PRA Cloud Mailbox 2.0.0

Aligned with PRA Remote Mailbox: same logic, command line, console and guides, for scenario 2 (AD, Exchange and Entra Connect lost).

Highlights

• PowerShell 7.5 for everything. Collect reads Exchange through a remote Kerberos session from any domain-joined server. Set Exchange.Server; Exchange.ConnectionMode is gone.
• Protected snapshot. Collect writes a .sha256 file beside the snapshot; Check, Convert and Recover verify it before any change.
• Guided console. Five pages (Setup, Task, Verify, Run, Next steps), mandatory preview, typed confirmation, interactive sign-in option, light or dark theme.
• Choose the objects of a run. -CsvPath, -SearchBase, -Group, -MaxObjects; Check -Batch <id> -Expect and one global report per batch.
• Schedule the daily Collect with -Action Schedule.
• No more waiting for ever. Every Microsoft 365 call has a time limit; a batch continues from its journal.
• Nothing case sensitive, and every failed run ends with the next step and the exact command.
• Native rooms and equipment (opt-in) with Scope.ResourceMode = 'CloudResource'.
• New guides: a beginner user guide and an administrator guide with the minimum permissions.

Upgrading from 1.x

Recreate the scheduled Collect task with pwsh.exe, set Exchange.Server, remove Exchange.ConnectionMode. Snapshots and journals from 1.x are still read.

Requirements

• PowerShell 7.5 or later.
• ExchangeOnlineManagement 3.10.1 or later; Microsoft.Graph.Authentication 2.41.1 or later.

Delivery

• Signed and timestamped runtime ZIP (PraCloudMailbox-2.0.0.zip). See CHANGELOG.md for the full list.

PRA Cloud Mailbox 1.2.0

Volume: bulk reads, phased Convert/Recover by waves (users and shared mailboxes), several case hold policies in the same eDiscovery case once 1,000 mailboxes is reached, progress events and a rough duration estimate, an option to convert room/equipment mailboxes like shared ones. See CHANGELOG.md for the full list.

PRA Cloud Mailbox 1.1.0

A window for every action, and waves of objects. The engine is unchanged when it runs without the window.

Added

• The window (Invoke-PraCloudMailbox.ps1 -Gui, Windows PowerShell 5.1 and PowerShell 7): the next step, the
  configuration (certificate found and valid until), the last snapshot and Check, the batches and this computer at a
  glance; a page per action with its table of objects (filter by text, status, type, 21,000 objects); Convert and
  Recover by waves of ticked objects. Every action runs the same script in its own PowerShell (5.1 for Collect, 7
  for the others) with its log, transcript, journal and report, and the activity panel follows it step by step.
  Convert… and Recover… are enabled only after a preview of exactly the same selection, and ask for a typed
  confirmation (CONVERT, RECOVER). Stop after the current object ends the run cleanly (resumable). The
  questions of Entra Connect Manual mode are asked in the window. Fluent theme with PowerShell 7.5 and later.
• -IdentityPath: Check, Convert and Recover on a list of objects (one identity per line, or a CSV file with an
  Identity column); the identities found nowhere are listed as a warning.
• PRA2.Common: events of the run for the window (PRA_EVENT_FILE), stop request (PRA_STOP_FILE), questions
  to the operator in the window or in the console (Request-PraOperator).
• Tests: PraCloudMailbox.Gui.Tests.ps1 (both editions, a real child run included); end-to-end scenarios for waves
  with -IdentityPath, a stop of Convert and of Recover followed by their resume, and the events of a run.

Changed

• Entra Connect Manual mode asks through Request-PraOperator: in the window when the run belongs to it,
  otherwise in the console as before.
• The package contains module\PRA2.Gui.psm1 and module\PRA2.Gui.xaml.

Fixed

• Microsoft Graph calls are sent again when the connection failed without an answer (timeout, reset): seen in the
  lab just after a long delta cycle, it stopped a Recover (cleanly; running it again resumed the batch).

Download PraCloudMailbox-1.1.0.zip: the files needed to run, with the user guide and the developer guide in HTML. Unblock the files after extracting them (Get-ChildItem -Recurse -File | Unblock-File).

PRA Cloud Mailbox 1.0.0

First public release of PRA Cloud Mailbox, the tool of the Exchange disaster recovery scenario 2: Active Directory, Exchange and Entra Connect are lost at the same time.

• Collect (Windows PowerShell 5.1, every day on an Exchange server): mailboxes, GUIDs, X500 addresses and the shared mailbox permissions (FullAccess with AutoMapping, SendAs, SendOnBehalf, groups expanded) into a SQLite snapshot — after the disaster nothing on-premises can be read.
• Check (PowerShell 7, read-only): is every object ready? Entra ID object, Exchange Online recipient, licences, permissions of the app registration.
• Convert (disaster): the identities move to cloud management and get an Exchange plan — licence group (cloud or synchronised from AD), Kiosk plan of the Teams licence, or direct licence. The Teams storage of each user becomes his mailbox, with his chats. Shared mailboxes are converted one after another with one temporary licence unit, tagged, with the permissions of the snapshot.
• Recover (infrastructure rebuilt): the identities go back to AD; the users' cloud data stays under an eDiscovery case hold, the cloud shared mailboxes become inactive mailboxes and Entra Connect recreates their objects. Licences are put back exactly as they were. No mail is deleted.
• Preview by default, one confirmation, a batch ID and a journal with the original state of every object; every run resumes where the previous one stopped.

Validated in a lab (Exchange Server SE, Entra Connect 2.6, Microsoft 365 E5 with Teams): every action and every licensing mode, shared mailboxes, waves, Entra Connect remoting (developer guide, appendix B). Offline test gate: Pester (PowerShell 7: 100 passed; Windows PowerShell 5.1: 82 passed), including end-to-end scenarios against an in-memory tenant; PSScriptAnalyzer clean.

Package: PraCloudMailbox-1.0.0.zip contains only the files needed to run (script, modules, SQLite engine, templates, configuration with empty environment values, samples) and both guides in HTML (light and dark theme). Unblock the files after extracting them (see the README), then start with the user guide.