I’ve got this idea when I was staring at one error message that was generated Office 365 for a user who was trying to send email message to another user who has a full mailbox… The guy who sent me this error looking for help, did not even bother to read few lines in the email that could explain all the problem for him!
So I thought OK, I got an idea that is going to do a great good for everyone! I’ll start from now on to document every single error message that I get. The only condition that I’ll follow is it must be related to Email. Be it Office 365, G Suite’s Gmail, or Microsoft Exchange Server.
Please leave any comment below for your feedback, or what type of details that you want to see in each post for error message.
I will include the following in … Read the rest “Documentation: SMTP and Email Related Error Messages List”
So you finally got the deal of a new G Suite project and you are preparing to star the work! You are in the middle of making the plans and time tables… As well as well getting the details that you need from the customer. This phase is one of the most critical phases in your project. Because once the preparations are complete, the project implementation will begin.
When to start the G Suite project?
Well, you can start it any time you want! Except not in the following times:
When the customer’s IT team are going into their holidays…
Trust me this is the worst time to have such a project initiated. Even if the customer IT team are handing over the tasks to each other. You don’t want to start the project with someone, and then struggle with a new face in the middle of the work. You … Read the rest “Don’t Start a G Suite Project in the Wrong Time”
What is the IT role in a G Suite project?
First of all, the IT has nothing to do with making the decision of going G Suite… They may influence the decision but they don’t make it. Simply because this type of decisions is a business decision in the first place. The more critical job of the IT department is to facilitate this shift and transfer to a new philosophy and technology. The business management will see the product functions and usability through end users who are getting the support they need from IT.
So how are the IT going to affect our project?
End users will complain to IT for issues they face daily. And here comes the core problem. If the IT team are reluctant to work on this, or if they are incompetent in communications with the G Suite deployment team, the issue will sit unresolved for … Read the rest “How the IT team can make your G Suite project fail!”
The book
Book title: Bastion Saturn
Author: C. Chase Harwood
Book genre: Sci-fi, space opera
Finish date: 5 Aug 2017
Link to book: Amazon
My review
What drew my attention to this book was its title! I am literally in love with two planets in this universe: mighty Jupiter, and the crown jewel of our solar system – Saturn. So I closed my eyes and bought the book happily. At the end I was not disappointed at all with the author’s great work!
Environment
What I liked about this book in particular was the relatively close time for its story from our time. There was the dystopian society which was controlled by an AI that is not allowing any living human to out-smart it or get out of its control! This is an expected end for our current AI development. And personally I am with the side who wants to … Read the rest “Book review: Bastion Saturn”
The book
Book title: Date Night on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 1)
Author: E. M. Foner
Book genre: Sci-fi, Humor, to me it is not Romance…
Finish date: 1 August 2017
Link to book: Amazon
My review
I saw this book and got drawn to it by its description. Although the cover image was a bit deceiving and might get you to get something else from the book (such as inter-species explicit relationships… or other stuff…). A sci-fi humor novel that involved dates and an earth politician, and an AI! I had a little expectation of what to come but I did not even get close to it!
Environment
The story takes place on a space station far away from Earth. Peace and coexistence is taking place between humans and other species, which is really a relieving thing. Residents of the station are peaceful and seem to only care … Read the rest “Book review: Date Night on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador Book 1)”
It is obvious that security is the number one issue in the cyber world these days… Email is being one of the widest and most critical fronts that is often a gateway to massive corporate breaches and leaks. Because of the nature of email usage these days, having a good email security practices and environment is very critical and essential for any organization to survive in the current era of technology and advancement.
G Suite offers a lot in the security of email. There are plenty of rules and activities that you can take to make sure your mail flow is secured and is not a wide open door for attacks and risks.
The Gmail settings in G Suite Admin Console offer multiple levels of email security. And if you are using Google Vault you can even do more in securing your environment. Google Vault is a long topic I’d … Read the rest “Steps you can take to secure your mail in G Suite”
Day summary
We have come to the point where we are completely ready to change the MX records for all the domains. The process involved a lot of manual work but we split up the domains and managed to do it in a short amount of time. When we finished we ended up with all domains pointed to G Suite.
Once we completed the MX records change, we moved then to fixing all SPF records. Started with the primary domain there was not a lot to do. We just added the Google part of the SPF record to the existing one and we were all set.
After changing the MX records we found out about some issues in group permissions and other issues about bad forwarding settings between G Suite and Office 365 and managed to fix them all.
We also took a quick look about the progress of the … Read the rest “A story of a project: 3600 users to G Suite in 60 days! – Day 8: Changing MX records”
Day summary
After getting the migration going, we moved to the next objective which is to complete the setup of the coexistence scenario between G Suite and Office 365. All what’s left was to setup the MX records and activate the forwarding from G Suite to Office 365.
I started with preparing a table for all the customer’s domains and then put all the required MX records in that table for each domain. And to be honest.. That was the most annoying thing I ever did! Once I completed the table, we agreed to do a change for one domain to test the delivery.
Prior to changing the MX records as we agreed, I had to enable the domain wide forwarding rule which was created earlier on the Admin Console. Then we were able to change the MX records.
I made sure we get all the old MX records documented … Read the rest “A story of a project: 3600 users to G Suite in 60 days! – Day 7: Completing the coexistence setup”
The book
Book title: Roadside Picnic
Author: Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Book genre: Sci-fi
Finish date: 10 July 2017
Link to book: Wikipedia (spoilers), Amazon
My review
Before going into the review, I want to tell you how I cam across this story… I came across a PC game called S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadow of Chernobyl (Steam, GOG, Wikipedia)… I owned the game DVD since 2008 but only was able to play in in 2014…
When I finished this game I felt some sort of a bond to it… Everything about this game was awesome (not talking about bugs…). So I started reading more about it and how it was made. I came to know that this was loosely based on the novel Roadside Picnic. And that was the point where I put this novel on my list, to finally read it and complete it on 10th … Read the rest “Book review: Roadside Picnic”
Problem management is really an important aspect in each service and project management practices… Without proper problem management you will create more problems instead of solving them… And without problem management you can even lose your whole project!
Little intro
I always come across many problems in every project I do. Some of them are caused by my bad judgement of things, others are caused by the customer’s inability to take the right decision at a certain stage of the project. The amount of problem management I am doing is giving me a lot of priceless experience that I’ll never be able to get by money!
The only common thing between all of these problems, is they will all come on me to fix! I have been doing a project recently and the start up was great… However during the middle stages the customer made a mistake that was very … Read the rest “My Problem Management in a Project”