• Active Directory,  Microsoft Exchange Server

    Create Email Aliases in Office 365

    The things are always changing. I write less and less how-to things because as the rate of innovation skyrockets (another way to say changes that are sometimes good and sometimes bad) – the second I hit save the article seems out of date, or technical debt. But hey, sometimes I have to look longer than I should for something. So. To create an email alias in Microsoft Online/Office 365. Login to an account with Exchange administrative capabilities Click the Admin tab. Click Exchange in the left sidebar. Click Recipients. Click Mailboxes (or Users in the newer interface). Click the user to create the alias for (in the old interface click…

  • Active Directory,  Bootstrappers

    Bootstrappers: Adding YouTube To A Content Marketing Strategy

    I see a number of digital marketing plans that identify YouTube as part of the plan. But when we start discussing how YouTube fits into the plan, getting started seems to be the hardest part. This might be because there’s a gap in understanding what to expect from running campaigns on YouTube, or it might be due to trying to weaponize a digital medium we don’t fully understand. Set Expectations Let’s start with what to expect. YouTube is a cute place to post videos. The title, description, and metadata for those videos is then picked up by the search engines. Do not expect to post videos that have millions of…

  • Active Directory

    Export AD Objects Into LDIF On Windows Server

    The LDIFDE utility exports and imports objects from and to Active Directory using the ldif format, which is kinda’ like csv when it gets really drunk and can’t stay on one line. Luckily, ldif can’t drive. Actually, each attribute/field is on a line (which allows for arrays) and an empty line starts the next record. Which can make for a pretty messy looking file the first time you look at one. The csvde command can be used to export data into the csv format instead. In it’s simplest form the ldifde command can be used to export AD objects just using a -f option to specify the location (the working…

  • Active Directory,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    Using odutil with opendirectoryd

    The options for Open Directory continue to get more refined, aligning with opendirectoryd. The odutil command is becoming more and more useful with each version of OS X. Let’s inspect the directory service cache, using odutil with the show verb and the cache option: odutil show cache You can also view statistics for opendirectoryd using that show verb but with the statistics option: odutil show statistics And to see everything, use odutil with the show verb and the all option to get plenty of data to grep through: odutil show all The final show option we’ll look at is configuration. Here, you will also need to feed a directory nodename…

  • Active Directory,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    Destroy Open Directory Servers Using The Server App

    You can destroy an LDAP server using the Server app (and still using slapconfig -destroyldapserver). To do so, open the Server app and click on Open Directory. Then click on the Open Directory server in the list of servers. When prompted to destroy the LDAP Master, click on Next. When asked if you’re sure, click Continue. When asked if you’re really, really sure, click Destroy. Wait.