MS 365 E5 Advanced Usage: Renew Subscription, One Drive Upgrade to 5T & Create Catch All Exchange Mail Rule

After received free Microsoft 365 E5 developer program's subscription, there are some special consideration or configuration you might want to think about it. Here are some advanced usage cases I collected.

Renew Subscription

You can check your Microsoft 365 E5 subscription from this link: https://portal.office.com/account/?ref=MeControl#subscriptions

For subscription status, check this page: https://admin.microsoft.com/Adminportal/Home?source=applauncher#/subscriptions

Based on Microsoft 365 Developer Program faq:

"

Your subscription is good for 90 days and is renewable based on valid developer activity. If you're using your subscription for development, it will be renewed every 3 months and will last indefinitely. 

"

And Microsoft use "a set of algorithms and telemetry that we get from your activity in the Microsoft 365 Developer Program and on your Office 365 E3 or Microsoft 365 E5 developer subscription to determine whether you are actively developing".

Basically, Microsoft does not give clear ideas what kind of activities can be defined as actively developing. But lots of people believes as long as you are using API actively, your subscription should be safe. 

One example to use API is to set up your OneDrive Index site. Here is my previous post about a serverless OneDrive Index Setup

Here are some posts:

• https://github.com/vcheckzen/FODI
• https://logi.im/back-end/fodi-on-cloudflare.html
• https://github.com/spencerwooo/onedrive-cf-index

Docker to run OneIndex： https://github.com/TimeBye/oneindex

There are some other suggestions to create some apps on your Microsoft 365 subscriptions. 

Check your Microsoft 365 Developer Program subscription using your original account (a personal account: such as [email protected]), not account with onmicrosoft.com domain, such as admin@<Your Site>.onmicrosoft.com. 

Increase OneDrive Space from 1T to 5T or More

Log into Microsoft 365 admin center using an admin account. 

Admin centers ->All admin centers -> OneDrive

Or directly from this link: https://admin.onedrive.com/?v=StorageSettings

Change default (mininum) storage in GB from 1024 to 5120 for 5T space.

If 5T is still not enough, there are some other ways to upgrade to 25T for your account based on some Internet posts. You can find one post how to do this 25T upgrade from references section. 

Use Web GUI， only those user accounts created after this change made will get 5T. Existing account before 5T change made, are still got only 1T. 

Here are steps to use Shell tool to modify existing accounts' OneDrive space:

1. InstallSharePoint Online Management Shell ToolDownload Address: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/download/details.aspx?id=35588

2. Enter following code from Shell window

Connect-SPOService -Url https://<organization name>.sharepoint.com

You can find out your organization name after you logged into your SharePoint site. For example, my url is https://51sec.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx

so my organization name is 51sec, then the code would be 

Connect-SPOService -Url https://51sec.sharepoint.com

3. After enter the code, you will be prompted Microsoft 365 login window. Using your admin email address and password to log in. 

4. Change certain user's (for example: test) OneDrive space size using following code:

Set-SPOSite -Identity https://51sec.sharepoint.com/personal/test mk -StorageQuota 5242880

Now you have successfully increased your existing user test's OneDrive space size from 1T to 5T.

Catch All Emails

1. Change your domain to default domain and make sure accepted domain is Internal relay type. 

2. Create a rule

Start from admin -> All Admin Centers -> Exchange

or from this url: https://admin.exchange.microsoft.com/#/homepage

Create a new rule:

Basically, all external user (Sender is located outside the organization) sent emails will be redirected to netsec and test those two users' email boxes. Although you can add external email address into forwarded address, it is not working for catch all rule. 

I have to configure to catch all emails (choose apply to all messages) to forward to external email box to get this working. 

Note: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/30462.office365-catch-all-mailbox.aspx

Allow auto-forwarding to external domain

Automatic - System-controlled is the default setting now. This setting is now the same as Off. When this setting was originally introduced, it was equivalent to On. Over time, thanks to the principles of secure by default, this setting was gradually changed to Off for all customers. For more information, see this blog post.

Note: Control automatic external email forwarding in Microsoft 365

To configure forwarding: 

1. In the admin center, go to the Users > Active users page.

2. Select the name of the user whose email you want to forward, then open the properties page.

3. On the Mail tab, select Manage email forwarding.

4. On the email forwarding page, select Forward all emails sent to this mailbox, enter the forwarding address, and choose whether you want to keep a copy of forwarded emails. If you don't see this option, make sure a license is assigned to the user account. Select Save changes.

   To forward to multiple email addresses, you can ask the user to set up a rule in Outlook to forward to the addresses.

   1. Open outlook > Home > Rules > Select Manage Rules & Alerts
   2. Select New Rule > Select Apply rule on message I receive located near bottom of list, then click Next.
   3. Click Yes when asked This rule will be applied to every message you receive.
   4. On the next list select the actions redirect it to people or public group and stop processing more rules
   5. Click the underlined phrase people or public group in the bottom part of window.
   6. Type the email address to forward mail to in the To field, then click OK.
   7. Select Finish

References

• 微软OneDrive网盘免费升级到25T容量教程
• O365 OneDrive Usage Tips and Tricks
• Onedrive容量 1T 修改 为5T，老帐号不删除重建
• How much "active developing" is required to keep Microsoft 365 Developer subscription renewing?
• Configuring Catch all Mailbox in Office 365 | Part 1#2