Enabling 3rd Party Azure AD Applications for Skype for Business Online Phones

Last Updated: 15/5/2019 Introduction Microsoft have announced that from July 1st 2019 January 15th 2020, the shared Azure AD application/client that all 3PIP (3rd party) phones currently use will be revoked. Moving forward, each vendor will need to issue thier own specific Azure AD application. This means that if you have 3PIP phones that connect to Skype or Exchange Online you will be impacted. Will I be impacted? Here are the following 3PIP deployment scenarios (taken from a very helpful AudioCodes article) and wether any action is required:

Change Teams to the Default IM App (by using a script)

Introduction When using Office applications, such as Outlook, you will see the presence and contact cards that appear when hovering over a user. From here you can initiate actions such as an IM or call etc. This is all based on the “DefaultIMApp” value in the current user’s registry. If the user is using Skype for Business, this does not need any action from the user. However, in Teams, this needs to be enabled by the user under settings in Teams:

MSGraphAPIGUI - A PS GUI for Microsoft Graph API

Note: This script is provided ‘as-is’ without any warranty or support. Use of this script is at your own risk and I accept no responisiblity for any damage caused. Background Graph is Microsoft’s API for Microsoft 365. By creating an Azure AD application it allows you to interface directly with Azure AD, Office 365, EMS etc using Graph API. You may want to write a script in PowerShell, Python, C# etc.

Get Latest Office 365 Service Status with Flow or PowerShell

With the recent high-profile outages within Office 365 and the ever reliance on Office 365, it’s always good to stay up-to-date with any potential issues. There are lots of ways to check the status of Office 365 - the Office 365 portal, Twitter accounts etc. However, what I was after was an automated way of checking for issues and letting me and the team at Symity know about them ASAP (so we can look to mitigate impact) - rather than happening to come across it, or worse users noticing and informing us.

Getting started with Microsoft Graph and PowerShell

Whilst this article is still very much a valid approach, Microsoft have started work on a PowerShell SDK for Graph API - find out more here: https://www.lee-ford.co.uk/graph-api-powershell-sdk/ What is Graph? Graph is Microsoft’s API for Microsoft 365. By creating an Azure AD application it allows you to interface directly with Azure AD, Office 365, EMS etc using Graph API. The API not only allows you to access data from Microsoft 365 but also modify and delete it.

New Team request for Teams using Flow (and Graph API)

Whilst Flow does have some integration with Microsoft Teams, one missing feature is the ability to create a Team in Microsoft Teams (you can create Channels, messages etc.). With recent additions to Graph API, you can create a Team using a template and a Graph API call. This API call can be used within a flow. In this scenario, I’m going to create a flow to create a Team. This will work like so:

Using Flow with Graph API

This is a quick post to outline the steps to integrate Microsoft Graph API using Microsoft Flow or Azure Logic Apps. The intent is to be able to integrate Graph API without user input. I intend to follow this post with other posts outlining use-cases for this. Before you start, you need to make sure you have the following: Access to an Office 365 tenant with administrative access to Azure AD Access to create flows in Microsoft Flow Step 1 - Create an Application in Azure AD You will need to register an application within Azure AD.

Send Message Cards with Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams has a feature that I don’t see used or talked about a whole lot - Cards. Cards allow you to post a container to a Teams channel. The type of card I will use here is a Message Card. These can contain text, images, links etc. Message Cards are not to be confused with Adaptive Cards. These are entirely different and are not exclusive to Teams. Adaptive cards are more flexible and interactive than Message Cards but unfortunately, do not support the method I employ here - Incoming Webhook.

Deploying an AudioCodes SBC in Azure using the Azure Marketplace

If you’re keeping count, this is the 3rd article on this topic. Previosuly, I have written about two other methods employed to deploying an AudioCodes SBC in Azure: Using Azure Site Recovery Uploading a pre-packaged ‘Azure VHD’ to Azure Whilst both worked, it still involved uploading an up-to-date copy of the SBC to Azure and a bit of patience. I’ve had quite a few users reach out to me and ask where they can download the ‘Azure VHD’, but it was never released for download by AudioCodes.

Review: AudioCodes 450HD

Whilst attending Evolve in Birmingham this year (which I highly recommend), I went to the AudioCodes booth and got on to the subject of their handsets. I’ve mainly used LPE or Polycom VVX so was intrigued by their offerings and they kindly offered to lend me a handset to test and review. Today, I have an AudioCodes 450HD with expansion module (allows for an extra 22 one-touch keys). It is certified Skype for Business Online and On-Premises (in addition to ‘standard’ SIP).