If you have used older versions of Windows, you are used to the Program file folder. It was so easy to create shortcuts from there. It was even easy to put the MS Teams Icon on the Desktop. How about the new teams icon on the Desktop?

The problem is that MS Teams is always changing and the ability to add a shortcut to Windows has changed too. Fortunately, it can be done in just 3 steps. If you read further in the article you will see how you can add the new shortcut to a computer that is used by several users.

The Steps to put New Teams Icon on the Desktop

1. Hit Win+r
2. Type shell:appsfolder in the text box and hit enter.
3. You will see all your aps in the apps folder.
4. Right click on it and choose Create Shortcut. It will ask you if you want it to be placed on the desktop, say yes.

Search for Teams:

Voila, you now have the teams shortcut on your desktop.

Using the Shortcut on a Multiuse Computer

Sometimes you need to deal with a computer that is in use by a lot of users. Like a common room or presentation room computer. It is quite easy to accomplish.

1. Copy the shortcut you created above.
2. Navigate to the multi-use computer and go to it’s C:\Users\Public\Public Desktop folder.
3. Paste the shortcut.

Now the users on that PC will have access to the New Teams Shortcut. Technically once the new teams are set up on their profile on the computer it runs at start up each time they login but it isn’t necessarily apparent.

Double-Clicking the icon will either bring the application to the front if they are already logged in or prompt for login credentials if it hasn’t already done so.

Either way, you will get MS Teams running and it will be the new teams form the shortcut!!!

Here is a good primer on How OneDrive Works. I have researched  a few posts  on how to install it. Still, since Microsoft has made a few significant improvements over the last few years, I would like to start from scratch and explain what OneDrive sync is and how to get the most out of it.

What is OneDrive Sync?

OneDrive sync is an application that you install on your computer that takes care of a two-way synchronization of files and folders between OneDrive and your computer (i.e., C: Drive).

Why do we need OneDrive Sync?

By making the files available on your computer, the idea is that you can access them without logging in to SharePoint Online. Moreover, you can access them without an internet connection (offline). OneDrive sync “remembers” the changes and synchronizes them automatically when the Internet connection is present, so you always get the latest and greatest copy of the files in either SharePoint Online or your computer.

How is OneDrive Sync related to OneDrive for Business?

OneDrive for Business is your personal storage place in Office 365, I show you how easy is to share here. OneDrive sync client is a separate application you install to synchronize the files and folders. They just happen to share the name “OneDrive”. And what adds to the confusion is that, as I described above, OneDrive sync client syncs files and folders from your private OneDrive for Business (within the company’s Office 365) .

How to install OneDrive sync client

Let’s describe to you how to install and configure OneDrive Sync client. Navigate to either your OneDrive for Business 

1. You will get a pop-up that looks like this and OneDriveSetup.exe file downloaded to your computer automatically.
2. In case if OneDriveSetup.exe does not start automatically, you might need to click get the latest version of OneDrive.
3. Go ahead and run/open the executable file.

4. Next, it will prompt you to enter your email address. Please make sure to enter your Office 365 User D (email address) and click Sign In

5. It will ask you the location where you want to store the synchronized files and folders. I suggest you leave as-is, but you can optionally change the location. Hit Next

6. And that is it! You will now get a notification that the files and folders synchronized to your computer.

What does it look like in Windows Explorer?

You can navigate to your synchronized files and folders by clicking on a blue cloud icon in the taskbar.

And then click Open folder.

You will now notice all the synchronized files and folders. Your personal files from OneDrive will reside under OneDrive section, while all the document libraries will reside under the [Company Name] section, next to a building icon

It is imperative to note the naming convention for the synchronized SharePoint Document libraries. The naming convention is as such: [Site Name] – [Document library name].

How to configure OneDrive Sync

Now that we installed OneDrive sync, it is time to configure it. You have a few options, depending on how you work.

Files On-Demand

Remember when I told you earlier that all the files are copied over to your C:Drive? Well, that is not 100% accurate. If you were to stop right here and not configure this any further, you would use what’s called the Files On-Demand feature. This is a new feature that was rolled out relatively recently. Its purpose is to save space on your hard-drive.

The idea is that it does not download the physical files and folders to your computer. Instead, it just downloads the names of files and folders as well as the hierarchy of folders. So it looks like you have them on your computer, but you don’t. It only downloads files and folders when you click on them.

In the image below, you can see the cloud icons next to all the files, except for one (green checkbox). This indicates that I opened the file on my computer, and it was physically downloaded to my computer at that time.

Files on your computer

The above setup works well when you want to save storage on your laptop, but if you do not have WiFi and need to access the files, it won’t work. In this case, you need to disable Files On-Demand. To do this:

Click the Blue Cloud Icon > More > Settings

Under the Settings Tab, uncheck the box next to Save space and download files as you use them.

You will get a confirmation message, just hit OK.

When you go back to Windows Explorer, you will now notice a bunch of green checkboxes, meaning that the files have physically been downloaded and synchronized to your computer.

How to stop sync of files and folders

It is crucial to note that once you synchronize your OneDrive or SharePoint document libraries, it establishes a constant 2-way connection between OneDrive/SharePoint and your computer. So any change you make in one place (i.e., deletion) will immediately happen in the other location. If you need to break that link – you need to stop the synchronization.

Here is a quick way to set your Microsoft Your Teams Meeting Settings in a couple of clicks. Keep these Teams settings handy so you will be able to set up meetings in the future quickly.

When you create a New Meeting in Teams you can choose options for the meeting. However, if the meeting is large (up to 300 attendees) you will want to customize the meeting even more. you need to go into “More Options”. From there, you will be able to set the following settings. Security, Audio and Video, Engagement, Roles, Recording and Transcript.

Security

In this option you can specify who can directly enter the meeting. The lobby is sort of a waiting room and if you don’t set it, the organizer of the meeting (the one who created it or people they have specified as co-organizers) will have to manually admit everyone into the meeting.

The green room is like the lobby, but it lets the user test their audio and video before that are admitted.

Audio and Video

Thes settings can be switched on or off depending on your need. For large meetings it is better to have video and mic switched off to save bandwidth and prevent interruptions to the meeting.

Set Your Teams Meeting Settings Engagement

Thes settings have to do how the users interact with the meeting. You can turn the chat future on or off. Enable Q & A. This is a good feature because it allows you to moderate questions before they show in the meeting, and you can allow replies as well. Allow reactions is just if you want attendees to react to the meeting with emoji’s provided by Teams. The Attendance report toggle is used if you want users’ attendance to the meeting recorded. Something you might want to do in a large meeting.

Set Your Teams Meeting Settings Roles

In larger meetings various users will have different roles in the meeting. The user who creates the meeting is the Organizer. They will be the one more than likely setting all the settings in the meet. Unless they choose some Co-Organizers. To do so all the organizers must do is change the role of one of the participants to Co-Organizer.

Enable language interpretation is a feature whereby you can assign a participant to translate the meeting in real time into another language.

Before you can assign anyone the role of Co-Organizer, Presenter or Language interpreter you must make them a participant first and assign one of the roles.

Like Organizers, participants can control their video and mic.

Recording and Transcript

Here you can enable automatically recording the meeting, but I wouldn’t. It records everything. So, you have basic setup and a lot of noise before the meeting recorded which would need to be edited afterwards. It’s a pain. Have one of the Organizers manually record the meeting when it starts and stop recording when it ends so it is a nice clean recording. Allow Copilot in enable this feature into your meeting, It may help automate some of your tasks in the meeting.

This is how you Set Your Teams Meeting Settings in a couple of clicks. I would keep this info handy any time you need to set up a large team meeting. At least you won’t be running around setting things up when the meeting has already started. You will be prepared!

I can show you how to Export OneNote in one step. You have a file in OneNote but not every user you need to share with has OneNote. You may have created this file or it was shared with you by another user in. In the case of it being a file being shared with you You Need Read / Write Access to the OneNote File

I also show you how to do this in another article.

How To Export OneNote in One Step

If the file is shared with you go here. Open it in the online version of One Drive By clicking on the link in your email:

It will open:

If you created the file , you can skip the first step. Click the Dropdown on the top right called “Edit” and choose “Open in Desktop App. It will open in the desktop version of OneNote:

Click File on the top left and choose export:

In this example the I Export OneNote in One Step to the computer locally as a word document. Now you are able to send the document to anyone who doesn’t have OneDrive as an application. They might have it but barely use it or are more comfortable with other formats other than OneNote.

Either way, it is an easy way to Export to OneNote in One Step.

By using this method you will be able to easily export OneNote content into various formats you desire either with a OneNote document you created or a OneNote document that was shared with you.

You may have a need where a group of users need for forwarding in Microsoft Teams using a shared account. You would like this group to quickly and efficiently configure this.

The problem is you do not want the users to login directly to Microsoft Teams and you don’t want them to have direct access to the Teams admin portal. I am here to show you how to accomplish this in two steps.

Enable Forwarding in Microsoft Teams by setting PIM

First, the shared account you want the group to set forwarding needs to be able to have access to configure call settings. The account needs to have the Team Communications Administrator Role assigned to them. This will allow the account to configure and disable forwarding as needed.

Create a PowerShell Script

You will need a PowerShell Script that makes use of Set-CsUserCallingSettings command. It will require you to login to Teams through PowerShell as the forwarding account, issue the call settings configuration and then disconnect from teams. Logging in will require you to have an encrypted password file.

Read/Write Access the Scripts Folder

To enable forwarding in Microsoft Teams you can have this stored on your files server if you still use AD or in SharePoint if you don’t. Regardless, the user account will need Read/Write (and in the case of AD Execute, too).

Enable Forwarding in Microsoft Teams – Putting it All Together

You can use the information listed above to enable forwarding in Microsoft Teams or I can send you the scripts to do it. Just buy me a coffee and I will send it to you. I also have other time savers that my readers have enjoyed, like a CSV to ICS converter and a Teams Contact Generator.

I showed you how to use Get-PublicFolderItemStatistics Here is a little Public Folder Notifications Tweak that makes it “set it and forget it”. It requires no intervention after it is set. If you are in charge with doing something like maintaining a separate set of contacts for your organization based on a master list of Public folder contacts. You have to constantly check the public folder for changes…

I guess you could ask the department that maintains the public folder to let you know when there have been changes made or you can set up an automated way using PowerShell and Tasks Scheduler.

Prerequisites On Public Folder Notifications Tweak

Please look at my last post on Prerequisistes.

Create a PowerShell Script To Check On the Public Folder

What this script does is allows you to Use Get-PublicFolderItemStatistics for Notifications that are sent by email to the email of your choosing. It looks for any changes that you set in the variable $baseline. If there is a change, the command Get-PublicFolderItemStatistics is piped into an html body that is formatted correctly for sending mail through the MS Graph API.

The contact listing in the public folder is sorted by modification date so you can tell which record was changed.

The Tweak

The Public Folder Notifications Tweak is the Get-PublicFolderItemStatistics command takes the first record’s modification date and compares it to a date that is written to a text file. If it is new than the date in the text file, it sends the report over email. You can look at the report and see the changes by modification date. It then takes the new date and replaces it in the text file for subsequent runs. If the date is not newer it does nothing.

##Declare Parameters##
$clientID = "Your_Client_ID" 
$clientSecret = "Your_Client_Secret" 
$tenantID = "Your_Tenant_ID"

##Run Script##
Connect-ExchangeOnline

$baseline = Get-Content -Path "<Path To>\baseline.txt"
$m = Get-PublicFolderItemStatistics -Identity "\Path\To\Public\Folder\Contacts" | Select Subject,LastModificationTime | Sort-Object -Property LastModificationTime -Descending

if ($m -ge $baseline) {
		
$k = Get-PublicFolderItemStatistics -Identity "\Path\To\Public\Folder\Contacts"  | Select Subject,LastModificationTime | Sort-Object -Property LastModificationTime -Descending
#Connect to GRAPH API

$MailSender = "sender_email"
#Connect to GRAPH API
$tokenBody = @{
    Grant_Type    = "client_credentials"
    Scope         = "https://graph.microsoft.com/.default"
    Client_Id     = $clientId
    Client_Secret = $clientSecret
}
$tokenResponse = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "https://login.microsoftonline.com/$tenantID/oauth2/v2.0/token" -Method POST -Body $tokenBody
$headers = @{
    "Authorization" = "Bearer $($tokenResponse.access_token)"
    "Content-type"  = "application/json"
}

$h = $k | ConvertTo-Html | select -Skip 4

$HTMLBody = @"
$h
"@

$msg = $HTMLBody

#Send Mail    
$URLsend = "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/users/$MailSender/sendMail"
$BodyJsonsend = @"
                    {
                        "message": {
                          "subject": "Change in Public Folder Contacts.",
                          "body": {
                            "contentType": "HTML",
                            "content": "$msg"

                          },
                          "toRecipients": [
                            {
                              "emailAddress": {
                                "address": "email_you_specify"                              }
                            }
                          ]
                        },
                        "saveToSentItems": "false"
                      }
"@

Invoke-RestMethod -Method POST -Uri $URLsend -Headers $headers -Body $BodyJsonsend

		$T = Get-Date
		Set-Content -Path "<Path To>\baseline.txt" -Value $T

}else{
		Write-Host No Change!

Public Folder Notifications Tweak for Notifications Scheduled Task

Please look at my last post on how to create the scheduled task.

What a great Public Folder Notifications Tweak! Now that you have the scheduled task set up, when there is a change in the public folder, you will be notified via email, and you can make the necessary changes on your end. Beats having to remember!

Managing Teams Apps

Microsoft Teams lack of integration with M365 doesn’t stop at the client. It extends to Administration too. Let me explain the ways in Managing Teams Apps.

You can add to the functionality of Microsoft Teams by Managing Teams Apps and add them to users. It is a good system. The responsibility is on the user to request access to this app which then can add to their teams by themselves once you approve them.

Where to Configure Managing Teams Apps

I have found three places to do this. You would think Microsoft would make it easy Managing Teams Apps but that wouldn’t be Microsoft. I will start with the main place and then describe the other two.

Microsoft Teams Admin

Them place is Microsoft teams admin. Go to https://admin.teams.microsoft.com to get to the team’s admin ports and click the Manage Apps section. From there, go to the top right of the screen under actions, and choose org wide app settings. This is where go can set your base config on how you want your Managing Teams Apps to behave. Like allow, MS Apps, Custom Apps or Third-Party Apps. Allowing apps for external access.

The best setting that I have turned off is letting users install app on their own. As an Admin, you need to vet out the application. By, default, most apps are blocked (with the exception of MS Apps). You must request access.

Teams Admin App

There are some apps that you can allow but unless they are turned on from this app, they will not work, For example, Dropbox. So, request and allow the Microsoft Teams admin app for yourself (As a Teams Admin) and add it to your teams. Open the app an allow any file sharing (that’s not OneDrive or Share point) into you organization:

Microsoft hides this. You really must look for it. They want you to use OneDrive or SharePoint. Requests that were made before you toggled this setting might have to be made again.

Microsoft 365 Admin Center

If you go to https://admin.microsoft.com and then fins settings along the left pane, you will see settings. Click that and then go to integrated apps. You will see a lot of apps that can be used with teams and Outlook or both. There is a disclaimer on the page that states it is better to use Teams Admin for Managing Teams App. It more than likely overrides anything you configure here. For admins like us, it makes our job a little more confusing.

How convenient is it to have your voicemails accessible from Microsoft Teams! But what if they Disappear from Teams History? I thought it was something simple. I was wrong. Here is a situation I came across:

Example of Voicemails Disappear from Teams History

A user receives a call from an internal number (person in the organization), they receive an email with voicemail. It shows in their Teams Activity that the caller left a voicemail, and the voicemail is also shown in their Teams call history. However, when a user receives a call from an external user (person outside the organization), they receive an email with the voicemail. It shows in their Teams Activity that the caller left a voicemail, BUT the voicemail is not shown in their Teams call history.

I guess some users do not get very much voicemail or the transcription they get in their Exchange mailboxes is not enough. If your user like getting voicemails through teams and they start disappearing, you will find out soon enough!! In my case it was only external voicemails, but it might be both internal and external. It all depends on where the underlying issue is.

Researching on Google didn’t turn up much information. I only found one article and it didn’t say much. The only hint I gleaned from it was maybe an exchange rule might be causing the issue. That put me on the right track….

How it was resolved

Looking at a few users I could roughly figure out when notices of external voicemail stopped showing up in their Teams. It was right about the time we employed a third-party service that scanned our emails for spam, phishing, and malware. It broke our voicemail behavior. It caused voicemails to Disappear from Teams History.

The tool is a combination of mail rules and connectors in Exchange that effectively send incoming emails out to be checked and if they are clean, it sends them back. Specifically, an Exchange rule. It must be tweaked to allow emails that contained external voicemails as an exception. By doing that the link in teams was restored and Voicemail started behaving normally again! See the screenshot below for an example.

The Moral of the Story

M365 is an integrated ecosystem. If you deploy third-party tools, be prepared for things to break. I would like to tell you Microsoft will help, but they won’t. You will be left to your own devices or helpful bloggers :p