Connecting Outlook 2013 to Office 365 2013 Wave 15

We recently completed a migration to Office 365 2013 from exchange and were forced migrate faster than anticipated. Our staff primarily uses Outlook and during the migration were forced to use Outlook where existing mail was and the web version of OWA. To put it mildly, our users were unhappy with this arrangement.

The way Outlook wants to find Office365 is through the autodiscover. Unfortunately, on a local network, you need to finalize the migration process after all mail has been moved to change the AD attributes that allow users to simply find autodiscover.

The intermediate method would be to setup a manual server mapping which used to just involve looking up your office365 server. To do this you now need the users unique Exchange GUID.

The following are the steps to obtain that GUID and setup a manual outlook to Office365 mapping. This will be useful during the migration process or when testing, but you should setup a profile using autodiscover for long term.

To get the exchange GUID for the user, run powershell as an admin and run the following commands using your Office 365 credentials


PS C:\windows\system32> Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

PS C:\windows\system32> $livecred = Get-Credential

PS C:\windows\system32> $session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook
.com/powershell/ -Credential $livecred -Authentication basic -allowredirection

PS C:\windows\system32> Import-PSSession $session

PS C:\windows\system32> Get-Mailbox -Identity username@domain.com | select ExchangeGUID

ExchangeGuid
------------
28f66595-de7c-40cb-93cc-5553bb990549

This exchange GUID is the number you need.

You will then want to open up the mail settings in the Control Panel to create a new profile.

Add a new Microsoft Exchange account and user the following format to create your server name.

https://outlook.office365.com/mapi/emsmdb/?MailboxId=28f66595-de7c-40cb-93cc-5553bb990549@domain.com

The key is the mailbox ID is your ExchangeGUID@domain.com.

Hopefully that helps during your email migration to the cloud.

Collection of Maps for Better understanding 1 Kings 17-19

In the process of prepping for a Sunday School lesson at Theophilus Bible Church I put together the following list of links to useful maps for helping gain a better understanding of the historical Context around 1st Kings.

• Maps overlay of the 12 Tribes of Israel
• Divided Kingdoms of Israel and Judah
• Kerish Ravine where Elijah hide from Ahab
• Map of the Events around destruction of False prophets
• The ministry homepage for several of these types of maps

Here is a Google Earth image of the approximate locations of the Events described in 1st Kings 18-19.

A short synopsis of the events are

1. Elijah hides in Cherith Ravine after telling Ahab it would no longer not rain until Elijah asked God for rain and Ahab repented. 1st Kings 17:3
2. (Not marked) The stream at Cherith dried up and Elijah went to a Widow in Zarephath near the shore of the sea. 1st Kings 17:9
3. Elijah and Ahab meet at Mount Carmel after 3.5 years drought with no rain. There Elijah faces off the worshipers of Baal and calls fire down from God. This excites the people to listen to Elijah who calls for the death of all the Baal priests. 1st Kings 18:38
4. Elijah leaves Mount Carmel and outruns Ahab on foot various Ahab's chariot the ~12 miles to Jezrel. They were also trying to outrun a massive storming that was coming inland from the Mediterranean Sea. 1st Kings 18:46 
5. Elijah the fleed Jezebel the queen who was in Jezerel and went to Beersheba in Judah. 1st Kings 19:3
6. Elijah went 1 day journey south into the desert and sat under a Juniper tree. Here an angel came and brought food and water to Elijah to give him rest and strength him. 1st Kings - 19:5
7. Elijah journeyed to Mount Horeb (Mount Sinai) in Egypt for 40 days through the desert. Here he listened for and hear the voice of God. 1st Kings 19:8

In the remainder of the lesson we will examine how do we learn from Elijah's life and live more zealously be more strongly under the power the God provides us.  More importantly, do we really even want this and are we prepared for what it entails? 

Are we seeking for God to purify and test us? 

Osnaburg Local Schools Financial Issues for Rebuilding

Currently the Osnaburg Local School District located in East Canton, Ohio is having a financial difficulty. The following post was originally placed on a facebook group that is trying to help address the issue. I am creating a copy of the information here for easier lookup from mobile devices.

To help understand the scope of the financial problem, I have put some information together from the latest publicly available sources I could find since the administration won't publish them. I may try and through together some charts/graphs if I have time to help contextualize the problem. However here are the facts.

Some information on the current fiscal status of the school per their Five Year Forecast reported to the Department of Education http://fyf.oecn.k12.oh.us/genForecast.asp?IRN=49916&Format=HTML

- Since 2009 they have been running an annual deficit of between 517k(2012) to 756k (2011)

- They are anticipating this to clime to 1.7m by 2016

- This appears to be due to 2 main factors.

• Loss of ~500k yearly because of state changes to reduce their share of personal property taxes (FYI this is not real estate property tax)
• Annual increase of ~180k in Personnel,Retirement/

Benefits, Purchased Services - Adding this to the existing deficit gives annual deficit spending of 1.5m - 1.7mi

- All of this has been eating away at the 4.3mi cash balance that existed in 2009 and that balance will be exhausted during the 2014 school year.

- Regarding the Income Tax that was rejected. The latest numbers I could find where 2010.

• Average income in Osnaburg = $40,559 per household for 2645 Households
• At 1.25% this would have generated $1,340,967
• Even if passed without changes this would still result in a deficit of ~400k per year

I also spoke with the John at the Stark County Auditor’s Office who pointed out the following.

- Property tax values will be adjusted this year.

- The school currently has an inside 5.1mil levy where the percentage the property values change will result in that same change on property values collected as a percent.

• IE, if district wide values go down 10% the school would lose 10% of this amount.

- There are several older levies that total up to 19.56mil these were all prior to 2000

• This will be adjusted upward and the school will receive more money if property values are worth more than they were in 2000.

• If the district wide property value is less than 2000 values the school would lose money -**He estimated this would not be the case.

Sources
Tax Income Numbers: http://tax.ohio.gov/divisions/tax_analysis/tax_data_series/individual_income/y2/Y2TY10.stm

Osnaburg Fiscal Forecast: http://fyf.oecn.k12.oh.us/genForecast.asp?IRN=49916&Format=HTML

Teacher Salary List: http://www.tos.ohio.gov/teacher_salary