Connection to Office 365 Account may Fail or Timeout When You Try to Connect from WS 2012 Essentials Dashboard

When you try to connect to Office 365 from the Windows Server 2012 Essentials Dashboard, the connection may fail or timeout.

This happens when the SYSTEM account is not able to establish an internet connection to the Office 365 site, but there is a workaround:

1. Download PsTools from http://download.sysinternals.com/files/PSTools.zip and extract it into a folder.
2. Open Command Prompt as Administrator and navigate to the folder where PsTools are extracted.
3. To open Internet Explorer under SYSTEM account, run PsExec.exe s i “C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\Iexplore.exe”.
4. On the Internet Explorer window that has been opened under SYSTEM account, open Internet Options from the Tools icon. Navigate to the Connections tab, and click on LAN Settings. Clear the check for Automatically detect settings.
5. Close the Dashboard and restart the Windows Server Office 365 Integration Service.
6. Open the Dashboard again and you will find the Office 365 information available in the respective windows now. If that is not the case, you may need to restart the server.

More information on this particular error can be found here.

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