended)
Auto-shink -> set to the default: OFF

You should set the recovery mode to FULL on every SharePoint database to make sure that your data can be restored properly if a disaster happens – remember to do database and log backups to avoid running out of disk space. Also consult a SQL Server Administrator to ensure this is set up correctly – and check the backups with test-restore so you know that everything is good (and the restore time is okay with you).

It is advised that the Search databases are placed on even different physical disks or even a separate SQL Server, as the crawler- and index service is performing many transactions during a crawl and index propagation.

A small side-note: If you database administrators creates new databases for you, they must create these with a collation of Latin1_General_CL_AS_KS_WS. During the installation of the SQL instance they could set this to the default for new databases. If databases is created from the SharePoint user Interface, this value is set automatically.

Shrinking the logfiles – when?
The database transaction logfiles seems to keep on growing – especially if you do not back these up. This is because every transaction is put in these and not “flushed” until you do a backup. When you perform a backup the file gets “empty” and is ready for new transactions. If your transaction logfiles is too big then you need to shrink these – but please leave some empty space and don’t shrink to the minimum size. When a file needs to grow it has a large impact on performance.

Network
As all data is sent over the network the bandwidth between all servers must be optimal. A 1Gbit network connection on the servers is advised at all times. Also be sure that devices can handle the load – such as network routers, switches and firewalls.

I made a little graphical overview also:



Source:http://jespermchristensen.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/optimizing-sql-server-performance-for-microsoft-sharepoint-20102013/

zaterdag 20 juli 2013

Installing Observium Monitoring Tool

Hi all, today another new blog from my side. My colleague Rob has a nice monitoring tool called Observium. So i thought lets check this out and lets install this on a brand new Debian server.

Photo-main

Observium was started true a kickstarter project.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/588464062/observium-alerting

A small introduction about Observium.

"

Introduction

Observium is an Open Source, auto-discovering network monitoring platform written in PHP which supports a wide range of devices and operating systems. We collect data and status via SNMP and an optional Agent and present the information in a useful-to-engineers manner.
To keep things simple to manage, we try to discover everything that can be graphed or monitored on a device automatically. You usually don't know you need to graph something until after the event or outage! We even try to automatically discover neighboring devices seen via CDP and LLDP tables or OSPF neighbor tables. 
We believe that one of the key purposes of an NMS is to help engineers understand their networks. One of the very first features implemented was the ability to visualize a device's place in the network based on the devices it connected directly to, and the devices its interfaces share sub-nets with. 

"

Ok now a little tutorial on how to install this brilliant package.
Install the following packages:
aptitude install libapache2-mod-php5 php5-cli php5-mysql php5-gd php5-snmp \
php-pear snmp graphviz subversion mysql-server mysql-client rrdtool \
fping imagemagick whois mtr-tiny nmap ipmitool
  

Create and copy the following directories and files
$ mkdir /opt/observium/
$ cd /opt/observium/
$ cp config.php.default config.php
$ mkdir graphs rrd
$ chown www-data.www-data graphs rrd
$ mkdir /opt/observium/logs
  

  
CREATE DATABASE observium;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON observium.* TO 'observium'@'localhost'
IDENTIFIED BY '<observium db yourpassword>';
  
  

We need to create some Mysql database lines by following up the commands bellow
  
$ mysql -uroot -p
Enter password: <mysql root password>
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 238145

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

mysql> CREATE DATABASE observium;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.10 sec)

mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON observium.* TO 'observium'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'observium';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.06 sec)
  
  

Now we need to add the config.php
cd/opt/observium/ nano config.php

### Database config
$config['db_host'] = "localhost";
$config['db_user'] = "observium";
$config['db_pass'] = "observium";
$config['db_name'] = "observium";

  

Ok now we need to add a virtual host to our apache
$ sudo vim /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/010-observium

<VirtualHost *:80>
       ServerName  observium.yourdomain.com
       DocumentRoot /opt/observium/html
       <Directory />
               Options FollowSymLinks
               AllowOverride None
       
       ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log
       LogLevel warn
       CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined
       
</VirtualHost>
  
  

$ a2enmod rewrite
Enabling module rewrite.
Run '/etc/init.d/apache2 restart' to activate new configuration!

$ a2ensite observium
Enabling site observium.
Run '/etc/init.d/apache2 reload' to activate new configuration!

$ service apache2 restart
  

  
$ ./adduser.php
Add User Tool
Usage: ./adduser.php <username> <password> <level 1-10> [email]

$ ./adduser.php admin adminpass1 10 

$ ./adduser.php admin1 adminpass2 1 


The only thing left is to add a new record in your hostfile.

192.168.0.20 observium.yourdomain.com

When you have don this you can access the web page true IE by typing observium.yourdomain.com


Good luck installing :)

P.S
Make sure you have a router with SNMP.








vrijdag 12 juli 2013

Starting a basic (next-next-finish) SQL server installation for Sharepoint 2010

First of all you should install the following applications:

-Server 2008R2
-SQL 2008 R2
-Filterpack 2.0 64bit
-MSchart
-SYNC Setup
-Windows6.1 KB974405-X64

You also need to add the role IIS and add the feature .NET Framework 3.5.

So now we can start installing SQL server 2008 R2.

Step 1. Run Setup.exe from the SQL Server 2008 R2 install CD 
Step 2. Click on Installation on the left hand column
Step 3. Click on New SQL Server stand-alone or add features to an existing installation

Step 4. Click on Show Details and make sure that all the setup support rules have passed and then click OK
image
Step 5. Give in your Licence key
Step 6. Tick I accept the license terms and click Next
image
Step 7. Click Install
image
Step 8. Click Next
image
Step 9. Select the components you want to install and click Next
image
Step 10. Configure the Instance name and details and click Next
image
Step 11. Review the disk space requirements and click Next
image
Step 12. Configured the Service accounts that you want to use and click Next
image
Step 13. Add a SQL Server Administrator and Click Next
image
Make sure you Give in the right collation for SharePoint 2010: Server Collation SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS 

Step 14. Click Next
image
Step 15. Click on Show Details and review the install rules and then click Next
image
Step 16. Do a final review of the install and click Install
image

Step 17. Click Next
image
Click 18. Click Close
image
Now you really need to install Service Pack 1

Step 19. Click Next
image
Step 20. Click I accept the license terms and then click Next
image
Step 21. Review the features that are going to be upgraded and click Next
image
Step 22. Click Next
image
Step 23. Click Update
image
Step 24. Click Next
image
Step 25. Click Close

For configurations tips and tricks check my SQL optimization blog