Using PowerShell and Graph to update Azure AD user photos in bulk

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Introduction In this post, I’ll give you some background information and show you how to utilize the Microsoft Graph API to bulk update Azure AD user photos. If you’d like to skip the background information and get straight to the nitty-gritty, click here. Background I work at a private K-12 school in the United States. Like many schools out there, we have scheduled portraits once a year for students and staff.

A Password Expiration Script

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Script Introduction This post will go through the steps required to create and deploy a password expiration script to run daily and send an email to all users whose passwords will expire in a set number of days. Scheduled tasks are the recommended implementation for this password expiration script. There are probably other ways to implement this script; however, this script targets scheduled tasks in Windows. 1 2 3 4 #Clear any stored errors $error.

Deploy Azure VPN Client to Mac

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App deployment for any computer, Windows or Mac, can be challenging. Widely used apps like Google Chrome are well-developed with options to automate and configure using scripts, MDM config profiles, or even back one-liner terminal commands. When you encounter an app that has little-to-no documented parameters or configurations, it can be frustrating. I choose to look at it as a challenge. Using any tools or ideas available, it’s easy for me to become engrossed in finding an automatable solution.

FSLogix App Masking Rules for M365 Apps

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I’m deploying Azure Virtual Desktop currently for a client and they want a “general shared desktop” pool that will have a bunch of core apps including Microsoft 365 Apps installed. However, not every user will be licensed for Visio or Project, and only a very select few users are allowed to use Publisher, and fewer still allowed MS Access (They’ve signed contracts so that if they dare create anything in Access, they have to support it for free till day they die, then their next of kin take over support.

Microsoft Teams Cache, a burden to us all

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Microsoft Teams Cache, we’ve all been there in the last year and a half. Microsoft Teams is working fine, then it’s not. What happened? I restarted Teams and it’s still acting weird. Well, Teams is an interesting app when it comes to its cache. It relies heavily on it. I personally do not know all the ins and outs of the Teams cache, but I too know all too well that it is a pain in the butt when it goes awry.

Get rid of the “Continue connecting?” prompt for your policy-configured wifi networks

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As of Windows 11, we noticed that we were getting prompted to continue connecting to a network that we’d never had a problem with before. It’s already defined in group policy, so this new behavior is puzzling and annoying. The certificate in question is for the NPS/Radius server our network uses to validate credentials for the wifi. Continue Connecting I really had no idea how to even begin googling for this problem, but while talking to some of my fellow nerds on the Winadmins Discord server, tossing around some ideas on what could be causing this, looking to see whether there was a problem with the certificate, etc.

Removing The Built-in Teams App in Windows 11 with Intune

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Intro So you’ve started rolling out Windows 11 to your endpoints, and your users got confused and upset over the consumer teams apps that is installed? Understandably you wish to do something about this. (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ No worries mate, Intune Proactive Remediations to the rescue! The Solution The code below fixes two things. It removes the chat by writing the registry key that disables it the TaskbarMn DWORD controls this Then it simply uninstalls the appx package for the consumer teams app, note that this has no effect on the regular teams app.

Installing The Configuration Manager Client During Autopilot

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Hey Siri, Write A Blog Post For Me THE CONTENTS IN THIS POST IS EXPIRED, DO NOT USE THIS ANYMORE This method of installing the Configuration Manager Client during Autopilot is no longer needed Please use the new autopilot into co-management feature. Autopilot into Co-Management Overview Installing the SCCM Client During Autopilot EXPIRED CONTENT BELOW Deploying the Configuration manager client is usually pretty simple. the procedure is well documented. However there are issues if you plan on installing the CM client during Autopilot using the officially suggested methods

Use Azure Policy to configure Boot Diagnostics Settings

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I found several posts about configuring Diagnostic Settings on VMs, but none that specified or included boot diagnostics. With this Azure Policy you can automatically enable Boot Diagnostics and apply a storage account to it. This is also a great base if you want to start testing out your own policies. 1. Overview Our process will have several major parts Create a Custom Azure Policy Definition Assign to a Subscription or Resource Group Find the Blob Storage URI to use Create a Remediation task to Apply the changes Optional: Link to GitHub for versioning 2.

Creating an Ubuntu 20.04 cloud template & cloud-init configuration in Xen Orchestra

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I had a need in my home lab to quickly deploy a bunch of thin clones of Ubuntu’s cloud image. I chose to use the cloud images Ubuntu provides instead of building a custom template. Xen Orchestra has had support for cloud-init since 2015. Quick Walkthrough Here is the short version of how this works: Download the current 20.04 ubuntu cloud image OVA file, there should only be 1 on each build’s page.