With time, your Active Directory (A/D) database can malfunction and become filled with data that you do not need anymore, such as references to users or servers that do not exist anymore. Here are 10 things to know before "de-gunking" your Active Directory.
Erratic Active Directory behavior is not always due to a corrupt Active Directory database. For example, not being able to create or remove a domain may be due to the fact that the domain controller hosting the FSMO roles for the domain is down, or even more simple, the user attempting to perform the operation may not have the necessary permissions.
Active Directory is completely dependent on DNS, so if this server fails, Active Directory begins to have problems too. Indications of a DNS server issue include error messages such as "Domain Not Found", "Server Not Available", or "RPC Server is Unavailable".
Windows domain controllers include a command-line utility called DCDIAG. Running this utility performs a number of diagnostic tests on a domain controller, and often times, DCDIAG will help you quickly determine the cause of the problem.
While you can use ADSI Edit to manually remove references to extinct servers, doing so often does more harm than good. With Active Directory being a relational database, removing an entry for an extinct server can orphan other database entries and cause a whole slew of problems. A better approach is to use the NTDSUTIL tool's METADATA CLEANUP option. This TechNet article provides a full set of instructions on the process.
You can use ADSI Edit to manually create and delete Active Directory entries, however, making a mistake can destroy your entire Active Directory. Therefore, it is important to know when and when not to use it. For example, Exchange 2007 can't be uninstalled until the last public folder has been removed, but a bug prevents you from removing the remaining public folders. ADSI Edit is useful to work around this issue, but take extreme caution in using it for other purposes.
With virtualization being so popular, many organizations have virtualized their domain controller and server virtualization products on the market allow you to create a snapshot of a server. That way, in the event that something goes wrong with the server, you can roll it back to a previous state without having to restore a backup.
While backing up your domain controllers before attempting to repair Active Directory is a good idea, you shouldn't use snapshots. Rolling back to a snapshot of a domain controller can have catastrophic consequences. Active Directory transactions are numbered and rolling back a domain controller causes the numbering sequence to be disrupted. This leads to all sorts of domain synchronization issues.
Normally, NTDSUTIL is the tool of choice for repairing Active Directory problems. But in the case of severe corruption, NDTSUTIL may not be enough for the problem at hand. In this case, the best option is to restore a backup. If that isn't possible, though, you can try using ESEUTIL.
ESEUTIL is a database maintenance tool for extensible storage engine databases and it can be used to repair structural problems within the database. This technique should only be implemented as a last resort due to the possibility of data loss during the repair process.
When you restore the Active Directory database on a domain controller, the restoration is usually non-authoritative, meaning that the restoration process restores the domain controller to the point at which it existed when the backup was made. The domain controller is brought into a current state by the replication process. Other domain controllers replicate any missing entries to the recently restored domain controller.
An authoritative restore does not backfill a restored domain controller using data from other domain controllers. Instead, you are effectively telling Windows that the recently restored domain controller contains the desired data and that you want to remove any subsequent data from the other domain controllers in the organization.
When Active Directory related services fail to start on a domain controller, the problem is often mistaken for database corruption while often, an administrator has recently tried to secure the system volume. Excessive NTFS permissions can actually prevent Active Directory from starting. Microsoft discusses this problem in Knowledgebase Article 258062.
Before performing any major repair or cleanup work on your Active Directory, it is imperative to perform a full system state backup of your domain controllers. Countless knowledgebase articles talk about the importance of backing up a system prior to modifying the registry — and modifying the Active Directory database is much more dangerous than editing the registry. If you make a mistake while editing the registry, you can destroy Windows. If you make a mistake in Active Directory, you can destroy the whole thing which potentially affects every system in your organization. Therefore, the importance of a good backup should never be underestimated.
One may talk to Cortana everyday and everywhere, whether it is to get information about the day, to set reminders, or to answer questions. However, many people don’t just use one digital assistant. They may also speak to Alexa on a daily basis to listen to audio books or to add things to an Amazon.com shopping list. Due to this fact that many people use and interact with all kinds of products, Microsoft and Amazon have announced a first-of-its-kind collaboration between Cortana and Alexa, offering more choice, value, and access to both personal assistants.
Available later this year, this collaboration will allow you to access Alexa via Cortana on Windows 10 PCs, followed by Android and iOS in the future. Conversely, you’ll be able to access Cortana on Alexa-enabled devices like the Amazon Echo, Echo Dot and Echo Show. By bringing Cortana to Alexa and Alexa to Cortana, more value and choice has been added for consumers and developers alike.
Cortana users will be able to have Alexa shop on Amazon.com and manage their Amazon orders and access many of Alexa’s third-party skills by asking Cortana to open Alexa.
For example, say you are at work and you receive a text from your partner saying, “We’re running low on diapers.” In the future, on your Windows 10 PC, iPhone or Android phone, you could simply say, “Hey Cortana, open Alexa,” and ask Alexa to order diapers using your preferred payment method for your Amazon account.
Alexa users will have access to Cortana’s world knowledge and helpful productivity features such as calendar management, day at a glance, and location-based reminders by simply asking Alexa to open Cortana. For example, what if you’re making breakfast in the morning and need to know if you have enough time to drop off the dry-cleaning before work? On your Alexa device, you can say, “Alexa, open Cortana,” and ask when your first meeting is. If you won’t have enough time, simply ask Alexa to open Cortana again and set a reminder for the end of your workday to drop off the clothes.
Dixons Carphone is a major electronics retailer that is based in the UK but employs many people over 11 different countries. Dixons Carphone provides consumers with products and services that help them lead seamlessly connected lives at home, in the office, and on the move. Similar to most retailers, Dixons Carphone has had to adapt to modern consumer buying patterns by incorporating a larger amount of online product research and shopping. In fact, 90% of their customers start their shopping in some way or form online, and an astounding 65% use their phones to assist them while shopping in-store.
Dixons Carphone partnered with Microsoft with aims to find better ways to increase customer engagement as well as ways to better optimize employee time spent with customers, they determined that AI was the answer. Specifically, Dixons Carphone investigated the capabilities of the Microsoft Bot Framework and Microsoft Cognitive Services in the context of customer interactions. The Bot Framework helps companies build, test and deploy intelligent bots capable of interacting with customers in a conversational way, working in tandem with Cognitive Services, a collection of intelligent APIs hosted on Azure that provide the underlying language and image recognition capabilities that power the bots.
After contemplating and brainstorming a personality and persona for their bot, Dixons Carphone decided on "Cami" with a mildly geeky and confident personality. Cami, for the time being, accepts questions (as text-based input) as well as pictures of products’ in-store shelf labels to check stock status, using the Cognitive Services Language Understanding Intelligent Service (LUIS) for conversational abilities and the Computer Vision API to process images.
Dixons Carphone will also be putting Cami to use in order to help employees in their day-to-day responsibilities, for example, in doing stock checks. In addition, the research done in conjunction with Microsoft showed that when shopping in store, customers who researched a product online (as far as things like stock level) are frustrated by the fact that when they get into the store they must start from scratch through store employees. Cami helps bridge that gap through a "Wishlist" feature. As customers add items to their Wishlist, Cami saves the search criteria they used and store colleagues can pull up that information in-store to see what the customer was looking for, leading to a much more efficient shopping process.
When Dixons Carphone goes live with the use of Cami, they will use the Cognitive Services Text Analytics API, Azure Application Insights, and Power BI dashboard to review which products customers are looking at, the sentiment of their interactions, and the questions they are asking. Understanding the questions that customers are asking and analyzing their interactions with the bot will help the company improve their communications and messaging as well.
An estimated 70 percent of online sellers in Germany have suffered fraud attempts, but only 14 percent of them use any safeguards today. Even though merchants are aware of the dangers of e-commerce fraud and the solutions available to protect themselves, they lack the resources to be able to manage the risk efficiently. On top of this, hackers quickly adapt their fraudulent ways and as a result, whatever solutions are put in place must adapt as well.
Arvato Financial Solutions, an integrated financial services provider, offers vital services around e-commerce safety for some 2,000 odd customers. One of eight divisions of Bertelsmann – the German media, services, and education giant – Arvato has recently partnered with Microsoft, inovex GmbH (a cloud and big data specialist), and a few of Arvato’s e-commerce customers with aims to create a fraud detection solution using Microsoft’s big data and machine learning offerings.
Through the combination of Azure services with the open-source Storm and Hadoop frameworks, Arvato built an integrated cloud-based solution that uses a modern lambda architecture to process massive data quantities using both batch and stream processing. The batch path transforms existing data using Hadoop, then, by applying machine learning algorithms, the solution develops self-learning analytical models from past fraud cases, for early recognition of any new fraudulent approaches. The stream-processing path captures incoming real-time transaction data via Azure Event Hubs. It then analyzes the data with the assistance of Storm and Azure Machine Learning to uncover fraudulent activities as they happen.
An important goal of the project was to visualize and monitor the models, and Power BI serves this function by displaying data sets drawn directly from cloud sources, Azure HDInsight and SQL Database, on several large screens in Arvato’s monitoring center.
Avato’s investment in good cloud design is paying for itself, helping the company reliably fulfill SLAs using cloud services. Their flexible architecture enables rapid deployment, which is key for fraud recognition in an international e-commerce setting. Using Microsoft machine learning on big data, Avato has created an innovative e-commerce fraud recognition solution and built the basis for innovative financial BPO services based on Microsoft Azure.
Starting as purely a creative outlet, Jennifer Sarkilahti made handcrafted jewelry. However, as she was inspired by the city's entrepreneurial spirit, she created Odette New York. Along the way, Sarkilahti's real challenge wasn’t finding a market for her jewelry, it was to stay connected to the creative process even as the business grew. Office 365 played a key role in Odette New York's needs, catering to their specific artistic needs as a business.
Sarkilahti was adamant about not getting too big, too fast. Keeping things local allowed her to stay in tune with the creative process as well as her manufacturing partners. “As a business, we value that we are able to make our product locally and take a slower, more thoughtful approach to manufacturing. Although the costs are higher to produce domestically, we can maintain a connection to the jewelry and the people that have a hand in making it throughout the entire process,” says Sarkilahti.
Sarkilahti admits that technology doesn’t come as naturally to her as the artistic process, however, she credits Office 365 for helping her through this. With that help, she is able to focus on her creativity, Sarkilahti states, “I’ve found the Office 365 products to be intuitive and easy to learn, as well as capable of adapting to whatever our needs of the moment might be. We use Excel and Outlook to help us create an efficient workflow process within our studio and communicate with people outside our studio, including vendors, retailers and customers. And on the creative side, we use PowerPoint to create mood boards for new collections, photoshoots and look books.”
Their slower approach to growth is certainly paying off. Odette New York currently has over 70 accounts, including both domestic and international retailers, and has been featured in major publications such as Vogue and Elle. Perhaps more importantly, Sarkilahti spends her days doing what she loves most—creating beautiful, handcrafted jewelry in her stunning Brooklyn studio.
In every industry, companies are looking to create more engaging customer experiences, empower employees, reinvent operations and transform products and services. To accomplish this, they look to technology. More and more, when companies work with us to envision their digital strategy across cloud, apps and devices, they do not just become part of a new wave of innovation — they help create it.
Building on recent announcements with organizations like NASCAR, BMW, T-Mobile, KPMG, Baidu and Dun & Bradstreet, Satya yesterday noted customers who are choosing Microsoft 365, Azure, Dynamics 365 and other solutions to propel their businesses. Here are a few examples from finance, fashion, logistics, retail and media companies.
HSBC, one of the world’s largest banking and financial services organizations, has selected Dynamics 365 as its cloud platform to digitally transform its customer engagement model. With 37 million customers and operations in 70 countries, HSBC needed a secure cloud solution and scalable infrastructure to support its client engagement and power a 360-degree relationship management program. This capability will help HSBC deliver high data integrity, reduce manual and time-consuming processes and innovate for future growth — all while ensuring data security and satisfying the unique regulations it faces as a global bank.
Moving from finance to fashion, Italian brand Dolce & Gabbana chose Dynamics 365 for its scalability, flexibility and reliability. Dolce & Gabbana is involved in every step of the fashion industry, from the purchase of raw materials to the sale on the market, and the company needed a solution to offer both a comprehensive view of its customers and the availability of finished products in each geographical area and for every sales channel. Dynamics allows the company to streamline processes and better plan production and distribution to ensure excellent service to customers globally.
When it comes to employee collaboration and the secure, modern workplace, industry leaders are choosing Microsoft 365, which combines Office 365, Windows 10 and security management in a complete solution to help simplify IT management. For example, FedEx, the global logistics and delivery services company serving 220 countries, pioneered industry standards for tracking and real-time monitoring for packages. Committed to a collaborative, modern workplace that supports its culture of innovation, FedEx is using Microsoft 365 to empower its workforce. FedEx also leverages the Azure cloud platform to build and power new services, such as its SameDay delivery service, securely and at scale.
In addition, Staples, the North American business solutions provider, brings technology and people together in innovative ways to consistently deliver products, services and expertise that delights customers. Staples is in business with businesses. The company is passionate about empowering people to become true professionals at work. As part of its public cloud strategy, Staples has chosen Microsoft 365 to simplify its IT infrastructure and create a secure, seamless productive experience for its 24,000 corporate workers and 38,000 retail workers.
Finally, Hearst — one of the U.S.’s largest diversified media, information and services companies, with more than 360 businesses — has partnered with Microsoft to implement a public cloud strategy. Recently, the company chose Azure to power its storage and compute needs as well as improve disaster recovery. With Azure, Hearst is also exploring new opportunities in AI with cognitive services and machine learning to power more advanced digital customer experiences. Hearst also uses Office 365 for collaboration and productivity for its global workforce, and Enterprise Mobility + Security and Intune to secure employee devices.
My best days at work are when I talk to leaders of companies like these. It energizes me to see how Microsoft can help them bring to life their digital vision by addressing their needs today and laying the foundation for business success tomorrow.
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[vc_row][vc_column][grve_single_image image="17396"][vc_column_text]As written by Frederic Lardinois on techcrunch.com
In the shadow of its Inspire partner conference, Microsoft today launched in preview three new tools for small businesses: Microsoft Connections, Microsoft Listings and Microsoft Invoicing. These join the company’s existing stable of small business tools like Microsoft Bookings and the Outlook Customer Manager.
Microsoft Connections allows its users to create Mailchimp-like email marketing campaigns. The new service, which is available on the web, Android and iOS, will offer the usual trappings of an email marketing campaign tool, including the ability to manage subscribers, monitor campaign performance (open rates, clicks, new customers, redemptions, etc.) and, of course, create the actual campaigns. While the details about how exactly the service works remain sparse, Microsoft says it will offer users a number of pre-designed templates for their newsletters and “simple ways for people to join your mailing list or unsubscribe.” A company spokesperson also told us that the new tools will be available at no extra cost.[/vc_column_text][grve_single_image image="17398"][vc_column_text]The idea here is obviously to tie users deeper into the Office 365 ecosystem and give them an alternative to the likes of MailChimp. Microsoft argues that getting started with email marketing “can be overwhelming.” While its competitors will surely disagree, there can’t be any doubt that those small businesses that already use Office 365 as their productivity suite of choice will appreciate the addition of this new tool.
Also new is Microsoft Invoicing, a new tool for — you guessed it — creating invoices and estimates. From what we can see, it’s a pretty straightforward service and the standout feature for many businesses is likely that it can be integrated with PayPal so small businesses can easily accept credit card payments. There also is a QuickBooks connector that lets you connect your accounting software (and your accountant) with this new invoicing tool.[/vc_column_text][grve_single_image image="17399"][vc_column_text]The third new tool is Microsoft Listings, which allows you to manage your business listings on Facebook, Google, Bing and Yelp and monitor online views and reviews. It obviously competes with a number of similar tools that do the same, but just like with the other new offerings, it’s a way for Microsoft to keep its users inside its own ecosystem.
The new applications are now available through Microsoft’s Office 365 First Release program.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]As written by James Phillips on community.dynamics.com
At Microsoft Inspire this year, more than 17,000 partners, customers and business leaders will hear our CEO and leadership talk about the critical role our partners play in enabling customers to transform their businesses across industries. Microsoft invests billions annually in innovation to bring the best products to market to support our customers, and to give our partners a set of technology solutions and services they can build their business atop.
This ecosystem of Microsoft Cloud Partners is 64,000 strong – one of the largest in the world. As our partners look to develop or grow their cloud practice we offer them the most comprehensive cloud - spanning Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), application-platform-as-a-service (aPaaS) through leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings. These services are enterprise ready and have been built from the ground up to work together.
ISV’s have always been able to build on Microsoft Azure. In fact, we have over 35,000 partners already using Azure IaaS and PaaS services for their apps. Increasingly we’re being asked by these partners to make our higher-level cloud services – particularly those that make up our business applications platform – available as embeddable building blocks.
We pioneered this with Power BI – which has been available as a partner-embeddable building block for nearly a year. Since then we’ve watched ISVs take advantage of Power BI Embedded to add powerful business analytics capabilities to their applications.
Now we want to give our partners even more capabilities with our award-winning business application services, such as:
Today we are making it even easier for ISV partners to modernize their existing business applications, and build new ones, with a new program we are calling ISV Cloud Embed. Later this year, we will extend the number of higher-level services available as embeddable “building blocks” to include:
In addition to being able to embed and build atop these new capabilities, partners also receive critical go to market benefits, based on deal volume, to support their business:
ISV Cloud Embed – like all Microsoft partner programs – delivers increased benefits based on usage and deal transaction volume. Go to market support is provided at all tiers. For partners whose apps drive significant consumption, we offer co-selling support from one of the world’s largest enterprise salesforces. Today’s post from Ron Huddleston provides more detail on this aspect of the program.
Any ISV that builds qualified, finished applications can participate in ISV Cloud Embed at different levels and benefits based on the partner’s preference. To learn more about the program, please go to the ISV Resource Hub. If you would like to sign-up, there’s a simple online form to get started.
We look forward to seeing you at Inspire this week where we will share more about this program, and we look forward to building with you in the coming months.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
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