Microsoft Teams Support when user mailbox is in Exchange On-Premises

I have been asked a lot lately, it is possible to use Microsoft Teams while still having your mailbox located on Exchange On-Premises.

The answer is yes, this is a supported scenario.  Microsoft Teams has a strong dependency on Exchange Online because all of your personal discusses are stored in Exchange Online.  If the user’s mailbox is still on-premises, a cloud-based storage area will be created for that user called a “cloud-based mailbox for on-premises user”.  This solution will only store Teams conversations and the user cannot directly log into this mailbox.

To support this, you must have Exchange Hybrid configured and you must be using AAD Sync.
To enable this, there is a request process you must go through, defined in the references below.

Additionally, if the on-prem mailbox is ever migrated to Exchange Online later, the Teams chat data will not be lost, the data will be migrated over to the primary mailbox in the cloud.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/exchange-teams-interact
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/securitycompliance/search-cloud-based-mailboxes-for-on-premises-users

Microsoft Teams Government Cloud Service Descriptions

Microsoft Teams has published out Service Descriptions for GCC, GCCH and DoD cloud deployments.  Please review this closely as the accurately convey what capabilities are available and not available in the respective clouds.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/plan-for-government-gcc
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/plan-for-government-gcc-high
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/plan-for-government-dod

K2 Blackperl Wrox Book 10 Years Later

On a personal note, it was brought to my attention that 10 years ago the K2 Blackpearl Wrox book that I co-authored was published.  Ten years seems like ages ago given how may career has gone.  When I started out of college, I would have never dreamed I would be in a position to co-author a Wrox book.  At the time, blogging was not really around, and the way many of us learned was through "books" 😊  Yes books.  Wrox at the time published some of the best software books out there.

Reflecting, it was the blogging that I started that put me in a position to write the book.  I will admit, if you read my blog, at times my work could use grammar edits.  However, learning how to write and communicate like this has really helped me advance in my career.  Sitting down and writing a whitepaper about Office 365 is something that I actually find fun to do.

Direct Routing with Microsoft Teams

If you are looking to learn about what is Direct Routing with Microsoft Teams, recommend you start with the references below.  Direct Routing allows customers to bring their trunk and then use a certified SBC to integrate with Microsoft Teams.  You have the ability to host the SBC yourself or do partner hosted SBCs.

References
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/Direct-Routing-is-now-Generally-Available/ba-p/210359#M1277

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/direct-routing-plan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N478Sq1v7Ss

Terms of Use with Office 365

There is a new capability in AAD that is available Terms of Use which a lot of Office 365 customers may want to utilize.

An organization will want users to accept a Terms of Use agreement to access their environment.  The Terms of Use solution can:

• Required all users accept a terms of use agreement to access Office 365 services.
• There is a new feature that can be used for B2B scenarios for such services SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams.  If you invite in an external user that is on AAD, that external user will be required to agree to a Terms of Use.

This is awesome because I find tons of customers who want this type of capability.  Here are some other features that are part of this.

• Can require users sign it once or every time they access.
• Can associate a Terms of Use document that is organization specific for users to review.
• Require users to expand and scroll through entire terms of use before accepting.
• Can expire the Terms of Use agreement after a specific amount of days or associated a frequency for when they must accept the Terms of use.
• Can enforce Conditional Access policies against the Terms of Use policy.
• Access to reports of who accepted and declined a Terms of Use.
• Works for browsers and mobile device scenarios.

Here are some detailed articles about this capability.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Azure-Active-Directory-Identity/Updates-to-Azure-AD-Terms-of-Use-functionality-within/ba-p/294822

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/governance/active-directory-tou

New Teams Admin and Management Capabilities

Personally, I have been doing more and more with Teams.  I will admit, making the change from Email to Teams definitely requires some re-orientation and change in how I communicate and share information.  I have to say even I am turning the corner, and the vision is so clear to me now.

With that said, there were some new Admin capabilities released into Teams.

New Microsoft Teams Administrator Roles

• There are four new admin roles that have been created that will provide finer granularity around how Teams are managed: Teams Service Administrator, Teams Communication Administrator, Teams Communications Support Engineering and Teams Communications Support Specialists.
• From my perspective, organizations will have specialists that may be more focused on the group chat features of Teams versus the Phone / PBX features.  This level of administrator definition will allow you to break roles and responsibilities out.

New Admin View

• There is a new all up view that allows you to see every Team in your tenant.
• Within this new view, you have the ability to take actions across multiple Teams from a single view.

New Automate Teams Management
This one I was the most interested in learning about.  There are new management APIs that have been released that allows you to automation around Team and Channel generation.  You can control the entire life-cycle of that Teams generation.  This just super interesting because there is opportunity to some really creative things.  For instance, lets every time new sales lead is created, you initiate a new Team or Channel, and then drive all the users who need to participate in the sales lead to have all their conversation and collaboration directly to that Team or Channel.  Your CRM can generate the Teams or Channel automatically.

Reference - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/New-Provide-a-great-Teams-experience-with-improved-manageability/ba-p/288059

Office Productivity Server 2019

There is still lots of good reason why customers need to deploy Office Productivity Server builds either on-premises or in an IaaS cloud, in a hybrid mode with Office 365.  If you did not see this week, Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, Skype for Business Server and Project Server all had GA releases of 2019 complete.

All of these builds continue with the investment in hybrid experiences with the Office 365 cloud.  Recommend you read up on these releases and prepare your environments to get to 2019 as soon as possible.

Office All Up announcement - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Office-2019-servers-available-for-commercial-customers/ba-p/275879

Skype for Business Server 2019 What’s New - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/skypeforbusiness/whats-new

Skype for Business Server 2019 What’s Deprecated - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/skypeforbusiness/deprecated - XMPP and Persistent Chat are the biggies.

Exchange Server 2019 What’s New - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/new-features/new-features?view=exchserver-2019

Exchange Server 2019 What’s Deprecated - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/new-features/discontinued-features?view=exchserver-2019 – Unified Messaging is the big one.

SharePoint Server 2019 What’s New - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/SharePoint/what-s-new/new-and-improved-features-in-sharepoint-server-2019

SharePoint Server 2019 What’s Deprecated - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/SharePoint/what-s-new/what-s-deprecated-or-removed-from-sharepoint-server-2019 - Definitions, Access Services, Groove Sync Client, InfoPath Services, SharePoint Designer, PerformancePoint Services, Sandbox Solutions, etc.  A lot of stuff I worked on over the years…

Project Server 2019 What’s New - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/Project/what-s-new-for-it-pros-in-project-server-2019

Project Server 2019 What’s Deprecated - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/Project/what-s-deprecated-or-removed-in-project-server-2019 - Resource plans, My tasks was some biggies