Update, fixed: KB3176934 breaks remote PowerShell

Update: This issue has been fixed in the re-released KB3176938 update.

Today I ran into an error message on one of my systems. PowerShell was unable to import my remote session to Exchange Online.

Import-PSSession : Could not load type 'System.Management.Automation.SecuritySupport' from assembly 'System.Management.Automation, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35'.

A quick Google search learned that this KB3176934 update was released a couple of days ago and is known to break DSC, remote PS and probably other stuff.

Microsoft scheduled an updated update to be released on the 30th of August 2016. If you can’t wait for some reason, for instance you planned to do some actual work today, uninstall the update and reboot your system.

wusa /uninstall /kb:3176934

Source: PowerShell DSC and implicit remoting broken in KB3176934

Focused Inbox admin controls appear in Exchange Online

Back in 2014 Microsoft acquired Acompli, a company that had developed the popular mobile apps with a feature called Focused Inbox. A server side algorithm was used to “learn” the difference between important email and less important email, providing the users a very clean view of their mailbox showing only the most relevant messages.

The Acompli apps have then been rebranded to Outlook Mobile and the algorithm was migrated to Office 365 and Azure’s machine learning capabilities. The next step is to bring Focused Inbox to Outlook and Outlook on the Web, which Microsoft recently announced. See Outlook helps you focus on what matters to you.

I’m sure that any Exchange Online admin remembers how Clutter was introduced, a new and potentially confusing mailbox feature without any admin controls. With Focused Inbox Microsoft is planning to do a better job and has announced admin control before the actual roll-out to the Office 365 tenants.

Admins will be able to disable or enable Focused Inbox on the tenant level with Set-OrganizationConfig and the -FocusedInboxOn parameter. Similar to Clutter there will be cmdlets to manage the feature per mailbox as well, expect something like Get-FocusedInbox and Set-FocusedInbox.

Focused Inbox will begin to roll-out in the September-October timeframe, starting with First Release customers. More information on admin controls will be available before roll-out, giving admins more time to develop a strategy on how to handle the implementation of this new feature.