Category Archives: Office 365

Editing calendar permissions Office 365 with powershell

After adding a new user into Office 365, the user has to be allowed to read/write some shared calendars withing the organization.

First of all you will need to connect to Office 365

Add permission to the calendar

[codesyntax lang="powershell"]

Add-MailboxFolderPermission calendar@company.com:\Calendar -User dude@company.com -AccessRights Author

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Note: AccessRights can be: Owner, PublishingEditor, Editor, PublishingAuthor, Author, NonEditingAuthor, Reviewer, Contributor, AvailabilityOnly, LimitedDetails

Get permission for a specific users

[codesyntax lang="powershell"]

Get-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity calendar@company.com:\Calendar -User dude@company.com

[/codesyntax]

To remove permissions for a specific user:

[codesyntax lang="powershell"]

Remove-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity calendar@company:\calendar -user dude@company.com

[/codesyntax]

 

UPDATE:

What if you need to change the calendar permissions for all users within your organization?!

[codesyntax lang="powershell"]

$allmailbox = Get-Mailbox -Resultsize Unlimited

Foreach ($Mailbox in $allmailbox)
{
    $path = $Mailbox.alias + ":\" + (Get-MailboxFolderStatistics $Mailbox.alias | Where-Object { $_.Foldertype -eq "Calendar" } | Select-Object -First 1).Name
    Set-mailboxfolderpermission –identity ($path) –user Default –Accessrights AvailabilityOnly
}

[/codesyntax]

How to add an Out of Office message in Office 365 using powershell

I know it's a simply task to do from OWA, but if you want to add an Out of Office message for another user, you will have to reset it's password, login into OWA and setup the message there. But I don't want to reset the user's password. So, after connecting to office 365, use the following commands:

[codesyntax lang="powershell"]

Set-MailboxAutoReplyConfiguration -Identity user@example.com -AutoReplyState Enabled -ExternalMessage "message with whatever autoreply" -InternalMessage "internal something autoreply"

[/codesyntax]

How do I disable this?

[codesyntax lang="powershell"]

Set-MailboxAutoReplyConfiguration -Identity user@example.com -AutoReplyState Disabled

[/codesyntax]

How to forward emails in Office 365

You want an easy way to forward all mails for one or more user(s) to another user? There are several ways to achieve this. One of them is to run the following command in powershell after you connect to Office 365.

[codesyntax lang="powershell"]

Set-Mailbox user1 -ForwardingSmtpAddress user2@example.com -DeliverToMailboxAndForward $false

[/codesyntax]

In this case, user1 is the mailbox you wish to forward mail for, and user2@example.com is the address that you would like to forward the email to. Because we set DeliverToMailboxAndForward to false, a copy of the email will NOT be kept in the Office 365 mailbox.

Do you want to turn off the forwarding?

[codesyntax lang="powershell"]

Set-Mailbox user1 -ForwardingSmtpAddress $null

[/codesyntax]

If you want to check ForwardingSmtpAddress just issue the following command:

[codesyntax lang="powershell"]

Get-Mailbox -Identity user1 | fl DeliverToMailboxAndForward,ForwardingAddress,ForwardingSmtpAddress

[/codesyntax]

Note: if you don't know how to connect to Office 365 from powershell please read this post.

Grep-ing in Microsoft windows powershell

How you find all maiboxes which starts with a certain string in tons of mailboxes in your Office 365 (Microsoft Exchange Server)? In Linux is quite simple... you use grep, but how about Microsoft Windows Powershell?

You have to remember the findstr command:

[codesyntax lang="powershell"]

PS C:\> findstr /?
Searches for strings in files.

FINDSTR [/B] [/E] [/L] [/R] [/S] [/I] [/X] [/V] [/N] [/M] [/O] [/P] [/F:file]
        [/C:string] [/G:file] [/D:dir list] [/A:color attributes] [/OFF[LINE]]
        strings [[drive:][path]filename[ ...]]

  /B         Matches pattern if at the beginning of a line.
  /E         Matches pattern if at the end of a line.
  /L         Uses search strings literally.
  /R         Uses search strings as regular expressions.
  /S         Searches for matching files in the current directory and all
             subdirectories.
  /I         Specifies that the search is not to be case-sensitive.
  /X         Prints lines that match exactly.
  /V         Prints only lines that do not contain a match.
  /N         Prints the line number before each line that matches.
  /M         Prints only the filename if a file contains a match.
  /O         Prints character offset before each matching line.
  /P         Skip files with non-printable characters.
  /OFF[LINE] Do not skip files with offline attribute set.
  /A:attr    Specifies color attribute with two hex digits. See "color /?"
  /F:file    Reads file list from the specified file(/ stands for console).
  /C:string  Uses specified string as a literal search string.
  /G:file    Gets search strings from the specified file(/ stands for console).
  /D:dir     Search a semicolon delimited list of directories
  strings    Text to be searched for.
  [drive:][path]filename
             Specifies a file or files to search.

Use spaces to separate multiple search strings unless the argument is prefixed
with /C.  For example, 'FINDSTR "hello there" x.y' searches for "hello" or
"there" in file x.y.  'FINDSTR /C:"hello there" x.y' searches for
"hello there" in file x.y.

Regular expression quick reference:
  .        Wildcard: any character
  *        Repeat: zero or more occurrences of previous character or class
  ^        Line position: beginning of line
  $        Line position: end of line
  [class]  Character class: any one character in set
  [^class] Inverse class: any one character not in set
  [x-y]    Range: any characters within the specified range
  \x       Escape: literal use of metacharacter x
  \<xyz    Word position: beginning of word
  xyz\>    Word position: end of word

For full information on FINDSTR regular expressions refer to the online Command
Reference.
PS C:\>

[/codesyntax]

That being said, here is an example:

[codesyntax lang="powershell"]

PS C:\> Get-Mailbox | findstr test
test                      test                 amspr06mb197     49.5 GB (53,150,220,288 bytes)
PS C:\>

[/codesyntax]

 

How to create an organization calendar in Office 365

Recently I migrated company's email to Microsoft Office 365. Because I haven't worked before with Office 365 the process wasn't so easy as I expected initially, but after passing all challenges, I got it done. Next challenge was to create a company calendar so every user can use it. There are few posts on the web that teaches you how to accomplish this task, but none of them was complete as I intend this post to be.

Note: You will need a Windows machine... (I know this sucks, but there is nothing you can do about this).

Well, let's get to work.

First thing to do is to download some  packages that we will going to use to get this task done!

1. Connect to Office 365

2. Create a new mailbox called "Organization Calendar" (you can choose whatever name you like, of course):
[codesyntax lang="powershell"]

New-Mailbox -Name "Organization Calendar" -Alias OrganizationCalendar -Shared
Add-MailboxFolderPermission OrganizationCalendar@organization.com:\Calendar -User user@organization.com -AccessRights Author

[/codesyntax]

3. Go to the Calendar view

01. Calendar view

4. Right click on OTHER CALENDARS and choose open calendar

02. Open the Organization Calendar

5. In the From Directory field search for Organization Calendar created above and click Open.

03. Open the Organization Calendar

That's it!

How to connect to Office 365 from powershell

MS Outlook & Exchange sucks but that's what my company supports. I am not going to discuss why I need it this... it will end up in an unnecessary flame.

Required software:

Connect to the 365 system with:

[codesyntax lang="powershell"]

Import-Module MSOnline
$O365Cred = Get-Credential
$O365Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell -Credential $O365Cred -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection
Import-PSSession $O365Session -AllowClobber
Connect-MsolService -Credential $O365Cred

[/codesyntax]

Note: if you have Windows 10 (please start powershell as Administrator, otherwise it won't work), then you will have to use this code:

[codesyntax lang="powershell"]

$O365Cred = Get-Credential
$O365Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell -Credential $O365Cred -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection
Import-PSSession $O365Session -AllowClobber

[/codesyntax]