Connect PowerShell to Office365 to manage Exchange – UPDATED

After a lot of Googling and discovering lots of incomplete instructions and horrible 50 page essays-form how-tos with old dead links, I figured it out, it’s really freaking easy and once you get the right programs, only a couple steps…sheesh

UPDATE – now even easier – UPDATE

1. Run powershell as administrator
2. Run:

   Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

3. Then run

   $UserCredential = Get-Credential

4. Type in your credentials in the pop-up, then run

   $Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/ -Credential $UserCredential -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection

5. And finally run

   Import-PSSession $Session

   And you’re there!

If you are reading this in the past – on, November 6th, 2014 – here is how to do it:

1. Download the Microsoft Online Services Sign-In Assistant Wizard, install it and reboot
2. Download the Windows Azure Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell and install it
3. Find the “Windows Azure Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell” on your start menu (start menu search helps)
4. In the shell, run:

   $Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/ -Credential $UserCredential -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection

   type in your office365 administrator credentials in the popup and hit OK

5. After the connection is made, run this:

   Import-PSSession $Session

You only get 3 PowerShell connections so when you are done, make sure you run:

Remove-PSSession $Session

As a special bonus, I was trying to establish the connection to give everyone in the org reviewer access to everyone else’s calendar – sharing is caring – so if you need to do that, run:

 foreach($user in Get-Mailbox -RecipientTypeDetails UserMailbox) {
$cal = $user.alias+":\Calendar" 
Set-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity $cal -User Default -AccessRights Reviewer
}