Category Archives: Automation

Automation, Intune

Killing and reinstalling the Intune Client without user interaction

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So, recently a customer installed the Intune client in an image, as my previous post details, causing the client to enter a bricked state.

Reinstallation of the client can fix this, but we wanted minimum user interaction as a large number of machines was already distributed.

For those who remember Winrar, it is a fantastic ZIP tool that can create a self-extracting archive (.EXE) which auto-self elevates (admin rights) and can automatically start a file from the archive after extraction.

Include the Intune setup file and the certificate Microsoft includes, and this script (as .bat), and your Intune installation will be ‘cleaned up’. Note that you may see some file protection dialogs.

Source code: Continue reading Killing and reinstalling the Intune Client without user interaction →

Automation, Office 365, OneDrive for Business, Sharepoint Online

Migrating files and folders to Onedrive for Business and Sharepoint Online without user interaction part 1

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This is the first post in a series about moving to Onedrive for Business and/or Sharepoint Online from traditional fileshares and/or homedirectories, in bulk, without user interaction.

O365DC_1

  1. Making your data compliant with Office 365 standards, and keeping it that way
  2. Moving the data (in bulk)
  3. User and endpoint transitioning

Many of my employer’s clients are transitioning to a Cloud First IT model. Think triple A, work anywhere, anytime, anyplace.

This poses a number of challenges on Continue reading Migrating files and folders to Onedrive for Business and Sharepoint Online without user interaction part 1 →

Automation, O365Datacleaner, Office 365, Powershell, Sharepoint Online

O365BulkDatacleaner released

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The first public version of the O365BulkDatacleaner has been released.

This script is an addition to O365Datacleaner and will allow you to run the original script over many target locations simultaneously, using a CSV file as input.

This is the simplest and most reliable method currently available to make, for example, all the data on your fileservers spread out over homedirectories completely compliant with Onedrive for Business or Sharepoint Online’s requirements.

Automation, Exchange 2010, Exchange 2013, Exchange Online, Office 365, Powershell, Skype Online

Automating remote mailbox creation in an Exchange 2010/2013 and Office 365 hybrid setup

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In organisations that have moved to Office 365, or are moving to Office 365 while using a hybrid setup with an on-premises Exchange 2010, 2013 or 2016 server and/or Lync/Skype, your helpdesk tools and scripts need to be adjusted.

While previously, you would provision your account in Active Directory, the mailbox on the onpremises Exchange Server and voip functionality on the Lync/Skype server, after your migration, you no longer need to provision mailboxes or lync accounts on premises. After a user has been migrated to Office 365, his ‘user type’ in the Exchange on premises server is ‘Remote Mailbox’. But for new users, this is not set automatically.

If you’re using scripting or tools like ADManager, you can use some simple Powershell commands to set the correct properties on a newly created user.

Configure and run below script Continue reading Automating remote mailbox creation in an Exchange 2010/2013 and Office 365 hybrid setup →

Automation, Powershell

AutoBuilder, a self restarting Powershell script for orchestration

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I was recently asked to build a Powershell script to fully automate building up a server, including detailed configuration and installation of roles and other software.

Some of these actions required a reboot. After a reboot, the Powershell script had to restart itself. When running a script remotely, Workflows can be used, but when running the script locally I could not get this to work properly. Thus, I built a self-restarting script template that will run each phase as you configure it.

This self-resuming Powershell script writes its own run configuration to a Scheduled task that will run at boot time without user interaction, under the SYSTEM account. It will run all the commands you specify, reboot and resume when necessary, and unregister itself when it has completed.

This is awesome for, for example, building up Terminal Servers or Web Servers in a highly virtualized environment. Of course there are many orchestration tools available, and they may be better suited for this task, but those were not available when I was asked to code this.

Download it here: AutoBuilder_v0.3

Or check out the source code:

Continue reading AutoBuilder, a self restarting Powershell script for orchestration →