jasoncoltrin.com – IT Solutions, Systems Admin Technologies, and Gaming *Best viewed with Chrome or Firefox

How to set Windows Date and Time formats to the internationally recognized ISO 8601 standard

YYYY-MM-DD is the standardized international date formatting scheme as codified in ISO 8601. The standard aims to provide a well-defined unambiguous method of representing calendar dates and times in worldwide communications.

The standard has the additional benefit of organizing file and folders in a data-system in an intuitive ascending or descending order. Additionally not only is this good for Excel sorting, it’s also excellent for file naming as it sorts properly (based on date) even if the sort is done alphabetically and not numerically.

Also, the ISO 8601 is a format recognized internationally, and will prevent costly mistakes (the refund expires on 2/22/21,) and inconveniences (my plane arrives in Japan at 5:30P on 12-23-22.)

Question: Yes this is all fine and good but I can’t remember all this, how do I get used to the correct date format?

Answer: Change the Short Date format under Windows Settings > Region Settings or Date and Time Format.

Click on the Windows Start button and type Region
Click on Region Settings or Change the Date and Time Format
In the Date and Time Format settings, change the Short Date format to yyyy-MM-dd

Windows Region Time Date Format Settings YYYY-MM-DD

4. Additionally we can change the Short Time format to hh:mm tt (which adheres to the ISO 8601 format)

5. Now we can see in the bottom-right corner of our screen, our date and time formats are displayed:

ISO 8601 Filename conventions

Naming files using the ISO 8601 scheme can have many variations, however the following makes most sense to me.

The timestamp is only a portion of the filename, it should not dictate how the other portions are formatted.

Typically dashes are used to separate fragments of a filename, while underscores delimit tokens within a fragment.

As such, the timestamp and the filename should be delimited by dashes, as they are different sections. Keep underscores within a section.

Then you get filenames which look like YYYY-MM-DD-file_name-v3.41. Which is clean and consistent (and easily copy / paste-able.)

Which of these filenames below is going to have you pulling your hair out, and which will leave you nice and happy when sorting by date in Windows File Explorer?

Loan – Spreadsheet v 1.1 May 4, 2020.xlsx

Loan – Spreadsheet v 1.1 May 2, 2020.xlsx

Loan – Spreadsheet v 1.3 January 1, 2020.xlsx

Loan – Spreadsheet v 1.2 May 2, 2020.xlsx

Loan – Spreadsheet v 1.2 May 4, 2020.xlsx

2020-05-04-Loan_Spreadsheet-v.1.1.xlsx

2020-05-02-Loan_Spreadsheet-v.1.1.xlsx

2020-01-01-Loan_Spreadsheet-v.1.3.xlsx

2020-05-02-Loan_Spreadsheet-v.1.2.xlsx

2020-05-04-Loan_Spreadsheet-v.1.2.xlsx

You guessed it – ISO 8601!

How to move a partition to the end of a disk with free MiniTool Partition utility

Recently after cloning a system using Clonezilla, I found all the empty space on the drive was located on the end of the disk. The System Recovery partition was between the empty space and the c: drive. We want the primary partition to extend and include the empty space, but the Disk Management utility built into windows cannot do this for us. First I tried a gparted open-source utility but the live USB failed to load and see my system drive. So I did a little looking and found a utility made by MiniTool – MiniTool Partition Wizard Free will do exactly what we need to do. The good thing about MiniTool’s utility is we can run and perform our partition operations inside of a running Windows 10 system.

How to move and extend partitions using MiniTool’s Partition Wizard Free utility

When we look at our Windows Disk Management, we see our empty space is on the wrong side of our Recovery Partition:

Windows Disk Management move Unallocated Free Space

We want the 509 MB Recovery partition to live to the “right” of our 65GB of empty/unallocated partition. Once we have the 65GB Unallocated partition next to our C: drive so we can then extend/resize the C: drive to use the empty space.

Make a backup of important data. Because this is a fresh install/clone, I’ll skip this part.
Install MiniTool Partition Wizard Free (during install, I confirmed I only want to install the free edition, and chose not to install the “Shadow” backup application.)
Once opened, select the Recovery Partition we want to move, and then click Move/Resize

4. Next slide the (whole) partition to the far right of the partition bar (screenshot it before the operation).

5. The result should look like the following screenshot after “sliding” the partition to the far right location.

6. Click the Apply button

7. If we close the MiniTool Partition Utility and check Disk Management, we can see our Recovery Partition is now at the end of the disk, and free space is adjacent to our C: drive.

8. To extend the C: drive and use the unallocated/free partition, we can use either Disk Management or the MiniTool Partition utility, but here we will continue to use the free utility.

Open MiniTool’s Partition Utility again and select the C: drive partition. Then click the Move/Resize button again. Move the right-most “Handle” and slide it to the far right. Below is the “Before and after” screenshots:

9. Remember to click Apply after completing the operation.

We’re done! We can close the MiniTool utility and Disk Management and then open Disk Management again (or refresh the disks) and we can see our C: drive is now extended and using our free disk space.

How to fix 550 5.7.520 Access denied, Your organization does not allow external forwarding.

If our organization controls two office365 tenants, at some point we may wish to enable forwarding of email from an address hosted in one of our tenants to an address hosted in another. When we enable the forward in O365 Exchange Admin, the end user may complain that every time they try to send a message to see if it is forwarded, they receive the following bounce back message:

Remote Server returned '550 5.7.520 Access denied, Your organization does not allow external forwarding. Please contact your administrator for further assistance. AS(7555)'

By default, Microsoft 365 Defender sets up an Anti-Spam outbound policy. And the policy default sets Automatic Forwarding to “Automatic: System Controlled.” Since we do not want to modify this default policy, instead we can create a policy (with a higher priority) that defines certain users or groups to allow forwarding.

Go to www.office.com and log into the tenant which hosts the email address that we want to forward mail from. (do not log into the destination email address tenant)
Open the Admin Center
Next, click Show All (admin centers) and then click Security.

5. Next, in the Security / Microsoft 365 Defender Admin Center, under Email & Collaboration, click on Policies & rules.

6. Here, click on Threat Policies

7. Under Threat policies, click Anti-Spam.

8. Under the Default Anti-Spam outbound policy (Default) we will probably find Automatic Forwarding is set to Automatic – System-Controlled

9. Close the Default Policy and then at the top of the screen click the + Create Policy drop-down and choose Outbound

10. In the new Outbound policy, edit the description to something like “Custom Outbound Mail Forward“, and add the Users or Groups to the policy (whom you want to give the ability to forward.)

11. At the bottom of the new custom policy change Automatic Forwarding to: On – Forwarding is enabled

12. Save and close the new policy and that should do it. Try sending some test messages to see if the forward works correctly. We may need to change the new policy’s Priority to 0 if something still isn’t working. Also, don’t forget to double check the Automatic Forwarding on the mailbox itself.

Protected: MyLinks

New World – How to Find Parsley to Craft Exotic Herb Supplies

We may get a quest to Craft Exotic Herb Supplies from a Town Board quest or from an NPC. When looking for Exotic Herbs such as Parsley, the herbs will not have a different look than other herbs, instead they will be purple and labeled “Herbs” when harvesting. They look similar to Lavender IRL.

When harvesting the Parsley from Herbs, we have about a 1-in-10 chance of finding a Parsley. Often times, in addition to obtaining Parsley, we’ll also harvest Peppercorns, Hyssop and Cinnamon.

Where to Find Parsley in New World

So finding Parsley is easy enough if we know where to look and what it looks like. In this case, Parsley is found in the far South West of the map, in tropical Cutlass Keys. I found the most near BALMY VELDT and HAUNTED ISLE.

Getting there, expect to encounter Tropical Boars, and Crocodiles. I am level 33 at the moment and the enemies are up to level 35. Try to stick to the roads and if too many mobs are after you, it’s best to run and dodge!

I hope this guide helps you find Exotic Herbs in New World.

New World Briar Branches – what they look like and where to find them

New World Briar

When trying to complete the Windsward Hamlet Barkeep’s No Confidence Stew quest, we need to find Briar Branches.

You can find Briar Branches near rivers and lakes. They are brown thorny bushes with green leaves, and will display “Briar” when looking at them. I found them near a lake just South West of Windsward Hamlet.

New World – How to Find Sporebloom Fruit to craft Common Health Potion

So there is a quest named “Alchemists Needed” in WindsWard Hamlet. The mission is to Acquire Common Health Potion. In order to complete this mission, one of the ingredients for the potion is named Sporebloom Fruit. Searching resource maps online didn’t help so I basically ran around along all the rivers in the area and collected all types of plants. I was then able to craft the Common Health Potion. At this point I found that we can click on the Recipe ingredient titled:
Tier 2 Medicinal Reagents (PRIMARY)

Under this recipe item I finally found all of the ingredients that make up Sporebloom Fruit. 1. Click on the Common Health Potion 2. Click on the Tier 2 Medicinal Reagents (PRIMARY) 0/1 Sporebloom Fruit menu:

3. Now uncheck / clear the box that says Owned Items:

4. Hover your mouse over each ingredient. Now we can see what the (Primary) ingredient constitutes, and they are:

Sporebloom Fruit (Sporebloom Fungus)
Glowing Mushroom Cap (Any Fungi)
Gillflower Gills (Gillflower Fungus)
Platecap Flesh (Platecap Fungus)
Lifebloom Stem (Lifebloom Plant)

How to upload Office365 user Contact Information with Powershell and csv file

If you have employees who change phone extensions, names, departments, address, or titles a lot, HR or management may want to have this contact information data updated in Office365. Oftentimes these little changes can add up and we want to make a lot of changes in bulk with a single command. Instead of updating manually, we can make the changes to an Excel csv file and upload the changes all at once.

Ok in order to import/update the contact information for employees in the Office 365 tenant using a csv file and PowerShell, do the following:

Edit the attached CSV file with information that needs to be imported into O365. **Note: the UserPrincipleName and DisplayName columns are required.** FYI, screenshot below is how I exported the required data from O365 and copied the required columns into the attached file.

contact_details_powershell_upload Download

Next, start a (hybrid) PowerShell session into your O365 tenant.

Run the following command, replacing the path in the script to the location of the .csv file on your computer.

Import-Csv "C:\Users\jcoltrin\Desktop\o365Users\contact_details_powershell_upload.csv" | foreach {Set-MsolUser -UserPrincipalName $_.UserPrincipalName -FirstName $_.FirstName -LastName $_.LastName -DisplayName $_.DisplayName -Title $_.Title -Department $_.Department -Office $_.Office -PhoneNumber $_.PhoneNumber -fax $_.fax -MobilePhone $_.MobilePhone -StreetAddress $_.StreetAddress -city $_.City -State $_.State -PostalCode $_.PostalCode -Country $_.Country

That’s it!

Solved – Microsoft Teams Start Recording Button Grayed Out

If your users report that the “Start Recording” button in Microsoft Teams is disabled and/or “greyed” out and/or “grayed out,” then perhaps recently the storage path for Teams to One Drive had changed, or there was a policy change or a tenant change occurred which caused the problem. Regardless, the following resolved the issue and fixed the grayed out problem for us. Special thanks to Ryu_Yosei for providing a solution here; below is the step-by-step.

For starters, this resolution’s time-to-fix is about 20 minutes. You’ll first want to start by opening a Microsoft Exchange Online Powershell Module as an Administrator, into the Tenant that is having the issue. If you’re unfamiliar with how to do this, follow the instructions in the first part of the procedure/guide here. One caveat, is that in order to import the required MicrosoftTeams module, we want to ensure that we start the Exchange Powershell session as an Administrator.

How to Run the Microsoft Exchange Online Powershell Module as Administrator

After installing the Hybrid Exchange Shell, we will probably have a desktop shortcut. Right-clicking on the shortcut doesn’t give us the usual “Run as an Administrator” option. Instead, we’ll want to first start a command ‘cmd’ prompt, run that as an administrator first, and then launch the Exchange Shell from within the command prompt.

Click the Start Button and type cmd
Right click on the Command Prompt app and choose Run as an Administrator

4. Next, inside the Administrator command prompt, issue the commands

cd c:\Users\Username\Desktop

5. Next start the Exchange module by running the command:

"Microsoft Exchange Online Powershell Module.appref-ms"

Start Exchange Powershell as Administrator

Now the Exchange Powershell session should open as an administrator and we can continue.

How to set Microsoft Teams Global Identity AllowCloudRecordingForCalls to $True

Inside the Exchange Powershell session, we’ll authenticate to our tenant with our username (email address) and the following command:

Connect-EXOPSSession -UserPrincipalName [email protected]

You may be prompted to log into O365, and perform multi-factor authentication if necessary. Next, if we do not already have the Teams module installed, issue the commands:

Get-Module MicrosoftTeams
Install-Module MicrosoftTeams

We’ll see some information asking to allow to trust the repo, so type y for yes.

PS C:\Users\jcoltrin> Install-Module MicrosoftTeams

Untrusted repository
You are installing the modules from an untrusted repository. If you trust this repository, change its
InstallationPolicy value by running the Set-PSRepository cmdlet. Are you sure you want to install the modules from
'PSGallery'?
[Y] Yes  [A] Yes to All  [N] No  [L] No to All  [S] Suspend  [?] Help (default is "N"): y

Next we’ll want to connect to Microsoft Teams in our tenant with the command:

Connect-MicrosoftTeams

We’ll have the system return some information including our Account, Environment, Tenant, and TenantId. We can now check the status of our CsTeamsCallingPolicy with the command:

Get-CsTeamsCallingPolicy -Identity Global

In our case if we look at the entry for AllowCloudRecordingForCalls, we can see it is set to False:

Teams AllowCloudRecordingForCalls set to False

To change this to True, use the following command:

Set-CsTeamsCallingPolicy -Identity Global -AllowCloudRecordingForCalls $true

We can check to see if the command worked by issuing the previous command again:

Get-CsTeamsCallingPolicy -Identity Global

We can now see that AllowCloudRecordingForCalls is now set to True:

The setting should take place pretty much immediately across the tenant, however, users will still see the Start Recording button is disabled or grayed out until they completely Quit Teams and then restart the App again. To quit teams, in the bottom-right corner of the Windows primary desktop, down by the clock, expand the SysTray, right-click on the Teams icon and choose Quit.

Restart and/or Sign into Microsoft Teams again, start a test Call/Meeting with an associate, and check to see that Start Recording is now available and enabled.

Hopefully this guide helps restore your ability to record Teams calls. If something else worked for you, please leave a note in the comments below.

How to Sync a SharePoint Library to Windows File Explorer with OneDrive Files On-Demand

If your organization has been utilizing SharePoint’s “View in File Explorer” or “Open With Explorer” to map a drive to a SharePoint directory, you may have had problems opening SharePoint files in File Explorer, the connection between SharePoint and the File Explorer breaks, the Mapped Drive disconnects, or the connection is unreliable. Also, SharePoint can be a bit cumbersome when trying to work with files in the web-browser. The outdated SharePoint “View in File Explorer” feature was built with WebDav in the 90’s, and may use ActiveX controls, which is why it relies on Internet Explorer version 10 and/or 11 to run. You may recall we wrote about troubleshooting SharePoint’s “Open in File Explorer” here.

Microsoft’s preferred alternative to “View in File Explorer” is OneDrive Sync, and Files On Demand (FOD.) When we think of “Sync”, we probably think of the classic Windows “Offline Files” configured in the Control Panel’s Sync Center. However, OneDrive Sync is not the same as Offline Files.

OneDrive Sync utilizes the more modern technology, Files-on-Demand (FOD), which is configured in OneDrive Settings. Once configured, Files on Demand will only pull the index of all the files and folders in a SharePoint Library.

If desired, we can get the entire file/folder/data by right-clicking on the file or folder and choosing “Always keep on this device.” By default, if FOD is enabled, and we choose to Sync, we’ll only get an index of the SharePoint Library in the File Explorer (and we won’t sync the entire library and data contained there in.)

How to Enable Files On Demand and Sync a SharePoint Library

Before we Sync our SharePoint Library, make sure the OneDrive app is up to date and is running and logged in with the same credentials used to log into SharePoint online at www.office.com. Look for the blue or white cloud icon in the Systray (bottom right corner of your primary screen; near the clock,) then right-click, and click Settings.

Next, in the Settings dialog box, near the bottom, place a check mark in the Files On-Demand / “Save space and download files as you use them” checkbox.

Next, open the Edge web browser and sign into www.office.com. Click on the SharePoint icon and then navigate to a Document Library that you would like to sync. Next, click the Sync button at the top of the Library:

Normally we’ll see a couple pop-ups: Getting Ready to Sync, and You are Now Syncing:

We’ll now have the SharePoint Library’s index built in our File Explorer with the files now having a status of either “Cloud Icon” or “Green Check Mark” next to each folder/file. As the Sync runs, we can check the Sync status by right-clicking on the OneDrive icon in the Systray.

If you attempt to sync a library that already has a shortcut pointing to that library from within the user’s OneDrive folder, you may get an error:

Sorry, we can’t sync this folder – You’ve already syncing a shortcut to a folder from this shared library.

So what the error means is just that. Look in the user’s OneDrive folder in the file explorer and look for a folder/file that has a link icon (screenshot below). Special thanks to Hans Bender blog for pointing this out: https://hansbrender.com/2020/10/07/onedrive-for-business-add-to-onedrive-problems/

OneDrive Shortcut to Library

The icon will appear to have a link, so right-click on the folder that’s pointing to the Library you’re trying to Sync, and choose remove shortcut. Now we should be able to Sync the library.

If we want to have the file in SharePoint downloaded completely to our computer, right-click and choose “Always keep on this device.”

We probably do not want “Always keep on Device” for the entire Folder/Library, as it will eat up our entire hard drive.

Always keep on this device OneDrive Sync

If a file or folder is inadvertently kept on our device, we can right-click and instead choose “Free up space” on the file (greyed-out in the screenshot above.)

Take note in the screenshot above, the newly-synced Shared Library is not directly under OneDrive in the left navigation pane of the File Explorer, instead, it is listed separately below it and has a different “building” type icon.

So now we can use Word and Excel apps to browse our local computer for files that are synced with SharePoint without having to use the old “Open/View in File Explorer” method.

For example, if we want to open a SharePoint file inside Excel, we click the File menu > Open > Browse > Organization / Library > File.xlsx > Open

Once we have made our changes and click Save, we’ll see a green checkmark under the Status column inside the File Explorer.

Excel File SharePoint Sync Status

We hope that if you’ve experienced difficulty opening SharePoint files in the Windows 10 File explorer, this procedure and OneDrive Sync will provide a more stable and fluid means of browsing SharePoint files in the File Explorer.