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No listicles and no predictions about the future of work. These are write-ups of things that happened on real projects, published because the useful detail is usually the part nobody else prints.
Latest
The method that makes process automation stick: the person, the written procedure, then the software; five department routines on Microsoft 365, priced.
Read it →How to train employees to spot phishing, check a link, handle an attachment and notice a compromised mailbox; who runs it, how often, and the Microsoft tools.
Read it →Windows Server 2016 stops receiving security updates on 12 January 2027. The four options, priced from our list: upgrade, Azure, ESU, or isolate.
Read it →How Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Azure subscriptions move from one Cloud Solution Provider to another: what transfers, what does not, and what it costs.
Read it →Every change in Microsoft's September 2026 price list for Europe: four up, one down, six new, with old and new list prices and what to do before renewal.
Read it →How a Microsoft 365 mailbox is taken over with multi-factor authentication on, what the attacker does inside for four days, and how to defend and recover.
Read it →For owners who see IT as overhead: what it does for the sale price, the insurance premium and the risk register, and four things that happen when it is cut.
Read it →What attack simulation in Microsoft Defender does, who it is for, how a campaign against thirty or five hundred people runs, and how it becomes a budget.
Read it →What Extended Security Updates cover, how they are bought and switched on, and three worked cases for Windows Server, SQL Server and Windows 10, priced.
Read it →Five real patterns: engineering PMs and finance, healthcare HR and operations, a law firm, logistics sales, a non-profit — what Copilot automated, what it did not, and the three things every rollout depends on.
Read it →What Copilot Studio is, how it is licensed (included with Copilot or €173 per 25,000 messages), the six steps to build an agent, the three agents most companies build first, and the three ways it goes wrong.
Read it →An honest comparison from a company that sells Copilot and uses all three: the model is not the reason; where the data can be seen, where it goes, where the tool appears and who governs it are. When Copilot is the first purchase, and when a Claude or ChatGPT seat belongs alongside it.
Read it →Microsoft sells six things called Copilot. The map: what each is, who it is for, what it costs (free to €2,080 a year), and which to choose for which purpose — Chat, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Business, Copilot Studio, GitHub Copilot.
Read it →A 260-person distributor built two Copilot Studio agents in six weeks: an IT support agent that resets passwords, locks lost laptops and cut tickets from ninety a week to fifty-five, and an HR onboarding workflow that put every laptop on the desk on day one. What it cost: about €720 a month.
Read it →Six plan families, user or device, three terms, three channels: the four axes behind every Microsoft 365 licence name, with the rule that picks each.
Read it →Guides
Written against the threads that recur for years in Microsoft’s own forums, verified against current documentation, with the exact order and the traps.
Seven days, then the term is binding. What the three terms commit you to, how seat reductions work, what happens at expiry, and the two mistakes that cost real money.
Read it →Microsoft now requires a second factor for its admin portals. The five things that break — starting with the six-year-old script running as a user — and the order to fix them.
Read it →The standard advice stops working at 50 GB, exactly where the mailboxes you most want to keep already are. Four options, what each costs, and which fits which situation.
Read it →Free, built in, higher fidelity than copying items, and with prerequisites that stall most first attempts. What has to exist before the batch runs, and what it leaves for other tools.
Read it →Whether the mailbox comes back depends on which state it is in and how many days have passed. How to tell, the commands for each, and the OneDrive clock that runs separately.
Read it →Three reports Microsoft already gives you, an afternoon, and the same three findings every time. How to run it, and how to turn it into money at renewal.
Read it →Nothing bounces and everything goes to junk. The DKIM records are tenant-specific and still describe the tenant you left. What each record does, the fix in order, and the five-minute test.
Read it →A licensed mailbox with a password everyone knows and MFA off is a licensing breach and the softest target in the tenant. The fix is free and takes twenty minutes.
Read it →The files are all there and nobody can find them. What Known Folder Move does, how to deploy it weeks ahead, and the cutover sequence for OneDrive.
Read it →A group is an identity, a mailbox, a site, a membership and whatever sits on top, each with its own route or none. The sequence that works, and the five mistakes.
Read it →Remove the licence and wait thirty days and the mailbox is gone. Three ways to keep it, the exact order, and the traps that catch people every week in Microsoft’s own forums.
Read it →When no administrator can sign in there is one supported path back, and it is slow. What to try first, how to reach Microsoft, and the emergency accounts every tenant should have.
Read it →Your data lives in your tenant and the tenant is yours. Six steps, the one that costs money if you time it wrong, and what to check before you accept.
Read it →A custom domain lives in one tenant at a time. What has to be true before the weekend, ten steps in order, and the DNS mistake that sends everything to spam.
Read it →A team is four services in one, each with its own migration path or none. What actually arrives when tools migrate chat, and the decision that saves most of the cost.
Read it →Write-ups
Five real patterns: engineering PMs and finance, healthcare HR and operations, a law firm, logistics sales, a non-profit — what Copilot automated, what it did not, and the three things every rollout depends on.
Read it →What Copilot Studio is, how it is licensed (included with Copilot or €173 per 25,000 messages), the six steps to build an agent, the three agents most companies build first, and the three ways it goes wrong.
Read it →An honest comparison from a company that sells Copilot and uses all three: the model is not the reason; where the data can be seen, where it goes, where the tool appears and who governs it are. When Copilot is the first purchase, and when a Claude or ChatGPT seat belongs alongside it.
Read it →Microsoft sells six things called Copilot. The map: what each is, who it is for, what it costs (free to €2,080 a year), and which to choose for which purpose — Chat, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Business, Copilot Studio, GitHub Copilot.
Read it →A 260-person distributor built two Copilot Studio agents in six weeks: an IT support agent that resets passwords, locks lost laptops and cut tickets from ninety a week to fifty-five, and an HR onboarding workflow that put every laptop on the desk on day one. What it cost: about €720 a month.
Read it →Six plan families, user or device, three terms, three channels: the four axes behind every Microsoft 365 licence name, with the rule that picks each.
Read it →Windows Server and SQL Server priced both ways from the September 2026 lists: CSP perpetual is 40% cheaper over three years; Open Value adds Software Assurance. Four cases where each wins.
Read it →Every partner uses one of these five. What each does well, where each stops, and the honest pick for five situations — from a partner that resells none of them.
Read it →Nine questions that separate people who have done this from people who have read about it — with the answers you should expect, and the things to ignore.
Read it →The tool vendors say no professional services required. Sometimes they are right. The honest test, the cases where it fails, and the middle option nobody advertises.
Read it →The comparison without the reseller in the room. Where an EA still wins, the four things CSP does that an EA cannot, and the one question that actually decides it.
Read it →The schedule is set by concurrency limits, mailbox size distribution and throttling — not by budget. The arithmetic behind real timelines, and the two things that genuinely shorten them.
Read it →A relocation, 24 TB, no downtime allowed — and a failed virtual machine that put duplicate mail into live mailboxes. What broke, how it was fixed, and why the same fix would not work today.
Read it →Endpoint management falls under co-determination in Germany. Projects that treat approval as a formality get halted after deployment. What is in scope, how long it takes, and how to sequence around it.
Read it →Something you would like written up? Ask — almak@itpartnerhq.com. We would rather write about the question people actually have.
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