Go paperless! Lighten your business load

You may start off with bank statements, letters, receipts, business transactions, and inventories only to find that you've collected a stack of folders which eventually turn into a shelf full of boxed paperwork.

Well, what if you could evaporate all that weight up into a cloud and reference it at your fingertips, whenever, and wherever?

Thanks to technologies such as Google Drive, going paperless can really help your business. It not only helps clear cluttered workspace in the office, but also saves money and eases your business' environmental footprint. (Not to mention less trips to the printer too!)

Here are a few practical reasons why you should go paperless with Google Drive:

• Security and Focus: You no longer have to worry about losing or misplacing your documents. No more distractions on your desk

• Space: Enables you to save valuable office storage space. 

• Mobility: Allows you to have access to all your documents in one place even outside the office. 

• Time: Saves valuable time.

• Money: Save costs ranging from printing paper, photocopying, and printer maintenance.

• Recovery: Disaster recovery.

• Peace of Mind: Ensures security and privacy.

Of course, all you need is Google Drive with an account and a scanner. You can also use Android/iOS smartphones or tablets to upload files as PDFs. Here are some Epson scanners that can scan directly to Google Drive with a couple of button clicks!

Google Drive uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) for easier search results once documents are uploaded to the Drive. Essentially, Drive turns all your scanned documents into searchable text for easier future referencing. OCR also enables you to save time by dismissing you from specifically naming saved uploaded documents. Instead, all you have to do is search a key word or tag from the document you wish to find and its right there at your fingertips.

Additional storage is cheap at $1.99 per month for an extra 100 GB or $9.99/month for an extra 1 TB or switch your organization to Google Apps Unlimited with Unlimited storage for $10/user/month

Drive also allows you to create and collaborate with others like share documents, spreadsheets, and presentations on the fly with complementary Google Docs, Sheets, Slides and Forms. You can even make files available offline when you are not under cloud connectivity.

You may find Google Drive for Work as one of your most valuable investments once you have made the transition to go paperless. You can work without limits. It is safe, secure reliable, easy, powerful, and built to optimize your individual and team productivity.

We have advanced to communicate paperless with instant messaging and email. Why not do the same with organizing documents and files paperless too. It's still early 2015 and not too late to save time, money, and some trees while your at it.

Going paperless is a great idea and our team here at Interlock IT will help you make paper filing a thing of the past.

Fixing conflicts and errors with Active Directory synchronization to Office 365 and Azure

Sometimes user accounts (or objects) that have been deleted and then recreated on your Active Directory will become out of sync with Office 365 meaning changes to passwords and other attributes won't sync properly. Another cause is a change in the configuration of your Azure Active Director Sync utility, such as changing the SourceAnchor attribute.

DirSync is more common in the Office 365 user base because its replacement, Azure Active Directory Sync was recently released in September of 2014. For a comparison of the two tools visit Microsoft's Directory Integration Tools page.

If you have objects out of sync or conflicting you might receive an error message email every few hours when the AAD Sync utility is run.

You should also see the errors in the Event Viewer and Application Logs on the Windows Server running the utility.

In some cases, the Microsoft's own Office 365 IdFix tool can't find the problem, and thus can't fix it.

By reviewing the contents of userdetails.csv output by the PowerShell command:

get-msoluser | export-csv userdetails.csv

we were able to see that the ImmutableID was set incorrectly due to a prior sync configuration or that the on-premises Object ID shown in the error message above was already connected to another user.

Somewhere along the line, Microsoft removed the ability change or clear the ImmutableID attribute without first disabling Directory Sync for the organization so most internet postings we found while looking for a solution are no longer valid. Some postings showed that back in 2012 you could set the ImmutableID from PowerShell. Today you can only clear it to null if Directory Sync is deactivated.

Deleting (setting to null) the ImmutableID attribute on Office 365/Azure Active Directory solved the sync problem for us. You can no longer change it to match but the directory sync utility will re-populate it for you. Here's how to do it.

Start by disabling the Azure AD Sync Scheduler task in Task Scheduler on the Windows Server that runs AAD Sync:

Next Deactivate Directory Sync on your Office 365 Admin console:

In our experience, it actually takes a couple of hours during business weekdays and about 10 minutes on a Saturday night to deactivate, but it could theoretically take up to 72 hours to complete.

Copy the commands below into a new text file and save it as eraseimmutableid.ps1, change the $upn value accordingly and run it:

set-executionpolicy RemoteSigned
Import-Module MSOnline
Connect-MsolService
$upn = "sampleuser@domain.com”
$oid = (Get-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName $upn).ObjectID
Write-Output "Before:"
Get-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName $upn | select userprincipalname,ImmutableID,ObjectID
Write-Output "`n`nAfter:"
set-msolUser -ObjectID $oid -immutableID "$null"
Get-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName $upn | select userprincipalname,ImmutableID,ObjectID

Now re-enable the sync service in Task Scheduler and run it manually.

If you still see errors keep looking at the results of userdetails.csv mentioned above. Search for the email addresses and Object IDs shown in the error message email.

Feel free to reach out to InterlockIT.com for assistance with your Office 365 Directory Synchronization configuration and fine tuning.

Interlock IT earns two Microsoft Silver Competencies!

Cloud Computing is entering its second second stage of hypergrowth in enterprises. Forrester estimates the public services cloud market will grow to $191 billion by 2020, a huge leap from "just" $58 billion in 2013.

Businesses of all sizes are looking to roll out fully cloud-enabled productivity suites with a minimum of disruption to their business. We've seen a huge uptick in demand for cloud-based systems that remove the stress of administering your own email system or file server and let you focus on the things that matter—like finding new clients or executing on projects.

Early in his career as Microsoft's new CEO, Satya Nadella knew that the way forward both for Microsoft and other businesses was "mobile first, cloud first." Shouldn't your business be able to work from anywhere in the world, on any device, at any time?

Office 365 plans start at $5.10 per user per month and for $12.90 per month the desktop versions of the Office suite are included. At that price managing on-premises email servers or paying for hosted Exchange no longer makes sense.

As a Microsoft Partner with Silver-level Competencies in both Small and Midmarket Cloud Solutions and Cloud Productivity, the team at Interlock IT is well-positioned to help you move from your antiquated email system that doesn't work at the pace of modern business.