Convert-MsolDomainToFederated in Office365 returns the error Service not available

While configuring ADFS 2.0 for Office365 we experienced an issue converting the domain to federated.

PS C:\> Convert-MsolDomainToFederated -DomainName contoso.com -SupportMultipleDomain
Convert-MsolDomainToFederated : Service not available
At line:1 char:30
+ Convert-MsolDomainToFederated <<<< -DomainName contoso.com -SupportMultipleDomain
+ CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (:) [Convert-MsolDomainToFederated], FederationException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : InternalError,Microsoft.Online.Identity.Federation.Powershell.ConvertDomainToFederated

Unfortunately googling (or bing-in) does not give a direct hit, so we have contact MS Support to help us out!

Reported cause
The Default password policy was modified.
The Default Password policy is “ValidityPeriod 90 -NotificationDays 14″
Customer had the PasswordValidityPeriod set to 730

Issue resolution

Change the password policy back to default by executing the following Powershell command

Start the Windows Azure Active Directory PowerShell module.
To do this, click Start, point to All Programs, click Microsoft Online Services, right-click Windows Azure Active Directory PowerShell module, and then click Run as administrator.

$cred = Get-Credential
Connect-MsolService –Credential $cred
Set-MsolPasswordPolicy -ValidityPeriod 90 -NotificationDays 14 -DomainName contoso.com

#after this, the convert MSOLDomainToFederated works perfectly!
Convert-MsolDomainToFederated -DomainName contoso.com -SupportMultipleDomain

Hopefully it works for you!

How to Migrate Virtual Machine to Windows Azure

To migrate a virtual machine to Windows Azure from you on-premise datacenter you don’t need CSUpload anymore. With the new Windows Azure SDK there is a new cmdlet available to upload your local VHD’s to Windows Azure using Powershell.

Add-AzureVhd -LocalFilePath $sourceosvhd -Destination $destosvhd 

A complete example script can be found here
http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Migrate-a-Virtual-Machine-0c533380

How To Get Metadata Navigation In A Document Set

In the last years I have seen quite a few times customers struggling with the change of folders structures to libraries, contenttypes and metadata in SharePoint. When you have finally convinced your customer to use the metadata navigation to find data instead of browsing folders you find out Document Sets do not support metadata navigation!?! Although you can always filter list using the dropdown on the column name people do more like single click filtering. To solve this problem I’ve created a simple script to transfer the list filters to navigation buttons using JQuery and SPServices.

By default a SharePoint List or Document library can be filtered by pressing the column heading.

But visitors of the document system are not familiar with this “hidden” feature, and would really like single click navigation demonstrated below.

To make this possible I’ve created a Content Editor Webpart which contains Javascript to accomplisch the transformation of filters in a dropdown to and filter based on buttons.

<script src="/style library/jquery-1.8.1.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

<script src="/style library/jquery.SPServices-0.7.2.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

<script>

$(document).ready(function(){

//set default vars; replace them with your ownvar

listID = '{AA2982F8-6E9B-4F01-8F30-9D90AB1E7A8B}';

var viewID = '{F51A0644-4798-474C-A50B-3EBC53CCA2A8}';

//load paramsvar

allVars = $().SPServices.SPGetQueryString();

var filterFieldsParams = "";

$.each(allVars, function( objKey, objValue ){

if(objKey.substr(0,11).toLowerCase()=="filterfield" || objKey.substr(0,11).toLowerCase()=="filtervalue"){

filterFieldsParams+="&"+objKey+"="+objValue;

}

});

var rootFolder=$().SPServices.SPGetQueryString()['RootFolder'];

if(rootFolder===undefined){

rootFolder=window.location.href.substring(0, window.location.href.indexOf('Forms'));

}

function getDynamicFilter(name, internalName){

$.ajax({

url: $().SPServices.SPGetCurrentSite()+'/_layouts/filter.aspx?ListId='+listID+'&FieldInternalName='+internalName+'&ViewId='+viewID+'&FilterOnly=1&Filter=1'+filterFieldsParams+'&RootFolder='+rootFolder,

success: function(data) {

//append filter dropdown to temporary filter field div

$('#filterField'+internalName).append($.parseHTML(data));

$('#filterField'+internalName+' select').each(function(i, select){

var $select = $(select);

$select.find('option').each(function(j, option){

var $option = $(option);

//create a button

var $button = $('<input type="button" style="margin-left:5px;"/>');

$button.attr('name', $select.attr('name')).attr('value', $option.val());

$button.attr('value',$option.text());

if ($option.attr('selected')) $button.attr('checked', 'checked');

//insert button

$("#filterButton"+internalName).append($button);

});

});

//set filter on button click

$('#filterButton'+internalName+' input').click(function(e)

{

// select the option with the current value as text

$('#diidFilter'+internalName+' option:contains("'+$(this).val()+'")').attr('selected', true);

// get index and value of selected filter

var value = $('#diidFilter'+internalName+' option:selected').val();

var index = $("#diidFilter"+internalName).attr('selectedIndex');

// activate filter

FilterField(viewID,internalName, value, index);

});

}

});

}

// provide selected filters

getDynamicFilter("Document Type", "Document_x0020_type");

});

</script>

<hr/>

<div id="allFilters">

<div id="filterFieldDocument_x0020_type" style="display:none"></div>

<div id="filterButtonDocument_x0020_type"></div>

</div>

When the visitor navigates to the document set the buttons for the column “document type” are dynamically loaded from the document type column filter. When the user presses the filter button (1) the list will be filtered using the column filter (2).

Notice: This feature does also work great in normal libraries or lists!

Signs of Office 365 Preview ( 2013 ) getting to General Availability (GA)

Today I’ve noticed a slight change in our Office 365 Preview which seems to be a preparation step of Microsoft to get ready for general availability (release) of Office 365 version 2013.

In the top left corner we were used to see , but from the 23th January we have

It looks like we are moving from preview to production.

Although Outlook Web App and management portal still shows Office 365 Preview

Day 4 of the SharePoint Conference 2012

The takeaways of the fourth and last day of the SharePoint Conference 2012.

OAuth and SharePoint

- To make a trusted connection between an application and SharePoint use OAuth

- OAuth is implemented in SharePoint and Exchange, onpremise to onpremise and to SharePoint Online. Currently there is no support to authenticate from SharePoint Onpremise to Exchange Online.

- In Office365 OAuth is using a Broker, which is the ACS (Access Control Service), for onpremise you do not have a broker

SharePoint Governance

- Define a policy for using SharePoint hosted, Provider hosted and Autohosted apps

- Check and confirm the SLA of a provider hosted app, catch up with your legal people for data sensitivity and backup/recovery

- Decide if users can install or just request apps from the app store

- Decide if you want to install apps local to one web, or for the whole “tenant”

Webtemplates and SharePoint (Online)

- Webtemplates can be used in Office365, using sandbox solutions

- Sandbox solutions are deprecated in SharePoint 2013

- No alertnative has been announced yet

- Use webtemplates instead of sitetemplates

Time to get home! Thanks Las Vegas and #SPC12

Day 3 of the SharePoint Conference 2012

On the third day of the SharePoint conference 2012 I’ve focus on Search, Azure and Office365, and Windows Phone

Search Driven Development

- Transform search results really easy using result sets and query rules

- Query rules perform on conditions and run actions against the result set. E.g if query contains the word “picture” the user is probably looking for pictures, with the query rule we can push a resultsblock with pictures alternatively styled

- Configure refiners to present themselves as sliders, multichoiche or barchart

- Configure refiners to load for specific queries with query rules

- Manage Search configuration in the site collection and web level

- This is THE way to build your intranet or internet website

Azure and SharePoint, better together

- Azure websites can communicate with SharePoint using OAuth tokens

- A Client App Part can show a page from azure with the required token information in the URL. So now you can integrate functionality which cannot be build in SharePoint in Azure and integrate with a Client App Part.

- Azure is still in Preview, GA (General Availlability) is not yet announced

Windows Phone app and SharePoint

- Developing Windows Phone Apps can be straightforward when it fits in the templates provided by the SDK

- Apps will run on Windows Phone 7, 7.5 and 8

- The Apps will use the REST/JSOM models to fetch and write data to SharePoint

Almost done here, tomorrow the last day of the conference

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Day 2 of the Sharepoint Conference 2012

The second day of the SharePoint Conference 2012 was very interesting with some deep dive sessions.

Connecting hybrid to Office 365

- In a hybrid deployment you can combine search results from onprem and o365

- Profile store will be connected to the online profile

- Metadata cannot be connected to the cloud

Office Web Apps Server 2013

- Standalone server, upscaling really easy with auto load balancing

- Configuration is just 2 PowerShell commands, there is no UI

- Office Web Apps 2012 are a lot richer in functionality for authoring

- OneNote is now part of Office Web Apps

- OWA server can be used by Exchange, Lync, SharePoint and every other third party vendor. Also Open from URL is available, where the URL can be any websites or URN on you network

- Security IS taken care of

Claims authentication migrations

- Claims are the default in SharePoint 2013

- Several migration scenario’s for Classic, Windows Claim, SAML Claim etc.

- I you do not migrate to Claims and stay in classic, Ofiice Web Apps previews will not work

- Custome code cannot using WindowsIdentity anymore, although you can use the Claim2WindowsToken service

Running SharePoint in Windows Azure

- Running SharePoint in Azure will be fully supported

- You can run SharePoint on Azure for your internal users only, a caveat is that you have to provide load balancing yourself

- If your requirement is to publish the environment to the web you only have to make a new Endpoint in azure, Azure will take care of the load balancing

- Costings are way lower than hosting SharePoint in your own datacenter(s), especially storage is very cheap

- With PowerShell you are able to export and import Virtual Machine Configuration. This enables a lot of interesting management tools to lower the cost of virtual machines which should not always be on. Like development, test and acceptance environments

- If you want to have a disaster recovery environment ready in 15 minute, but don’t want to pay for hot-standby, Windows Azure is the solution

Catch up tomorrow with a new update