The Essentials Server to Office 365 integration tool is great because it automatically replicates the same credentials from in house to Office 365 with little administrative overhead.
If you successfully had the Office 365 integration service working between Essentials Server and Office 365 and it stopped working, it may be due to a recent Windows update. I have seen this problem happen on the same server multiple times after deploying Windows updates.
Note: Essentials Server is limited to 25 users. If you are over 25 users, you should upgrade your licensing and keys to Standard.
If you click around on various blogs, you may be tempted to scrap the Essentials Server 365 integration tool and download and install Microsoft’s Azure Active Directory Connect instead. Don’t. That tool is only intended to be used with Standard or Datacenter versions of Windows Server. It should not be installed or used on Essentials.
If you already attempted to rerun the 365 Integration Wizard and it failed, you probably wondered why these so-called “wizards” can’t use their magic to fix themselves.
I know I cannot be the only one. You start installing something and you get excited to learn that there is a handy little wizard that will walk you through the process. Everything is going fine until you get the little red circle with a white X. “There was an issue configuring the integration”. We did everything right, we followed all the steps, but here is Microsoft telling us we failed once again.
Unless you are a Pro error interpreter or just really love surfing through logs to find an exception, we have a path of least resistance to attempt before we curse Microsoft’s name again for yet another update than causes us undo pain.
An exception with the BecWebServiceAdapter is likely what has caused our wizard friend to kick the bucket. According to Microsoft, “the issue occurs due to a web exception when the Bec Web Service API tries to reach out to the remote endpoint for provisioning purpose”. This is stored in our registry keys.
To repair the connection we can look in REGEDIT.
When you open REGEDIT, locate the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE folder and choose the SOFTWARE hive.
- Click Microsoft
- Windows Server
- Productivity
- O365Integration
- Settings
In here you will see the BecEndPointAddress key. Delete it. Pro tip: Always make a backup of your registry before deleting keys.
Now that we have deleted the BecEndPointAddress key, we can go back into our Essentials console.
- 365 Summary Tab
- Change admin account
- Reenter your account
It will reconnect and restart the console.
Now your Wizard should run smoothly and you will be back on the road to integration in no time.
Note: If this service has been offline for some time you may want to warn your end users any password changes they made in house will be updating on Office 365 accounts. They may get prompted by Outlook or mobile devices to update credentials.
If you are still having trouble getting the integration back online please don’t hesitate to give us a call. There are many other reasons you may be having connectivity issues.