Welcoming Three New Hires 

Among those three new hires we were welcoming, Doug Williams, who joined me on the IT team as a Network Engineer I out of the Chicago office, has about 4 years of IT experience working on a variety of IT things, including server and network infrastructure. He also brings in MDM experience working with Microsoft Intune and has been working on similar projects his first 5 months at the DMC.

We also welcomed Juan Sulbaran to our Automation team in Denver as a Project Engineer. Juan brought 11+ years of experience working in various industries including food and beverage, steel, automotive, precision-cutting, petrochemical, and cement. 

And finally, we welcomed Mark Veystel, who is our new Accounting Associate on the DMC Accounting team! Mark graduated from DePaul University with a B.S. in Business and a major in Finance. He was also a property manager for two years prior to coming to DMC.  

Highlights From the Night 

SPIN Chicago is a unique venue in Chicago that replaces the idea that pool tables and shuffleboard tables are the only way to have fun in a restaurant/bar. As an avid ping pong player myself, this is a Welcome Party I was not going to miss. Several of DMC’s offices, including Chicago, Boston, Houston, and San Diego have ping pong tables in their office, and several DMCers here have some serious talent — mostly from playing so much ping pong at DMC!

We even feature a leaderboard and Ping Pong App, mounted next to the ping pong table, that allows you to start a singles (1 on 1) or doubles (2 on 2) game, see H2H stats, and includes a ranking system for bragging rights.

Around 40+ DMC’ers and their plus ones showed up to welcome these three new employees, and we had a blast of a time. While eating some amazing appetizers and drinking various mixed spirits, we played at the 3 tables that were reserved for our group.  Next to each table were large buckets of ping pong balls, featuring the SPIN Logo. These weren’t your average ping pong balls either, they are Stiga branded ping pong balls, who, in my opinion, is the #1 most respected ping pong manufacturer in the world.

SPIN also provides their own ping pong paddles (otherwise known as a “bat” if you were in England); however, I chose to bring in my own for competitive reasons! We started off playing a few games of doubles, where you play games to 21, and each team alternates after each hit. Two of our newest IT members, Doug, who we were welcoming, and Jon Wilmot, who started at DMC on the IT Team a few weeks prior to Doug, challenged to see who the 2nd best ping pong player on the IT department was! 

We all had a great time taking in the great food and drinks, and the competition between colleagues was awesome. I look forward to more events at SPIN Chicago.

Learn more about DMC’s company culture and check out our open positions!

The post DMC SPIN Welcome Party appeared first on DMC, Inc..

If you are not familiar, Microsoft now provides customers with the ability to host a virtual desktop environment within Azure that will allow users to connect to a guest OS that has been preconfigured with applications mandated by IT.

DMC has already had the opportunity to assist with the implementation of WVD in production for one of our top clients – which is going quite well.

WVD Overview

This technology, which was mastered by Citrix 20 years ago for on-premise environments, is a game-changer now hosted in the cloud. No longer will you need to set up on-premise resources to build & host what was a fairly complex farm needing lots of horsepower (RAM/CPU) and large amounts of storage.

This can all be done within a secure environment in the cloud, which is important, that allows you to use Microsoft services such as Intune, Information Rights Management (IRM), Conditional Access, Sensitivity Labels — in other words, everything that Microsoft has done to make Office 365 and Azure secure, can be leveraged within your secure Virtual Desktops your users are logging into.

Benefits & Features

Let’s break down some of my favorite benefits and features of WVD:

• WVD can use Azure Active Directory (AAD) as the identity provider. This gives you the ability to use features like MFA and SSO.
   
• This is one of my favorites — No inbound ports need to be opened! Because it is using “reverse connect technology”, an outbound agent creates a secure outbound connection over TCP/443 into the WVD management environment. Because of this, you do NOT need to allow TCP/3389 (RDP port) on the firewall for your users to connect to their desktops.
   
• Traditional on-premise RDS (Remote Desktop Services) Roles such as the RDS Gateway, Broker, Licensing and Diagnostics are now provided to you by Azure meaning that you do not need to manage any of it!
   
• Virtual machines hosting the WVD environment are not exposed to the Internet directly. Again, reverse connect technology allows the VMs to be accessed.
   
• The service supports multiple OS platforms, such as Windows 10 Multi-Session, Windows 10 Single-session, Windows 7 Single Session and Windows Server 2012 R2 and newer operating systems.
   
• IT gets full control over software, and businesses will not need to purchase expensive traditional desktops. The only requirement is a device that has an HTML 5 capable browser, which could be a company-owned device or a personally owned device.
   
• Once logged into the Remote Desktop URL where the desktop is hosted, users simply just need to double-click the desktop that is assigned to them, and they are in (see below screenshots)!

Conclusion

This technology really is a game-changer in the IT world. I’m expecting a good portion of small and mid-size businesses, as well as Fortune 500 companies, to start using WVD over the next 12 months. And with Microsoft’s partnership with Citrix whereby they have announced Day 1 support for WVD, they are getting support from the people that know this technology the best.

If you are interested in starting a WVD deployment at your organization or want to learn more about Microsoft’s Virtual Desktop solution, contact us today!

Tim Johnson
Senior Systems Consultant

Learn more about DMC's Digital Workplace Solution services.

The post Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop is Now Available appeared first on DMC, Inc..

There is a second tradition that seems to come with our golf outing – our outing is always condemned with overcast skies and the chance of thunderstorms. We thankfully lucked out once again with only light rain on the first tee box.

We changed up the format this year from our traditional scramble per group to stroke play format which allowed each golfer to play their own shot. This certainly presents a more difficult challenge to our golfers that only play once a year (or less). They also get their “money’s worth” by number of swings taken and they get much more practice on top of it.

This year, we had two foursomes – in order from left to right from the picture: Matt Goedke, Justine Chavez, Rick Rietz, myself (Tim Johnson), Jacob Cooper, Tim Herrmann and Eric West. We all had our good and bad moments on the course, but the important thing is we had a blast competing and building rapport! We hope to get out there for another round before the 2018 season ends.

Learn more about company culture at DMC.

The post DMC Golf Outing 2018 appeared first on DMC, Inc..

This includes the management of Azure Active Directory, which was something that could only be accessed via the classic Azure Portal.

As of the publication date of this blog, both portals continue to be available to manage your Azure AD for your Office 365 Identities.

Old VS New

Old Azure SaaS Gallery

New Azure SaaS Gallery

The Problem

DMC ran into a problem for which there is no real fix available on the internet. When you clicked on any Azure App from the Azure SaaS Gallery, it would redirect to a page that displayed the loading page endlessly. If you looked closely in the URL, you would see the following text in the beginning section of the link:

access_denied&error_description=AADSTS65005%3a+Invalid+resource.+The+client+has+requested+access+to+a+resource+which+is+not+listed+in+the+requested+permissions+in+the+client%

The Fix

If this happens to you, the fix is below:

1. Log in to the new Azure Portal.
2. Go to Azure Active Directory.

3. Click on Enterprise Applications.
4. Click the application that gives the URL error above. Click Single Sign-on.
5. You will notice that it is set to Azure AD single sign-on disabled.

6. Change this to Password-based Sign-On.
7. Click Save.
8. Before testing again on the client side, you may need to close all browsers and empty your browser cache before trying to access the application again.
9. You're done!

Is That Really It?

We opened a ticket with Microsoft, and they acknowledged that this default setting of Disabled occurred in the transition of moving the SaaS apps to the new portal. Once it is set to Password-based Sign-On, it will not revert back again.

Please contact us at DMC if you have any questions.

Learn more about our Microsoft Consulting Services.

The post Access Denied to Azure SaaS Applications appeared first on DMC, Inc..

The new admin interface is designed to more closely resemble the look and feel of Azure. Enhanced reporting makes it a lot easier for our team to monitor the Office 365 environments of our clients to detect abnormalities and prepare monthly health assessments.

New Interface Features

Along with the new look and feel, the interface comes with some nice new reporting features that are captured on the Activity Dashboard.

Reports are broken down into two categories off the main O365 admin portal side bar.

Usage Reports – Detail how much activity each O365 application has used versus the number of users & activations, storage consumed, and general activity for each user.

Security & Compliance Reports – Displays information related to auditing and mail protection. These reports show how much SPAM or malware has been blocked from Office 365, as well as how many users have a litigation hold on their mailbox.

Activity Dashboard

This dashboard allows you to access application level usage information. Microsoft is currently working to enhance the report to offer drill down capabilities to each specific application for additional details within the report.

In the chart below, you can see reports on Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, Skype for Business and Yammer.

It offers a helpful, high-level overview of usage. For example, a company that is paying for 175 users would be interested to find out if they only have 140 active users. In a per-user, per month billing structure, a report like this is extremely helpful.

Another new report that is located on the Activity Dashboard directly beneath the Active Users report is the Storage/Activity Report.

I like to look at this report monthly to get a quick snapshot of how much active use is occurring in my Office 365 environment. It’s good to see trends in data, up or down, to make sure no one accidentally deleted 500 GB of data from SharePoint or OneDrive.

Exchange Online Storage Report

This report was recently added to the new reporting with major upgrades. It displays the overall storage used for the entire O365 Exchange Online tenant and each user in sortable columns by the number of emails and storage used. I can now quickly identify who is in good standing in regards to that user’s 50 GB quota and perhaps set up archiving or share some email best practices with that user.

Skype for Business Activity Report

While I admit, this report is more of a curiosity type report, it is interesting to see who is a heavy user of Skype’s IM feature.

Security & Compliance Reporting

Microsoft has stepped up their game in an area that I think a majority of IT directors worry about the most when considering all the data that lives in the cloud.

Security reporting helps IT Admins find out who has access to things they shouldn’t, detected malware & spam sent/received, what rules have been deployed/used and whether or what mailboxes have been placed on any type of hold. These are the reports I find the most valuable, but there certainly are others as you can see again in the image below.

With each of these reports, you can change the date filter or even use a custom range.

SPAM Detection

Looking specifically at the SPAM detection reports over the course of 30 days, you can see the spikes throughout and see which days SPAM was received at a faster rate.

A new feature is the ability to click a data point on the graph (within the last 7 days) and get a detailed report that includes the emails themselves that were classified as SPAM.

Malware Report

The same applies to the Malware report. This is helpful for figuring out not only when it was sent but from what source.

Below is the Top Malware for mail report that shows which specific malware was detected.

Conclusions

Now that the new admin center has been available for most O365 tenants for the better part of a year, Microsoft has done a fantastic job improving the reporting. All reports that were in the old admin center are still there, and Administrators now have an easy way to take a granular look at the data they care most about.

Improvements seem to come in weekly, so stay tuned for further improvements to not only the reporting area but also to the entire admin center itself.

DMC monitors the Office 365 environments for many clients to detect abnormalities and prepare monthly health assessments using this data.  Reach out to us if you need any health monitoring/recommendations on best practices for your Office 365 or Azure environments.

Learn more about DMC's Microsoft Office 365 services.

The post New Office 365 Reporting Options appeared first on DMC, Inc..

Due to the rainy forecast, the golf league that we were supposed to be following canceled and we basically had the entire course to ourselves. We split into three teams of three and played in a scramble format, which means you take the best shot of each of the golfer’s three shots until you get it into the hole. Team Spencer included Spencer Glassman, Caleb Stoll, and Nick Thystrup. Team Jeremy included Jeremy Green, Sudeep Gowrishankar, and Jeff McCormick. Team Microsoft included Jordan Harris, Curtis Weir, and yours truly.

I can’t speak for everyone else, but Team Microsoft played extremely well. This was Jordan’s first attempt at golfing and Curtis’ first time playing this year. We had six pars (including a 40-foot downhill save by Jordan), one birdie (coming off a 255-yard hybrid to give us a 10-foot eagle putt) and two bogeys. 

Team Microsoft took the DMC Championship with +1 for the day as the other teams checked in at +2 over a piece. The weather held out, and it ended up being an amazing sunny late evening out on the course. We even saw holes eight and nine for the first time in daylight, as rounds on this course typically have us in darkness by the seventh hole.

We had a blast out there and look forward to defending our title next month in the second 2016 DMC golf outing!

The post DMC Chicago 2016 Golf Outing appeared first on DMC, Inc..

Specifically, the error prevents emails from actually being sent until this change has been fixed. The error looks like this: “System.Net.WebException: The request failed with HTTP status 401: Unauthorized.”

The simple fix is to go into your Outgoing Email Router Configuration Profile. You can access your Outgoing Email Profile by accessing the “Email Router Configuration Manager” that is found in Start-All Programs on the server where your email router is installed. At the very bottom of the window, check the box that reads “By selecting this check box, you agree to share data from the configured email system with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is subject to a separate privacy agreement.” The field you need to change is highlighted in the image below. Once you've checked the box, save your changes by hitting OK at the bottom of the window.

If you open your Outgoing Email Router Configuration Profile back up, you’ll notice that the checkbox will stay checked as it was not before. To complete the fix, simply restart the CRM Email Router Service, and all queued emails should be sent instantly.

Learn more about DMC's Microsoft Dynamics CRM services.

The post CRM 2015 Email Router Fix for KB3072333 Update appeared first on DMC, Inc..

We went through the upgrade process from CRM 2011 to 2013 just 18 months ago, but the road to the finish line was a bit different this time around. For that upgrade, we built a new server because there were a ton of schema changes and our custom code needed to be tested before going live. This required a ton of preparation.

Upgrading to CRM 2015 was much simpler as it was done as an in-place upgrade, meaning it ran on top of an existing installation. The advantage, of course, was that the installer itself would upgrade all files, databases, and web applications for us with minimal effort. However, we were not prepared for the errors that occurred after running the required prerequisite check.

"That complete system upgrade went exactly the way I thought it would", said no IT person ever.

Every CRM install has two databases that are needed for the site to function. The first database contains all of the data CRM has within, and the second database contains all of the configuration data. The former has about 18 GB in our case, where the latter sits at about 50 MB. When running the prerequisite check, we saw roughly 50 errors, 45 of them having the same message: “The database could not be accessed. In order to access this database, check your network connection (etc.)” For some reason, it was taking the CRM database name, adding “_MSCRM” to the end of it and then asking for it during the upgrade.

I decided we had 2 options at this point to fix the error:

1. Build a new server, install CRM 2015 on it, and manually update the databases one by one.
2. Create a new blank database with the name it was looking for, copy the contents of the current data into that database, and point the server to that data.

We went with the second option here and crossed our fingers that it would not only get through the installer prerequisites, but also have a good configuration when finished. It turned out that it installed just fine and once the upgrade was finished, it started referencing the original database file to where we were able to safely delete the new database files we had created. It was good that we had created a new database and not just renamed the original live database, as that is never a good idea. It’s always a good idea to make backups of your current databases prior to any major upgrade like this to fall back on if something goes wrong.

In the end, the installation issue was easily corrected. We completed the upgrade without any further issues, and are very excited to continue exploring CRM 2015's new features. If you have a similar problem or need assistance upgrading/installing Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013/2015, please give us a call and we will help!

Learn more about DMC's Microsoft Dynamics CRM services.

The post Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2015 Update appeared first on DMC, Inc..

Let’s start with the basics. You need a router/firewall in front of any network you choose to deploy. While Cisco is slowly trying to drive the small business market away by nickel and diming license and maximum user access requirements, I’m still convinced it’s the leader in the router market. So I went with a SMB version of their router/firewall. Of course, I needed a test network to plug into, so I used an available public IP address from our ISP and connected it directly to an available port on the modem. The next thing we needed was a managed switch. Because we use a VOIP system, a POE switch was a requirement. A managed switch, or smart switch, gives you the ability to program each port for certain capabilities or assign them to separate VLAN’s that the router has defined. For example, you can take two ports and trunk them together to get a higher throughput and possibly greater redundancy should one of the ports fail. While the price difference between a non-POE and POE switch has doubled, the cost of a managed switch vs non-managed switch is usually not too bad. That being said, I always lean towards smart switches, even if I don’t need the features right way. This way it gives you greater flexibility down the road if you need it.

One key thing that I learned while setting up the new networking equipment is to always start with basic security and work your way up to higher security measures. You need to establish connectivity before you can start placing multiple switches across your network. After some basic ACL’s were setup on the router, one more managed non-POE switch set-up and one Netgear WAP were configured and tested. Then it was time to configure the server. One of the best things about working for DMC is that we are a Microsoft Gold Partner, which means we have access to the latest and greatest Microsoft software releases. So, I was excited to install Server 2012 R2 combined with a Hyper-V instance for a SQL virtual that would be used later down the road. This server was configured as a local domain controller installed with Active Directory, DHCP, DNS roles and also, our 3CX VOIP system software. The other piece of this puzzle was choosing Denver’s local file system: we chose a NAS solution. I’m completely in love with Synology because of the ease of use, speed and security features that you get for a reasonable cost per GB. It’s loaded with seven 3 TB drives and one hot spare giving a total of 15 TB usable. This mass amount of storage was then connected directly to the server using I-SCSI which is a virtual interface. The final step was to set up the site-to-site VPN between the Denver office and our Chicago office. This is often the hardest step because everything in the connection properties has to be exact or the VPN connection will fail. Without giving too much technical detail, this ended up working perfectly! The moment of truth was when the hardware was connected for the first time at the remote site itself. Once the automatic email came through showing that the network was up, the hard part was over. This is indeed the bread and butter of my position and is truly something I enjoy doing. And of course, if a third opportunity comes along to build a new network, such as a new DMC office in Hawaii, I will be that much more ready to implement it!

The post DMC Denver Network Installation and Set-Up: All In One Pile appeared first on DMC, Inc..

We split up into two teams of four. Team A included Devon Fritz, Eric West, Jeremy Green and myself. Team B was made up of Spencer Glesmann, Rick Rietz, Simon Healey, and Jeff McCormick. 

We decided to play in a scramble format (i.e. best shot). Not only did each group have a first time golfer (Simon and Eric), but Rick also came up with the idea to have each player take two shots, making it even more of a challenge! The pace of the game was unbelievably slow, and in two and half hours, we only were able to get in six holes!  

Although results are unofficial, Team A came in at +1 and Team B at +3. 

I personally had a blast and was extremely impressed with Eric and Simon’s first time golfing ability! I just won’t mention the shot off of Eric’s Five Iron that ricocheted off of a tree and then off of the golf cart I was sitting in…

We hope to get another outing scheduled in the very near future and perhaps schedule a day that does not include playing behind a golf league. Let us know if you would like to join!

From Left to Right:  Jeff, Jeremy, Eric, Spencer, Devon, Simon, Tim, Rick

The post Upping the Ante at DMC’s Fifth Official Golf Outing appeared first on DMC, Inc..