Office 365 - Set user password to not never expire

It is as easy as
1. Connnect-MSOLService
2. Get-MSOLUser -UserPrincipalName | Select PasswordNeverExpires
3. Set-MSOL -UserPrincipalName -PasswordNeverExpires $true
4. Get-MSOLUser -UserPrincipalName | Select PasswordNeverExpires


If all the above statements do not make any sense to you, read on...
  
I was asked by my SDM to create an Global Administrator for one of our clients and set the password expiry to be set to Never. This is what we expect with system accounts when passwords don't change normally.

I created a new account and unchecked "Make this person change their password the next time they sign in"

That's all I though was involved in setting up an account as there was no "Password Policy" that I saw and of course my assumption was not right.

Solution

If you want to apply such a policy for a specific user, PowerShell is your friend. We will see in the end what it takes to apply different password related policies for all users in an organization.

You need to get Microsoft Online Services Sign-In Assistant and Windows Azure AD Module.

Download each of them separately (64 bit) and install one after the other.

Once all is setup, look for Windows Azure Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell and right click and run as administrator

Type following command
Connnect-MSOLService
and connect using admin account on your tenant

First thing you need to do is verify if user password is already set to expire or not. We will run this commend again when we have applied the policy to set if it is set correctly.

Get-MSOLUser -UserPrincipalName | Select PasswordNeverExpires

This command will return you a value of True or False depending on user settings. 

To apply the password never expire policy on your user run the following command

Set-MSOL -UserPrincipalName -PasswordNeverExpires $true

Rerun

Get-MSOLUser -UserPrincipalName | Select PasswordNeverExpires 

to verify if your changes are applied or not.

Office 365 Interface

You must have realized by now that its too much work to be done if you need to apply it to the all users. Fear not my friend and continue reading.

Once you are on your Office 365 admin center click Service Settings and then select Passwords. This is where you administrate organization wide password policy. 

Happy administrating Office 365.

Announcement List in Publishing Sites

It was kind of strange to learn that I cannot create an Announcement List or a Discussion Board while on my Publishing site.

Don't worry, we have a cure now.

Go go Site Actions > Site Settings. Click Manage site features under Site Actions.

Check if Team Collaboration Lists feature is activated or not. Activate it and you will have collaboration features enabled on your publishing site.

You can always set them off by deactivating this feature.

Happy team collaborating.

Save Site as Template for Publishing Sites

Today we celebrated Nick's birthday while I was working on Content Types, Document Libraries and Publishing Site features on my Office 365 SharePoint 2010 Online version.

I thought that creating site templates will be a piece of cake for me and it will be much tastier than the one I just had. But as it turned out, and as Aurelien puts it "not a piece of cake".

I was trying to create a site template for Publishing Site in SharePoint 2010 and I realized that I cannot.

Ofcourse there is a workaround.

Once you have all the customizations you want to have, go to Site Actions > Site Settings

Click Manage site features under Site Actions 

and Deactivate SharePoint Server Publishing feature.

Clicking Deactivate will take you to Warning page, click Deactivate this feature. (Dont worry, you can always re-activate it again and no love is lost)

Go back to Site Settings page and now you will see Save site as template under Site Actions

Now save this site as a template by giving it a File Name, Template Name and options Template Description.

If you want to have the content that you uploaded in document libraries or items in lists part of your template so they can be used again, click Include Content check box. Click OK to save your site template.

Site Templates in SharePoint 2010 are not .STP files any more  Moreover they are not in Site Template Gallery like MOSS 2007. Site Templates are .WSP files stored in Solution Gallery like features and webparts.

As you have already created your site template, it is of no use until you activate this template. Click Site Actions> Site Settings again.

and click Solutions under Galleries

You will see your site template. If its not already activated, activate it. Go back to your original site and enable SharePoint Publishing feature again.

Create a new site by click Site Actions> New Site. Select Blank & Custom from Categories and select your hot,  freshly baked template straight from the oven. Set a Title and decide on a URL.

Click Create.

Aaaannnnnnnnd you are done. Wooow not so fast. Remember you deactivated Publishing Feature to create this site template and as this site is created from a deactivated publishing feature site template, you have to enable it to get publishing features.

This is a very good article which gives you an idea of what you get and what you are missing if you create a site from site template.

Invite External Users in SharePoint 2010 Online & Office 365 Step By Step

There comes a time in every site collections' life that you need to give external users access to your SharePoint 2010 Online site.

Giving access to external users is easy.

Go to your site collection and click Site Actions > Share Site

If you see Invitation to users outside your organization are currently disabled, do not worry, you are making good progress.

You first need to allow external users access to your site collections and you do this by Allowing External Users from Manage site collections page on your Sharepoint 2010 Online portal.

Note: You need to have appropriate rights to perform this operation.

Once on Manage Site Collections page, click Manage External Users under Settings button on the ribbon.

Remember not to select any site collection or Settings button will be disabled.

On the Manage External Users pop out, select Allow and press Save button.

Why are you in so much hurry? There is still one more configuration step that you need to perform. You need to enable External user invitations feature on your site collection.

Once your External users invitations feature is activated, you can perform the same steps you performed earlier to share your site with others. You got it right, Site Action > Share Site

Oops, I forgot to tell you that to activate a feature you need to go to the Features page which can be accessed by clicking Site Action > Site Settings. Look for Site collection features under Site Collection Administration and click it.

Gotchas

Your external user email address needs to be a Microsoft Online Services ID or a Windows Live ID like @live, @hotmail, @msn. If your partner does not have above mentioned id, they can always associate their ids with above services to access your shared site.

But how can they associate their ids to above services?

Do not worry, SharePoint 2010 Online already has a user friendly solution for this. Remember, you gave access to your external users by sending them an email :) 

Watchout 

I have already posted a question and to date waiting for a reply.

Office 365 and SharePoint 2010 Online Administration

It took me by surprise that there is no Central Administration in SharePoint 2010 Online but when the dust settled, I realized that this should be the case.

Anyways if there is no Administration, how can I access and do my configuration/administration was still a question to be answered.

With appropriate access rights, I visited my portal i.e. https://portal.microsoftonline.com and clicked Admin from top rightish corner of my browser.

Once on the Admin page, you will see Manage link under SharePoint heading (implies you have appropriate access rights)

Clicking on the Manage link takes you to the limited services that SharePoint 2010 Online offers.

Enjoy