Monthly Update #119 Now Available for Subscribers to Download

The Office 365 for IT Pros writing team is proud to announce the availability of monthly update #119. Subscribers can download the updated files using the link in the receipt emailed to them when they bought Office 365 for IT Pros (2025 edition). The link always fetches the latest files. For more details about downloading updates, see our FAQ. Details about the changes in update #119 are in our change log.

Automating Microsoft 365 with PowerShell

Updated files are also available for the Automating Microsoft 365 with PowerShell eBook. We posted a note about update #11 a couple of days ago because we try to get this update out before focusing on the big book. Since then, we’ve added some more information, and the current version of the PowerShell book is 11.3.

The earlier post contained some information about bugs in V2.27 of the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK. More bugs have been reported since, and a common problem appears to be that the payload used to create or update objects “disappears” when the Graph SDK translates the cmdlet parameters into Graph API requests. There’s a batch of issues listed in the SDK GitHub repository, including a problem assigning licenses to user accounts. Collectively, the bugs make us believe that it’s not a good idea to update to V2.27. Stay with V2.25, which is the last solid release of the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK.

Copilot Wave 2 and the M365 Conference

A week ago, Microsoft announced Copilot Wave 2 spring release. The updates include new agents, a new agent store, better personalization, and Copilot notebooks. Having yet another notebook is a depressing thought. Maybe Microsoft could have integrated Copilot better into Loop or OneNote? Just a thought.

Next week, the Microsoft 365 “Community Conference” takes place in Las Vegas, NV. I won’t be there. My experience from last year’s event in Orlando confirmed my feeling that this isn’t a community conference at all. It’s dominated by Microsoft, who spend a lot of money for the privilege of branding, multiple keynotes, and many conference sessions. If it were a community event, there would be a higher percentage of sessions covering the experience of working with today’s products instead of marketing sessions about the future.

The other problem I have with the event is that it doesn’t cover all of Microsoft 365. This is an event deep in SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Teams, all covered with a rich coating of Copilot for Microsoft 365. There’s room for topics like Microsoft Mesh, Loop, Viva Connections, Power Pages, and Viva Engage, but other parts of Microsoft 365 are excluded because they are not part of the sponsoring business unit. A strong impression is that the conference organizers believe that everyone will write agents and everyone has Copilot for Microsoft 365, and that’s not reality. But organizers will do what sponsors want.

If you attend the conference, don’t expect to hear much about the Microsoft 365 substrate, Exchange Online, Entra ID, Intune, Sentinel, Microsoft Defender, the Microsoft Graph, and PowerShell, all of which play important roles in a Microsoft 365 deployment. Success with SharePoint Online and Teams only happens when tenants are built on a strong and secure foundation, and I think this conference completely misses that point. The organizers will plead that they can only schedule the sessions submitted for consideration. That’s not true. It’s always possible for conferences to find speakers to cover important topics (I’ve done this several times).

I’m sure that the conference attendees will have a fun time in Vegas. It’s always nice to get away from the office to focus on new things. It’s just sad when a major conference purporting to cover Microsoft 365 does such a poor job of covering the essentials.

Back to Writing

Returning to Office 365 for IT Pros, where we do our level best to cover all the important pieces in a Microsoft 365 infrastructure, we’re working on update #120 for the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook, which we plan to make available on June 1, 2025. Have a great May!