Office 365 Weekly

It’s Moving Day...

Thomas C. Finney — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 23:33:34 GMT

Update: All content published through June 20, 2019 will be available at this site. I will have the "Planned Service Changes" posts for 2019, 2020 & 2023 on the new blog, where they will continue to be updated. As announced a few weeks ago Office 365 Weekly is moving, and moving day is now here. Between email and RSS subscriptions, over 2000 people follow this blog each week, and for that I am very grateful. I look forward to welcoming you all, and lots of new folks, to the new home! The blog and RSS feed links are included below, and both will be live no later than Monday, June 24, 2019 for the next Office 365 Weekly post.

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Thank you all again for your support over the last 3 ½ years! I really hope to see you soon… Sincerely, Thomas

Office 365 Weekly Digest | June 9 – 15, 2019

Thomas C. Finney — Mon, 17 Jun 2019 14:00:47 GMT

Welcome to the June 9 - 15, 2019 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest. There were eight additions to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, with half of those for Teams and also including features for Outlook (web & Windows), MyAnalytics and Office 365 ProPlus. There is one new event for this week's post - the June 2019 virtual meetup for Women IT Pros on Friday, June 28, 2019 at 12pm Pacific. This week's spotlight event is the "Speaking of Security - Privacy Compliance" webinar on Thursday, June 20, 2019 at 10am Pacific. Highlights from last week's blogs include recent updates to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, a look at Planner updates over the last six months, and a summary of the announcements for Microsoft Flow, PowerApps and Power BI from last week's Microsoft Business Application Summit. Wrapping up are noteworthy items including details on what's new in Office deployment for IT Pros, a Microsoft Mechanics video on Multi-Geo capabilities in Office 365, and a Microsoft IT Experts Roundtable focused on portals and publication in SharePoint. REMINDER: As announced a few weeks ago, Office 365 Weekly is moving to a new home. I will post one last time on the current blog (by Wednesday, June 19th) with the details on the new home, new RSS and Feedly feeds, new email subscription sign-up, etc.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

Below are the items added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week…

Feature ID	App / Service	Description	Details	Status	Added	Estimated Release	More Info
51938	Teams	Microsoft Teams - External Access in Office 365 Government GCC High and DoD	Seamlessly communicate with people outside your organization with Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams external access allows users from other domains to participate in your chats and calls, including those who are still using Skype for Business Online or Skype for Business on-prem.	In development	06/10/2019	July CY2019	n / a
52256	Teams	Microsoft Teams - Unified Presence (Skype for Business and Teams unified) in Office 365 Government GCC High and DoD	Presence states for users (i.e. available, busy or in a call) is now aggregated between Teams and Skype for Business. This ensures that a user has a single presence state regardless of the app and the device they use. For this functionality, the underlying Skype for Business account that is connected to the Teams user needs to be hosted in Skype for Business online.	In development	06/10/2019	July CY2019	n / a
50586	Teams	Microsoft Teams - Information Barriers	Avoid conflicts of interest within your organization by limiting which individuals can communicate and collaborate with each other in Microsoft Teams. This helps limit the disclosure of information by controlling communication between the holders of information and colleagues representing different interests, for example, in Firstline Worker scenarios. This is particularly helpful for organizations that need to adhere to Ethical Wall requirements and other related industry standards and regulations.	In development	06/10/2019	June CY2019	n / a
52278	Office 365 ProPlus	Expanding your organization's transparency and control over Microsoft 365 cloud connected experiences for Office to additional platforms	In the Office 365 ProPlus 1904 update for Windows, we launched new controls to enable organizations to determine the level of diagnostic and related data that Office sends to Microsoft. Now, we're updating the Office apps for Mac, iOS, and Android, to honor those controls as well.	In development	06/12/2019	July CY2019	Overview of privacy controls for Office 365 ProPlus
52276	MyAnalytics	MyAnalytics Dashboard is coming to more Microsoft 365 and Office 365 suites	The MyAnalytics Dashboard will be made available to everyone using Office 365 and Microsoft 365 Enterprise and Business suites that include Exchange Online, specifically Microsoft 365 E5, E3, Business, Office 365 E5, E3, E1, Business Premium and Business Essentials.	In development	06/12/2019	Q4 CY2019	n / a
51966	Teams	Microsoft Teams for Firstline Workers: Import a schedule into Shifts	Now in Teams, importing larger shift schedule amounts simplifies the manager experience.	Rolling out	06/13/2019	July CY2019	n / a
52371	Outlook Web	Outlook on the web - Authentication Session Management	Authentication Session Management allows you to control the frequency at which your users are required to enter their credentials. Admins will be able to configure both the Sign-in frequency as well as if sessions will persist after Outlook on the web is closed.	In development	06/13/2019	June CY2019	n / a
49924	Outlook Windows	Outlook for Windows supports Black Office Theme with reading pane toggle	Office Black theme will turn all Outlook screens into dark mode and adds a sun/moon toggle between black and white based on your preference for reading message content.	In development	06/14/2019	Q4 CY2019	n / a

UPCOMING EVENTS

Make the switch from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams: End User Guidance Designed specifically for Skype for Business end users, this course offers everything you need to help make the transition to Microsoft Teams. We'll focus on the core communication capabilities you use today, chat and meetings, as well as provide an orientation to additional collaboration functionality Teams has to offer. The session is also available on demand at https://aka.ms/fromskypetoteamsondemand.

Getting Started with Microsoft Teams This 60-minute session introduces you to the key activities needed to get started with Microsoft Teams today. From setting your profile, to running a meeting, users will leave this session with the foundation needed to use Teams with confidence. The session is also available on demand at https://aka.ms/teamsgettingstartedondemand.

Microsoft Teams Tips and Tricks (Part 1) Designed for those who are already familiar with Microsoft Teams, our Tips and Tricks sessions offer insights, best practices and advanced functionality to help optimize how Teams can work for you. Each session will also include a few real-world examples of how customers are using Microsoft Teams today. Part 1 is focused on tips for conversations and meetings. Many of our interactions start as a simple chat. Learn how you can take those conversations to the next level, including: (1) Formatting messages to help increase response rates, (2) Managing conversations to easily track and follow-up, (3) Organizing conversations, keeping important and active chats front-and-center, (4) Expanding conversations into a full meeting experience, and more. Prefer to watch this session on your own time or simply want a refresher after attending the live training? Access the consolidated on-demand version of Tips and Tricks here: https://aka.ms/teamstipsandtricksondemand.

Microsoft Teams Tips and Tricks (Part 2) Designed for those who are already familiar with Microsoft Teams, our Tips and Tricks sessions offer insights, best practices and advanced functionality to help optimize how Teams can work for you. Each session will also include a few real-world examples of how customers are using Microsoft Teams today. Organizing your workflow and projects in Teams can really help simplify productivity. Join us for Part 2 of this series, where you'll learn tips including: (1) Implementing effective strategies creating and managing teams and channels, (2) Leveraging best practices for channel-based conversations, (3) Utilizing a personal team to manage your own productivity, (4) Designing your workspace to quickly find relevant content in Teams, and more. Prefer to watch this session on your own time or simply want a refresher after attending the live training? Access the consolidated on-demand version of Tips and Tricks here: https://aka.ms/teamstipsandtricksondemand.

Maximizing Teams Meetings The average employee spends approximately 30% of their working life in meetings. But meetings in Microsoft Teams are designed to be flexible and enable different types of connections for all the ways that work needs to get done. For users who are familiar with Microsoft Teams but want to better understand and optimize the Teams meeting experience, this session provides guidance into how to create spontaneous and scheduled meetings, leverage the pre, during and post-meeting features, identifying supported devices, and more.

Upgrade 101: Managing your upgrade from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams (Part 1) As an existing Skype for Business customer, we understand that upgrading to a new technology can be confusing and are committed to supporting you on your journey to Microsoft Teams. Through our two upgrade classes, you will find everything you need to plan and implement your upgrade. Part 1 is focused on upgrade planning and user readiness. Targeting project stakeholders with accountability for Skype for Business to Teams upgrade success and user readiness/change managers, this session serves as the foundation for your upgrade planning, including: (1) An overview of our proven, upgrade success framework, (2) Real-world customer examples, (3) Insights into facilitating user readiness and upgrade acceptance, and (4) Orientation to key upgrade guidance resources.

Upgrade 101: Managing your upgrade from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams (Part 2) As an existing Skype for Business customer, we understand that upgrading to a new technology can be confusing and are committed to supporting you on your journey to Microsoft Teams. Through our two upgrade classes, you will find everything you need to plan and implement your upgrade. Part 2 is understanding coexistence and interoperability. Designed for the IT Pro/technical experts implementing the migration from Skype for Business to Teams, this session will arm you with the information you need to know before migrating your users, including: (1) End user experiences during the upgrade, (2) Available journey options an organization can take from online or on-premises as the starting point, and (3) Routing and federation experiences.

Microsoft IT: Speaking of Security - Privacy Compliance When: Thursday, June 20, 2019 at 10am PT | During this webinar, the speakers will discuss the Microsoft security teams approach to privacy compliance. We'll address how we approached the topic and new requirements from GDPR. We'll answer your questions and talk about governance, compliance, and transparency, including all of the elements necessary to build a privacy program. Finally, we'll share some of the key things we learned on our journey. There are other sessions now available on demand at the Speaking of Security webinar series site. Customer Immersion Experience: Simplifying your data privacy & compliance journey Join us for a hands-on introduction to Microsoft 365 Compliance features and an opportunity to experience powerful solutions across the data lifecycle of assess, protect and respond. During this 2-hour interactive session, you will explore how to: (1) Understand your compliance from a single pane of glass, (2) Make identity the new perimeter, (3) Discover and govern sensitive data across clouds, devices and apps, (4) Recognize attacks, detect breaches, and recover quickly using automation, and (5) Streamline your operational processes and understand your security posture. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

June 2019 v-meet up for Women IT Pros - LinkedIn for future-ready professionals When: Friday, June 28, 2019 at 12pm PT | During this session, we will explore the why's of LinkedIn and dive deeper into the best practices for an optimal and effective LinkedIn Profile. Come prepared to learn about SSI scores, leveraging our LinkedIn network for personal branding, and how to be discoverable and stay relevant & current. Speaker: Sophie Solomon is a Global Marketing Executive known for her "Can do" attitude and adaptability to any business climate. She has extensive experience in people management, coaching and Lifelong Learning. She is an avid learner who continuously looks at how to disrupt to foster creativity, innovation and growth for her teams and ecosystems. Sophie leads with empathy and does not rest until all voices are being heard.

BLOG ROUNDUP

Help when you need it – new support features for Microsoft 365 admins New admin support features include: (1) intelligent self-serve solutions, (2) Callback scheduling, (3) User-defined case severity, (4) Full page ticket and case communication history, (5) Case History export, and (6) Updated Service Request view. The new support experience has already started rolling out as part of the new Microsoft 365 Admin Center, with more features available in the coming weeks. To get the latest Admin Center experience, ensure you've opted into the Preview experience using the toggle in the top right corner of the Admin Center home page. | Resource: What's new in the Microsoft 365 admin center Planner six-month recap: a quick summary of what's been released during the first half of the year It's been a busy six months for Planner. (You've probably noticed if you're a Tech Community regular—and if you're not, you're missing out!) We released a variety of features since December 2018 that have made it easier to manage your plans and keep track of your tasks. Here's a quick review of those features, including: (1) Accessibility documentation, (2) Mobile guest access, (3) Multiplan, (4) Copy plan, (5) Government cloud, (6) To-Do integration, and (7) Teams notifications. As a bonus, we have one more popular request that's coming soon -- Export to Excel. With Export to Excel, you'll be able to export your entire Planner plan to an Excel spreadsheet for further analysis and additional options for sharing and printing. | Related: Microsoft To-Do: May Lookback - Planner and Flagged Emails on Personal Accounts 10 Yammer groups considered the backbone of many Yammer customers' networks Groups in Yammer are the backbone of conversations. The core groups that your network has becomes the place to go for information about those related topics. You don't need to think of every group before you get started, but a few of these with some seeded content and committed members will help your network start on the right foot. Once you've seen a few groups, start to brainstorm about your own organization's communities and then the possibilities are endless. From our customers, here's the top ten list that we've pulled together: (1) CEO Connection, (2) Heritage, (3) Diversity & Inclusion, (4) Emerging Technologies, (5) New Hires, (6) Innovation, (7) Social groups, (8) Departments / Regions / Offices, (9) Safety Moments, and (10) Parent Community. These are the groups we've seen that showcase the power of Yammer and help to drive adoption. These examples could already exist, or they could use a bit of your help to get off the ground. Some of these groups relate to your core values and culture. Some of these groups focus on the diversity of your organization and the organic communities that may already exist. While other groups may focus on specific product improvement initiatives, leadership connecting directly with employees, and others may just be for fun. Announcing New AI and Enterprise features for Power BI In a world in which data is coming from everywhere, Power BI is about helping our customers embrace a data culture, where every employee can make better decisions based on data. The growth of Power BI has been staggering – customers ingest more than 20PB of data to Power BI every month, lighting up over 30M reports and dashboards, and the Power BI service processes over 12M queries per hour. Last week at the Microsoft Business Application Summit, we made significant new announcements that will help our customers drive a data culture. These updates and new features can be summarized in three categories: (1) Simple, fast, intuitive experiences including a new look for the Power BI service, (2) Unified Platform for Enterprise BI including the general availability of paginated reports, and (3) Pervasive application of AI including the general availability of Azure Cognitive Services. Related:

2019 Release Wave 2 Plan and May Updates for Microsoft Flow We are announcing the availability of the 2019 Release Wave 2 Plan for Microsoft Flow. This release plan details the main features that we will be releasing between October 2019 and March 2020. Use this, in addition to the previous release plan from earlier this year, to understand the major investment areas in Microsoft Flow. One of the biggest new investments is AI Builder, which is in preview today. In addition, the past month we've released a number of great features that help you to get started with Flow and build out rich approvals. Related:

NOTEWORTHY

What's new in Office deployment for IT Pros Updated: June 11, 2019 | This article lists new features, tools, and articles for IT Pros who deploy Office in the enterprise. For details on Office announcements and plans, see the Microsoft 365 Roadmap. The article was recently updated with the following: In July 2019 Microsoft Teams will be added to existing installations of Office 365 ProPlus, starting with Version 1906 in Monthly Channel. For more information, see Deploy Microsoft Teams with Office 365 ProPlus. Microsoft Mechanics: Multi-Geo in Office 365 - Steps and details on setup Format: Video (8 mins) | Operate a single global Office 365 tenant with pinpoint control in locations all around the world. Administer where each user's content is stored at rest, and where future content will be stored. If your organization is subject to requirements around where your data is stored, in just a few minutes, you'll see the steps and details around setting up Multi-Geo capabilities in Office 365. You will learn how to manage your diverse, organization-wide data residency needs making it easy for users to seamlessly work together regardless of their location. As an admin, you can easily and confidently manage a distributed global workforce as your organization expands into new markets. Multi-Geo capabilities for OneDrive, Exchange and SharePoint are generally available now. Microsoft IT Showcase: IT Expert Roundtable - SharePoint at Microsoft - portals and publication Format: Video (61 mins) | In this webinar, experts from both the business, and IT side of Microsoft will share candid insights and best practices around Enterprise Search, and how we manage our internal portals. They also answer questions about our strategy for modernizing employee experiences, delivering targeted communications, and enabling employees to find the authoritative content they need. Conditional Access is now part of Microsoft 365 Business! Over the past several months you've told us that adding Conditional Access to Microsoft 365 Business would help it secure SMB customers more comprehensively. So, we are excited to announce the availability of Conditional Access for Microsoft 365 Business subscribers, enabling small and medium-sized businesses to enforce granular control on how company resources are accessed. Conditional Access policies and configurations available to Microsoft 365 Business subscribers are the same as those available to Azure Active Directory Premium P1 subscribers. Conditional Access enables Zero Trust security, helping you provide this access while maintaining control over "where, when and who" is connecting to your Office 365 environment; so you can protect company assets while also enabling employees to be productive from anywhere. For example, you can define a Conditional Access policy that evaluates sign-in connections from mobile devices to Exchange Online, and requires employees use Outlook for iOS and Android to successfully access their work email and calendar. This gives your organization the security and productivity advantages of an email and calendar app built specifically for the Office 365 cloud. Ensuring security of your Microsoft Teams apps with Microsoft Cloud App Security Apps in Microsoft Teams allow you to leverage additional capabilities, enhance your experience, and make Teams work for you by adding your favorite Microsoft and third-party services. Currently, hundreds of ecosystem apps provide a great way to enhance and customize Teams, but to enable applications and services in an organization, they often need to be reviewed across a wide range of security and compliance criteria. At Microsoft Build 2019, we announced the app certification program, which will streamline the process of gathering app information related to security, data handling, and compliance practices from our partners powered by Microsoft's Cloud Access Security Broker and gives customers the ability to review this information in one central location. In the first stage of this program, we'll work closely with solution providers of Teams apps to ensure that the information is up to date, and allow them to self-attest their apps against more than 80 risk factors provided by Microsoft Cloud App Security, as well as leverage their security and compliance information submitted in CSA STAR. In the future, we'll expand this program beyond Teams to include our entire app ecosystem across Microsoft 365. We'll also look into opportunities that would allow customers to easily identify apps that can enhance their experience in Teams, while meeting certain security and compliance requirements. A central app certification program could provide developers the ability to receive a "business ready" badge for each app and simplify the selection process for organizations.

Office 365 Weekly Digest | June 2 – 8, 2019

Thomas C. Finney — Mon, 10 Jun 2019 06:00:59 GMT

Welcome to the June 2 - 8, 2019 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest. Three features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week - one for SharePoint Online, and two for Microsoft Teams. No new events were added for this week's post. The spotlight event for this week is the "Upgrade 101: Managing your upgrade from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams - Part 1" session on Thursday, June 13, 2019 at 10am Pacific. Note: You can then catch "Part 2" on June 17th or June 20th. Blog posts in last week's roundup include the May 2019 roadmap summary for OneDrive, a brand new centralized hub for adoption resources, announcement of the ability to save Office deployment configurations to the cloud, and several short videos focused on how to create a plan on how to protect data in Microsoft Teams and governing access to Microsoft Teams. Noteworthy item highlights include the Microsoft 365 Updates for May 2019 video, the final installment of the Top 10 actions to secure your environment series, the release of the Microsoft Graph Application Access Policy feature for Exchange Online PowerShell, and more.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

Below are the items added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week…

Feature ID	App / Service	Title	Description	Status	Added	Estimated Release	More Info
51933	SharePoint	SharePoint hubs limit raised to 2,000	Hubs enable connecting related sites together to create a shared navigational and content experience. In order to meet the needs of many organizations, we are increasing the hubs limit from 100 to 2,000 providing even more flexibility on how you can organize your sites.	In development	06/04/2019	June CY2019	n / a
51927	Teams	Microsoft Teams – Interoperability (1:1 Teams – Skype for Business chat) in Office 365 Government GCC	A user that has been upgraded to Teams-Only mode can continue to communicate via chat with other users in the organization who are still using Skype for Business by using the interoperability capabilities between Teams and Skype for Business. This helps users stay productive while the organization transitions from Skype for Business to Teams.	In development	06/05/2019	June CY2019	n / a
51448	Teams	Microsoft Teams – Priority Notifications	Share urgent messages and time-sensitive information more effectively with Teams. Priority notifications alert a recipient of an urgent message on their mobile and desktop devices until a response is received, every two minutes for up to 20 minutes. Note: For a limited time, unlimited Priority Notifications in Microsoft Teams will be made available for all customers. This promotion will run from July 2019 until December 31, 2019 and during this time all Teams users will be able to send unlimited Priority Notifications. Starting on January 1, 2020, licensed users will be able to send Priority Notifications according to the terms of their subscription. IT Admins will be given reporting on priority notification usage to support appropriate user licensing.	In development	06/07/2019	July CY2019	n / a

UPCOMING EVENTS

BLOG ROUNDUP

OneDrive Roadmap Roundup – May 2019 After an exciting SharePoint Conference 2019 (SPC19) filled with OneDrive innovation disclosures, we are back with the monthly roadmap roundup of what's landed in production in the month of May (2019). If you are not already caught up the latest feature announcements at SPC19, do check out the blog to learn about how OneDrive can better connect you to all your files in Microsoft 365, as well as harness collaboration and productivity. Here are the latest functionalities that have begun rolling out in May 2019: (1) Microsoft Search powers OneDrive search from Office 365 suite header, and (2) Configure OneDrive to automatically sync your SharePoint team site shared libraries. NEW: Microsoft Adoption Resource Hub You asked for a central place to find Microsoft 365 adoption resources and it is now LIVE! View our first step in streamlining our adoption resources for Microsoft 365 at our unified Microsoft Adoption Resources page located at https://aka.ms/MicrosoftAdoption. This page pulls together existing and new resources to help you chart your path to productivity with our Microsoft services. It includes: (1) An updated Microsoft 365 Adoption Guide & workbook, (2) A new Security and Compliance adoption toolkit, (3) A new Teams in Government and Teams Devices Flyers (via the Teamwork Adoption Toolkit), (4) An updated SharePoint adoption guide, and more. Throughout the calendar year we will continue to align these resources to our updated Microsoft 365 adoption framework and what many of you have been studying in our Service Adoption Specialist on-line course. Save your Office deployment configurations to the cloud Keeping to our promise of continuous innovation and improvements to make Office deployment easier, our team released a new feature that allows you to save the deployment configurations that you create in the cloud. This allows you to create, edit and access your deployment configurations from one central location, your Office 365 tenant. Not only can you save your deployment configurations, but you can access them directly using an anonymous URL that can be copied from each deployment configuration and used with the Office Deployment Tool. This allows you to skip the step of downloading the XML and just reference it directly on the command line when executing the /configure, /download or /customize commands. The Office Deployment Tool will access the XML directly from your tenant using the anonymous access URL. | Related: Video - Manage your configuration files (Office Deployment Insiders) Microsoft Teams: Security & Compliance Microsoft Teams is the hot topic on the streets these days with everyone from small business to large enterprise using it or in the process of deploying it. No doubt it is instrumental in driving digital transformation and changing workplace culture, and in return, modernizing the workplace. But, what about security and compliance? The short videos in this post will help you to understand and create a plan on how to protect data in Microsoft Teams and governing access to Microsoft Teams using Microsoft 365. | Related: How to get started with Microsoft Teams – 10 questions to ask yourself to help you get started!

NOTEWORTHY

Video: Microsoft 365 Update for May 2019 Format: Video (3 minutes) | This month, we're introducing new tools to help simplify compliance, app updates to boost productivity, and features to foster secure, collaborative user experiences. Updates for May include: (1) enhancements to Microsoft Search, (2) OneNote Dark Mode, (3) Updates to Microsoft Forms, (4) Integration between Microsoft To-Do and Planer, and many more. Learn more at https://msft.social/dMQsnY. Top 10 actions to secure your environment: Step 10 - Detect and investigate security incidents The "Top 10 actions to secure your environment" series outlines fundamental steps you can take with your investment in Microsoft 365 security solutions. Step 10 is the final installment in the blog series. Here we walk you through how to set up Azure Advanced Threat Protection (Azure ATP) to secure identities in the cloud and on-premises. How Microsoft Marketing and Consumer Business Radio Show Use Live Events in Yammer Microsoft has been going through transformation of their own and recently launched Live Events. Various groups throughout the organization have started to use it as part of their communication strategy to engage employees. There are different groups using live event capabilities in Microsoft 365 to create, run, and share events that connect employees using a single robust solution to produce events ranging from global all-hands meetings to specific topical webinars, leaders across the company foster employee engagement, information sharing, and meaningful conversations while achieving their communication goals, reaching various audiences, and working within any budget. | Related: 3 ways to use Enterprise Social to leave a digital legacy Secure your journey to the cloud with free DMARC monitoring for Office 365 As a member of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association, Valimail provides a critical free service for Office 365 customers who want the benefits of DMARC enforcement. DMARC enforcement, together with the anti-spoofing and anti-phishing capabilities in Office 365, will effectively stop an entire class of phishing attacks. Valimail Monitor for Office 365 makes the service-discovery component of DMARC implementation far easier, providing a fully automated visibility service, free of charge. With Valimail, Office 365 users can easily see all third-party services sending on their behalf, as well as potential imposters that are spoofing their brand. It eliminates the need to wade through XML-based aggregate reports or try to interpret which IP addresses correspond to which cloud services. Valimail Monitor for Office 365 provides a clean, clear, human-readable interface that lists services and their email volume on the domain in plain English. Scoping Microsoft Graph application permissions to specific Exchange Online mailboxes We're excited to announce the release of the Application Access Policy feature for Exchange Online PowerShell. This feature allows Exchange Online administrators to scope application permissions for Microsoft Graph to allow access to specified mailboxes in their Office 365 tenant. Why would you need to do this? Well, imagine Contoso, an Office 365 customer that has thousands of employees spread across multiple departments. Contoso has built and deployed an appointment booking app that helps their customers book service appointments with specialist technicians employed by the company. The app Contoso built uses Microsoft Graph to identify free appointment times on the technicians' calendars and uses them to book appointments. Because the app requires access to multiple technicians' mailboxes, it uses the OAuth 2.0 client credentials grant flow, and application permissions were granted to it, enabling the app to access all mailboxes in the organization, not just the mailboxes belonging to technicians. Using Application Access Policies, Contoso administrators can now restrict the app's access to only the technicians' mailboxes via a security group and disallow its access to other mailboxes.

Office 365 Weekly Digest | May 26 – June 1, 2019

Thomas C. Finney — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 06:00:07 GMT

Welcome to the May 26 – June 1, 2019 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest. There were only two features added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week - one for Microsoft Teams, and the other for Outlook on the web. The June schedule for Azure Active Directory webinars is now available. This week's spotlight event is the Planner Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) on Thursday, June 6, 2019 at 9am Pacific. The theme for last week's blog posts was "What's New", with a look at updates and new features in May 2019 for Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive and Microsoft Forms. There is also information on improved brand customization across Microsoft 365. Noteworthy item highlights include a simplified user experience for Outlook on Windows, Dark Mode and other updates for OneNote, and the May 2019 release details for Office 365 on Windows Desktop.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

Below are the items added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week…

Feature ID

App / Service

Title

Description

Status

Added

Estimated Release

More Info

51786

Teams

Microsoft Teams - Channel Moderation

Drive focused conversations within your organization with Microsoft Teams. Channel moderation gives team owners and members who have been added as moderators exclusive rights to create new posts in the channel and control whether team members can reply.

In development

05/31/2019

June CY2019

n / a

51882

Outlook

Web

Outlook on the web - calendar quick compose

You will now be able to add attendees when using the quick compose form in the calendar surface in Outlook on the web.

In development

05/31/2019

June CY2019

n / a

UPCOMING EVENTS

Customer Immersion Experience: Simplifying your data privacy & compliance journey Join us for a hands-on introduction to Microsoft 365 Compliance features and an opportunity to experience powerful solutions across the data lifecycle of assess, protect and respond. During this 2-hour interactive session, you will explore how to: (1) Understand your compliance from a single pane of glass, (2) Make identity the new perimeter, (3) Discover and govern sensitive data across clouds, devices and apps, (4) Recognize attacks, detect breaches, and recover quickly using automation, and (5) Streamline your operational processes and understand your security posture. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Azure Active Directory Webinars for June When: Multiple sessions currently scheduled from June 4 - 13, 2019 | Are you looking to deploy Azure Active Directory quickly and easily? We are offering free webinars on key Azure Active Directory deployment topics to help you get up and running. Sessions include Getting Ready for Azure AD, The Basics of Governing your Azure AD and Office 365 Deployment, Securing Your Identities with Azure Multi-Factor Authentication, Choosing the Right Authentication Method for Azure AD, and more. Each 1-hour webinar is designed to support IT Pros in quickly rolling out Azure Active Directory features to their organization. All webinars are free of cost and will include an anonymous Q&A session with our Engineering Team. So, come with your questions! Capacity is limited. Sign up for one or all of the sessions today! Note: There are also some sessions available on-demand. 10 time saving tips and tricks with Outlook mobile When: Thursday, June 6, 2019 at 9am PT | Outlook mobile brings together your email, calendar, contacts, documents and more in one fast, fluid experience so you can accomplish the most important tasks in just a few seconds. All backed by enterprise-grade security you can trust. Join the Outlook mobile team for a webinar that will highlight cool tips and tricks that save you time and spark joy. You also get to ask any questions and share feedback with the team directly. In this webinar, you will learn: (1) Why Outlook mobile is the right choice for you, (2) Best practices for getting started, (3) Cool tips and tricks that spark joy and let you accomplish the most important tasks in just a few seconds, and (4) Ask questions or share your feedback directly with the Outlook team. There are also sessions from previous months that can be viewed on demand. Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Microsoft Planner When: Thursday, June 6, 2019 at 9am PT | We are very excited to announce a Microsoft Planner 'Ask Microsoft Anything' (AMA). An AMA is a live online event similar to a "YamJam" on Yammer or an "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit. This AMA gives you the opportunity to connect with members of the product teams who will be on hand to answer your questions and listen to feedback. Join in the Planner AMA space, or add the event to your calendar. We look forward to seeing you there! Microsoft Teams Spring Adoption Series: Ongoing Adoption - Tips and Best Practices When: Friday, June 7, 2019 at 11am PT | As your user base becomes more comfortable with teams, they'll start to explore functionality beyond basic Chat and Collaboration. "Where should I put my files in Office 365" will become a recurring question as they use Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive. When more Teams come online, best practices like Favoriting a Team, Following a Channel, and using the Activity Feed will help users get the most out of Teams. Your core Project Team should begin to transition from initial enablement to service management and monitoring for service changes and usage issues. Being able to rely/leverage your Champions community for ongoing "best practices" sessions, tips, and communications. Join live, or add the event to your calendar. Note: The top-level link has information and links to the recording for previous sessions in this Spring Adoption Series. Upgrade 101: Managing your upgrade from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams (Part 1) As an existing Skype for Business customer, we understand that upgrading to a new technology can be confusing and are committed to supporting you on your journey to Microsoft Teams. Through our two upgrade classes, you will find everything you need to plan and implement your upgrade. Part 1 is focused on upgrade planning and user readiness. Targeting project stakeholders with accountability for Skype for Business to Teams upgrade success and user readiness/change managers, this session serves as the foundation for your upgrade planning, including: (1) An overview of our proven, upgrade success framework, (2) Real-world customer examples, (3) Insights into facilitating user readiness and upgrade acceptance, and (4) Orientation to key upgrade guidance resources.

BLOG ROUNDUP

New to Microsoft 365 in May—new tools to streamline compliance and make collaboration inclusive and engaging In May 2019, we're introducing new tools to help simplify compliance, app updates to boost productivity, and features to foster secure, collaborative user experiences. At Microsoft Build this month, we announced several new capabilities in Microsoft 365 to help developers create people-centered, cross-platform experiences. This month, we introduced capabilities to help you get more done—including updates to SharePoint and the OneNote, Yammer, and Microsoft To-Do apps. New privacy controls allow you to meet compliance obligations and efficiently manage access requests at enterprise scale. What's New in Microsoft Teams | May 2019 In addition to the announcements that you may have seen from Build Conference, several other features became available this past month of May in Teams! These features include: (1) Find a nearby meeting room easily with proximity-based meeting join in Teams, (2) Let callers know when you are already on the phone with Busy on Busy signal, (3) Make calls directly from Teams with the new Calls App, (4) Share read-only materials with your students in the new Class Materials folder, (5) Multi-team support for Firstline workers who are on more than one team, (6) Manage Teams on your phone, (7) Always be on time for your meetings with "Meeting started" notifications on your phone, (8) Join meetings the way that works for you with "Call me", and (9) Work with your Teams usage reports the way you want by exporting them from the Teams admin center. | Related: Game-Changing Teams Announcements from Build 2019 | GitHub! Code better together with GitHub and Microsoft Teams SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop: May 2019 We are post-SharePoint Conference 2019 – and the cadence of releasing new capabilities and updates did not slow. This is the all-inclusive recap for all things SharePoint and related technology. Our goal is to provide change management excellence, with clear, concise and timely resources. All the features listed in the post began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Office 365 as of May 2019 (possibly early June 2019). Some of the updates include: (1) add quizzes, polls and surveys into Microsoft Stream videos via integration with Microsoft Forms, (2) In-geography storage of Yammer messages at rest for new EU customers, (3) General Availability of Microsoft Search, (4) Full-fidelity shared libraries in OneDrive, (5) Sharing links that block downloads for Office files, (6) Updates to the SharePoint Admin Center, and many more. What's new in May in Microsoft Forms We continue making it easier to work with Microsoft Forms, the simple way to create surveys, quizzes, and polls. Section, released earlier this month, lets you segment your survey, quiz, or poll questions into individual pages. You can now easily add surveys, quizzes, and polls into your Stream videos. With admin ownership transfer you can transfer form ownership of a disabled account to an active one, helping prevent data leaks while improving visibility into all existing forms. Office 365 helps you get back to work, now with improved brand customization In today's modern workplace, people use many different apps, services, and tools to identify what's their most important work to complete. Valuable time is wasted looking for the most recent content, like searching for new comments in one's documents, and the most relevant tools just to get started working. Office.com and the new Office app released on Windows help you get started and back to work more efficiently by pulling together your most relevant apps, including third-party apps your company uses, documents, and places where you and your colleagues are working. Additionally, we are modernizing your custom theming experience to help you represent your company or school brand with a higher quality logo across Office 365. Now, you'll be able any file size and any format to improve the clarity of the logo image that your users see in the Office 365 navigation bar across their Office applications, like Outlook, SharePoint and Office.com. | Resource: Customize the Office 365 theme for your organization

NOTEWORTHY

Outlook for Windows rolls out its simplified user experience Outlook for Windows has evolved through multiple generations of improvements to create a user experience aimed at making it easier for you to get things done and focus on what matters. Now, after rounds of validation and refinement through customer research and the Coming Soon preview feature, the updates to the user experience are rolling out as the default experience. The optional, Simplified Ribbon provides a streamlined experience for Outlook with a core set of most commonly used commands in a single line and can be easily expanded anytime to the full, classic ribbon. The updated user experience is designed for simplicity, to feel lighter and more open, and focus on getting things done faster. We made it easier to scan the message list with more separation between emails, added stronger treatment for flagged items which are more consistent with other Outlook end-points and updated the single line view to include an unread indicator. Go Dark Mode and more on OneNote This month, we're excited to bring you some highly anticipated features in OneNote. You asked, and we heard you. Dark Mode in OneNote for Windows 10 is finally available! To turn on Dark Mode, head over to Settings in the upper right corner of the ribbon, click Options and select Dark under the Color section to switch your OneNote to Dark Mode. Send emails and meetings from Outlook to OneNote for Windows 10, OneNote for Mac and OneNote on the web with ease. In Outlook, click the Send to OneNote add-in to open the location picker panel. Find the destination notebook and section then click Send – it's that easy. Once you go to the selected section in OneNote, your email or meeting will be there. Now, you can insert printouts of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files into your notebooks for more robust content in OneNote for Windows 10. Finally, simplified ribbon has come to OneNote for the web. Enjoy more space on your screen and quickly get to the tools you need with this update. If you prefer to switch back to the old experience, click the View tab and uncheck Simplified Ribbon to refresh and return to the previous ribbon. Office 365 for Windows Desktop - May 2019 release details On May 29th, 2019, Microsoft released Office for Windows Desktop version 1905 (Build 11629.20196). Our Global team translated this update into 44 languages as well as helping the PowerPoint team ship Live captions and subtitles. This cool new feature allows you to transcribe your words as you present and display them on-screen as captions in the same language you are speaking, or as subtitles translated into another language. This can help accommodate individuals in the audience who may be deaf or hard of hearing, or more familiar with another language, respectively. Also, you can now @mention teammates in document, spreadsheet or presentation comments and they will automatically receive an email notification drawing them into the document, spreadsheet or presentation. This new functionality is in Excel, PowerPoint & Word. The new account manager shows all your Office 365 work and personal accounts in one place. Switching between them has never been easier. Co-authoring in Excel has improved the merge success rate when working with conditional formatting, cell styles, range protection, view gridlines, and cross-sheet cut/paste. More information and help content on this release can be found in the What's New in Office 365 page. Azure Cloud Shell Now Supports Exchange Online We're very happy to announce that the Exchange Online PowerShell module is now available in Azure Cloud Shell! If you're an Exchange admin and you've never used Azure Cloud Shell before (or have no idea what it even is!), then this blog post is for you. We know it's hard to keep up to date with all the different things Microsoft is doing at any point in time, so we're making sure our Exchange admins know about this pretty nifty capability we recently released. In short, Azure Cloud Shell is a browser-based, authenticated shell experience, hosted by Microsoft. You can use any browser to securely open a shell environment hosted in Azure, then you can connect to Exchange Online (and of course, Azure) – and have the exact same experience managing Exchange Online that you do today – but without any of the concerns about installation of required components or operating system suitability.

Office 365 Weekly is moving to a new home soon!

Thomas C. Finney — Wed, 29 May 2019 06:00:14 GMT

As the title notes, Office 365 Weekly is moving to a new home by June 20, 2019. There are lots of things to work through, and it's possible that the existing content may not be migrated or automatically redirected. I will provide an update once everything is finalized, and prior to the actual move. I will also provide details including the new blog URL, RSS and Feedly links, etc. Many thanks for your support and sharing the content over the last 3+years! I really hope you will continue to do so following the move... Sincerely, Thomas

Office 365 Weekly Digest | May 19 – 25, 2019

Thomas C. Finney — Tue, 28 May 2019 06:00:13 GMT

Welcome to the May 19 - 25, 2019 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest. Twenty six features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, with the vast majority for OneDrive, with others for PowerPoint Online, Outlook on the web, and Yammer sprinkled in. A rather notable feature for OneDrive is support for Files On-Demand for Windows Server 2019, targeted for release in June 2019. No brand new events were added this week, just additional sessions for existing series. The spotlight event for this week is the "Simplifying your data privacy and compliance journey" Customer Immersion Experience on Thursday, May 30, 2019 from 12pm - 2pm Pacific. With SharePoint Conference 2019 held last week, most of the blog posts are focused on the news and numerous announcements shared during the conference. There is also information on a new, optimized Microsoft 365 setup experience, the May 2019 feature updates for Workplace Analytics, Step 9 in the Top 10 actions to secure your environment, and a post on why one should use Office on the web. Wrapping up the post are noteworthy items including a Microsoft IT Showcase IT Expert Roundtable webinar on migrating to live events in Microsoft 365, the latest updates to OneNote on Android, general availability of Identity Secure Score, and details on three key updates to Azure Active Directory provisioning.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

Below are the items added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week…

Feature ID	App / Service	Title	Description	Status	Added	Estimated Release
27015	Outlook iOS	New Files Experience in Outlook iOS	An improved files experience in Outlook mobile for sending attachments and accessing files.	In development	05/24/2019	May CY2019
27020	OneDrive	OneDrive for Business: File Requests	OneDrive users can request files from others by sending an upload-only link.	In development	05/24/2019	Q4 CY2019
27027	OneDrive	OneDrive for Business: VDI update	Support for Files On-Demand for server 2019	In development	05/24/2019	June CY2019
33412	OneDrive	Differential sync for all file types in OneDrive for Business	OneDrive will synchronize large files significantly faster and considerably reduce network utilization for all file types	In development	05/24/2019	May CY2019
49083	OneDrive	OneDrive Mobile: Updated Recent View	Improved recent files experience in ODB mobile app that you can see in all Office end points including Scans & PDFs. (It will also help you navigate between PDfs in an easier manner)	In development	05/24/2019	Q4 CY2019
49084	OneDrive	Updated UI for PDF annotations	With PDFs, either as a native PDF file uploaded into OneDrive or when you scan an item like a whiteboard, receipt or business card, you can annotate the PDF to circle items or add notes for you and others. We are updating the user interface when you go to add your annotations, to give you more options and for it to be friendlier to use.	In development	05/24/2019	May CY2019
49085	OneDrive iOS	Updated design (align w/ Mobile Coherence)- iOS	Refresh look and feel of OD iOS app to align more closely to other Office apps	In development	05/24/2019	June CY2019
49095	OneDrive	OneDrive for Business: Save for later	Save for Later will allow you to bookmark files and folders from your OneDrive, files shared to you and those in Shared Libraries to a "Saved for Later" list that you'll be able to easily access	In development	05/24/2019	Q1 CY2020
49421	OneDrive OneNote	OneNote migration with KFM	Until now, the OneDrive sync client has not supported OneNote files. And we feedback shows that it's critical to migrate OneNote files as any other - thus we're introducing the ability for the OneDrive sync client to help migrate desktop OneNote files when leveraging Know Folder Move (KFM) to move your primary desktop folders (Documents, Pictures and Desktop) to the cloud.	In development	05/24/2019	Q1 CY2020
49510	OneDrive	"Popular Around Me" files	The "Shared With Me " view will now surface personalized recommendations based on your working relationships to help you find relevant and trending information faster and discover content you might not have been aware of.	In development	05/24/2019	Q4 CY2019
49516	OneDrive	360° images previewer support	OneDrive supports previewers of over 320+ file types - and now add to that 360° images. Once your 360° images are uploaded into OneDrive, you get a rich, interactive preview of the images without leaving OneDrive, and without requiring additional software or apps.	In development	05/24/2019	June CY2019
51381	Yammer	Office App Launcher in Yammer	We're updating the Office App Launcher and Header in Yammer. This is being done to provide consistency with Yammer and other Office apps and also show any customizations you have within Yammer as well.	In development	05/24/2019	June CY2019
51537	PowerPoint Online	Direct links to individual PowerPoint slide (web only)	Get a link to individual slide to share with recipients.	In development	05/24/2019	June CY2019
51538	Office 365	Updates to @mentions email notifications	Whenever someone @mentions you in an Office file you receive an email notifying you about the same. With this update the body of the email will now include the text of the comment as well making it easier to understand the context of the mention.	In development	05/24/2019	Q4 CY2019
51551	Outlook Web	Outlook on the web - inline translation	Inline Translation detects the language in incoming email messages and offers to translate them into your mailbox's language.	In development	05/24/2019	June CY2019
51552	Teams	Microsoft Team - Read Receipts in private chats	Increase communication transparency with Teams. Do you often wonder if your teammates saw your message? Read receipts in private chats allow senders to know when a message was read by the recipients.	In development	05/24/2019	June CY2019
51587	Teams	Retention for Microsoft Teams hybrid users	Hybrid or on-prem users for Microsoft Teams who have a mailbox in the cloud can set 30days retention policies for Teams content.	In development	05/24/2019	May CY2019
51623	Microsoft 365	Microsoft 365 Admin Setup Page	The new setup experience—which is being rolled out over several weeks—saves you time and helps you get the most out of your apps and services. Based on products you've purchased, features you've configured, and your admin role, we curate tasks and related information from across the entire Microsoft 365 stack and surface it in a single location—the Setup page—so you see only what's relevant to you.	Rolling out	05/24/2019	May CY2019
51723	Teams EDU	Teams Education - Gradebook	Now teachers can view and grade all assignments for a class directly from the channel Assignments tab. The new gradebook is a straightforward way to organize and track each class' assignments. In addition, the gradebook enables teachers to see a single student's progress across all their assignments.	In development	05/24/2019	Q4 CY2019
51726	Teams EDU	Microsoft Education - Weekly Parent Email Digest	On a weekly basis, Teams sends emails to parents on assignments and their statuses.	In development	05/24/2019	Q4 CY2019
51729	Teams EDU	Microsoft Teams Education - Class Avatars & Stickers	You can now choose from a wider selection of class avatars for your class team, and students and teachers can have their pick with the latest stickers.	In development	05/24/2019	Q4 CY2019
51730	Teams EDU	Microsoft Teams Education - GradeSync	With Grade Sync, save time and record assignment grades all in one platform – grades automatically get pushed to your Student Information System.	In development	05/24/2019	Q4 CY2019
51731	Teams EDU	Microsoft Teams Education - Turnitin Integration	Turnitin's originality score and Feedback Studio will be integrated into the Assignment workflow in Teams.	In development	05/24/2019	Q4 CY2019
51732	Teams EDU	Microsoft Teams Education - MakeCode Assignments	Teams Assignments now saves MakeCode work and allows students to turn in for review.	In development	05/24/2019	Q4 CY2019
51733	Teams EDU	Microsoft Teams Education - Mobile Grading	Teachers can now grade Teams Assignments on mobile (iOS, Android).	In development	05/24/2019	Q4 CY2019

UPCOMING EVENTS

Azure Active Directory Webinars for June When: Multiple sessions currently scheduled from June 4 - 13, 2019 | Are you looking to deploy Azure Active Directory quickly and easily? We are offering free webinars on key Azure Active Directory deployment topics to help you get up and running. Sessions include Getting Ready for Azure AD, The Basics of Governing your Azure AD and Office 365 Deployment, Securing Your Identities with Azure Multi-Factor Authentication, Choosing the Right Authentication Method for Azure AD, and more. Each 1-hour webinar is designed to support IT Pros in quickly rolling out Azure Active Directory features to their organization. All webinars are free of cost and will include an anonymous Q&A session with our Engineering Team. So, come with your questions! Capacity is limited. Sign up for one or all of the sessions today! Note: There are also some sessions available on-demand. Microsoft Teams Spring Adoption Series: Measuring and Communicating Success When: Thursday, May 30, 2019 at 11am PT | This week we'll discuss how to collect and communicate success stories, qualitatively and quantitatively. Qualitative success stories are anecdotal points of feedback from stakeholders, champions, and users. These may be examples of improved collaboration, reduced internal email, faster team member onboarding, and similar stories. Quantitative success examples come from the Office 365 Microsoft Teams usage reports built into the Office 365 Admin portal. This information can show the usage of Microsoft Teams in your company. Communicating real-world examples and quantitative data is critical to reinforcing project success and getting buy-in and additional resources from leadership. In this session we'll walk through several examples of one-page or one-slide summaries you can create, and how to secure the data and examples you'll use to reinforce the message. Join live, or add the event to your calendar. Note: The top-level link has information and links to the recording for previous sessions in this Spring Adoption Series. 10 time saving tips and tricks with Outlook mobile When: Thursday, June 6, 2019 at 9am PT | Outlook mobile brings together your email, calendar, contacts, documents and more in one fast, fluid experience so you can accomplish the most important tasks in just a few seconds. All backed by enterprise-grade security you can trust. Join the Outlook mobile team for a webinar that will highlight cool tips and tricks that save you time and spark joy. You also get to ask any questions and share feedback with the team directly. In this webinar, you will learn: (1) Why Outlook mobile is the right choice for you, (2) Best practices for getting started, (3) Cool tips and tricks that spark joy and let you accomplish the most important tasks in just a few seconds, and (4) Ask questions or share your feedback directly with the Outlook team. There are also sessions from previous months that can be viewed on demand. Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Microsoft Planner When: Thursday, June 6, 2019 at 9am PT | We are very excited to announce a Microsoft Planner 'Ask Microsoft Anything' (AMA). An AMA is a live online event similar to a "YamJam" on Yammer or an "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit. This AMA gives you the opportunity to connect with members of the product teams who will be on hand to answer your questions and listen to feedback. Join in the Planner AMA space, or add the event to your calendar. We look forward to seeing you there! Microsoft Teams Spring Adoption Series: Ongoing Adoption - Tips and Best Practices When: Friday, June 7, 2019 at 11am PT | As your user base becomes more comfortable with teams, they'll start to explore functionality beyond basic Chat and Collaboration. "Where should I put my files in Office 365" will become a recurring question as they use Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive. When more Teams come online, best practices like Favoriting a Team, Following a Channel, and using the Activity Feed will help users get the most out of Teams. Your core Project Team should begin to transition from initial enablement to service management and monitoring for service changes and usage issues. Being able to rely/leverage your Champions community for ongoing "best practices" sessions, tips, and communications. Join live, or add the event to your calendar. Note: The top-level link has information and links to the recording for previous sessions in this Spring Adoption Series. Upgrade 101: Managing your upgrade from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams (Part 1) As an existing Skype for Business customer, we understand that upgrading to a new technology can be confusing and are committed to supporting you on your journey to Microsoft Teams. Through our two upgrade classes, you will find everything you need to plan and implement your upgrade. Part 1 is focused on upgrade planning and user readiness. Targeting project stakeholders with accountability for Skype for Business to Teams upgrade success and user readiness/change managers, this session serves as the foundation for your upgrade planning, including: (1) An overview of our proven, upgrade success framework, (2) Real-world customer examples, (3) Insights into facilitating user readiness and upgrade acceptance, and (4) Orientation to key upgrade guidance resources.

BLOG ROUNDUP

New SharePoint home sites headline Microsoft 365 innovations for the intelligent workplace At the 2019 SharePoint Conference, we showcased recent and upcoming innovations in SharePoint and across Microsoft 365—including SharePoint home sites, a dynamic, engaging, and personalized employee experience for your organization. These innovations power the intelligent workplace, where teams can collaborate and streamline workflows, organizations can engage employees and communicate effectively, and individuals can be more creative and productive with experiences and insights powered by artificial intelligence (AI). The world-class applications in Microsoft 365—including SharePoint, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, Yammer, Microsoft Stream, PowerApps, and Microsoft Flow—enable digital transformation for more than 500,000 customer organizations and 180 million commercial active users. This post highlights our innovations across the following areas: (1) The intelligent intranet featuring SharePoint home sites, (2) Innovations in Yammer and Microsoft Stream for employee engagement and communications, (3) Intelligent file experiences, sharing, and controls with OneDrive, and (4) Turbocharging Microsoft 365 performance, security, intelligence, and innovation. Related:

Optimize Microsoft 365 with the new setup experience Get the most out of the services you purchased and ensure your users are secure and productive with a new, proactive approach to onboarding and configuration. The Microsoft 365 setup experience was designed for modern IT teams, whether you're a small business or a large enterprise. The new setup experience—which is being rolled out over several weeks—saves you time and helps you get the most out of your apps and services. Based on products you've purchased, features you've configured, and your admin role, we curate tasks and related information from across Microsoft 365 and surface it in a central location—the Setup page—so you get only the information that's relevant to you. Workplace Analytics - May 2019: Feature updates The Workplace Analytics team is excited to announce our feature updates for May 2019. The Workplace Analytics team has expanded language support for those who work with meeting exclusion rules. Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Vietnamese, and many other languages – 52 in all – are now supported. The Admin settings page in Workplace Analytics has been redesigned to separate system default settings and privacy settings into two separate pages. The Workplace Analytics team has made two helpful changes to the query filter panel in Person, Person-to-Group, and Group-to-Group queries. Top 10 actions to secure your environment: Step 9 - Protect your OS The "Top 10 actions to secure your environment" series outlines fundamental steps you can take with your investment in Microsoft 365 security solutions. In Step 9, we provide resources to help you configure Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (Microsoft Defender ATP) to defend your Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android devices from advanced threats. In an advanced threat, hackers and cybercriminals infiltrate your network through compromised users or vulnerable endpoints and can stay undetected for weeks—or even months—while they attempt to exfiltrate data and move laterally to gain more privileges. Microsoft Defender ATP helps you detect these threats early and take action immediately. Why you should use Office for the web Our engineering teams are focused on ensuring the web is a first-rate platform for Office and the best experience it can be. We have been investing heavily in recent years to make Office on the web better, faster, and smarter. We have released dozens of new features over the past year including things like, simplified ribbon, @mentions and co-authoring, and IDEAS for Excel and PowerPoint. We have an aggressive roadmap for the web and will continue this pace of innovation for the foreseeable future. Performance and reliability for the web have improved dramatically with page load times getting better by more than 60%. The web is at the forefront of Office innovation. The web is instrumental in providing the real-time feedback and machine learning necessary to make our AI and collaboration features excel, so you will often see may of our newest innovations appearing on the web first. If you haven't used Office on the web or if it has been a while since you checked out, you should give it a try. It is super easy to get started – just go to Office.com and sign in with your work, school, or personal Microsoft account. There you can find all the apps available to you and access all your documents stored on OneDrive or SharePoint. Every version of Office 365 gives you access to Office on the web, however there is also a free version for consumers that makes it easy to work with anyone. The web makes it so you don't need to worry about whether another has Office of which version they're using – just save a file on your OneDrive, send them the link, and then they can view, edit, and work in the document with you at the same time.

NOTEWORTHY

Azure AD: Identity Data for European Customers We are excited to announce that for customers who provide an address in Europe, Azure AD now keeps all personally identifiable identity (PII) attributes within datacenters in Europe. Last year, we made changes in Azure AD to keep most identity data for European customers within Europe. We have now expanded on this capability to include all PII data. For details on what types of data we store and where, read Identity data storage for European customers in Azure AD. For information on where your identity data is stored, read Where is your data located? Microsoft IT Showcase: IT Expert Roundtable - Migrating to live events in Microsoft 365 from Skype Meeting Broadcast Format: Video (53 mins) | During this webinar, experts at Microsoft Core Services Engineering and Operations (CSEO) answered audience questions about how we migrated to the live events capability in Microsoft 365. They shared candid insights and best practices around the new video and interactive discussion capabilities available in Microsoft Teams, Yammer and Microsoft Stream, including planning, technical considerations and communications that were needed to ensure an optimal experience for both event producers and Microsoft employees. Do more with OneNote for Android In case you missed them, we've put together a list of features that have been added to OneNote for Android over the last few months. These new features include: (1) Palm rejection support for more natural and accurate inking, (2) Insert file attachments and PDFs from your Android device, (3) Sticky Notes integration and sync across devices, and (4) Improvements to search and search results. These features are all currently available so feel free to try them out and let us know what you think! Identity Secure Score is now generally available! Getting security right and protecting your identities can be hard. Knowing what guidance you should follow, the actions you should take, and even knowing what products you should use is often complex and difficult to navigate. That's why at Ignite last year, we announced the public preview of Identity Secure Score to help you improve your identity security posture. We're excited to announce that Identity Secure Score is now generally available! Identity Secure Score provides organizations with increased visibility and control over their security posture by discovering opportunities that will help to improve security across your organization. These opportunities are surfaced as recommendations, which are coupled with the guidance and the workflows necessary to help security administrators implement each recommendation. The more improvements you make, the more your identity security posture improves—increasing your identity secure score! Build a strong identity foundation with Azure AD provisioning Azure AD allows customers to bring identities from on-premises systems through Active Directory, as well as cloud HR systems (like Workday), and automatically provision/deprovision the identities to SaaS applications, unlocking joiner-mover-leaver scenarios. Provisioning enables organizations to have a single identity for a user across all applications and helps unlock productivity, security, and usability for your organization. The Azure AD provisioning team is constantly listening to your feedback on how to make Azure AD provisioning better. We want to share three key updates to Azure AD provisioning that we rolled out in the last few weeks—based on your input, including: (1) Provisioning from Workday now supports username writeback, (2) Automatically provision to Dynamic Signal, Keeper Password Manager & Digital Vault, and Comeet Recruiting Software, and (3) Manage groups from the cloud and improved usability with the new version of Azure AD Connect.

Office 365 Weekly Digest | May 12 – 18, 2019

Thomas C. Finney — Mon, 20 May 2019 06:00:26 GMT

Welcome to the May 12 - 18, 2019 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest. There were five additions to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, all for Microsoft Teams and Outlook on the web, including a new cloud document sharing experience. There is one new event, also this week's spotlight event, which is the SharePoint Virtual Summit on Tuesday, May 21, 2019 at 12pm Pacific. Blog posts in this week's roundup include information on the availability of Planner notifications in Microsoft Teams, recent updates to Outlook mobile, general availability of the Yammer conversations web part in SharePoint, and the enablement of "Section" in Microsoft Forms. Noteworthy item highlights include a Microsoft IT Showcase article on improving employee engagement with live events in Microsoft 365, a quick look at Supervision policies in Microsoft 365, the removal of the 16-character limit for passwords in Azure Active Directory, and the public preview of Azure Active Directory conditional access for combined registration experience for Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and Self-Service Password Reset (SSPR).

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

Below are the items added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week…

Feature ID	App / Service	Title	Description	Status	Added	Estimated Release	More Info
49152	Outlook Web	Outlook on the web - bold calendar event colors	Users will be able to choose between bold and light colors for their calendar events in Outlook on the web. Users can toggle bold event colors in the Calendar settings by going to the gear icon or in Outlook settings.	In development	05/17/2019	May CY2019	n / a
51234	Teams	Microsoft Teams - Improved Channel File Tab Experience	We continue to bring the power of SharePoint into Teams. The new experience in the file tab of a channel includes the ability to sync files to your computer, more view options, and lifecycle signals. Additionally, you can pin and check out files.	In development	05/17/2019	June CY2019	n / a
51452	Teams Office ProPlus	Microsoft Teams desktop app coming to existing installs of Office 365 ProPlus and Microsoft/Office 365 Business/Business Premium	In the second phase of an effort to improve and streamline users initial experience with Teams, we're making an enhancement so that the desktop Teams client will now be downloaded by default when new existing users with Office 365 ProPlus, Microsoft 365 Business, and Microsoft 365 Business Premium apps. With this change your users will no longer need to do a separate installation of Microsoft Teams in order to use Teams functionality. We'll begin rolling this feature out soon.	In development	05/17/2019	June CY2019	Deploy Microsoft Teams with Office 365 ProPlus
51464	Teams	Microsoft Teams - Per-team and Cross-team analytics	Get more insights into how you and your colleagues are using Teams. As an individual, you can see activity data for all teams that you are part of in a single view. Cross-team analytics are found in "Manage teams" below the list of joined teams. Per-team Analytics, found in "Manage team" after clicking on the ellipsis alongside a specific team name, provides temporal-based charts for message and active user counts, plus deeper breakdowns of user types and activity trends.	In development	05/17/2019	June CY2019	n / a
51553	Outlook Web	Outlook on the web - new cloud doc sharing experience	Outlook on the web is updating how you share cloud docs from OneDrive and SharePoint. Now when you paste a the link for a OneDrive or SharePoint file in a message, it will replace it with the name of the file and the corresponding Office app icon. That link will also allow you to manage permissions for the file using a new sharing dialogue.	In development	05/17/2019	June CY2019	n / a

UPCOMING EVENTS

Tuesday, May 21, 2019 at 8am PT

Thursday, May 23, 2019 at 10am PT

Microsoft Teams Spring Adoption Series: End User Training When: Friday, May 24, 2019 at 11am PT | We have to help users adopt a self-service mindset to learning and discovery in order to keep up with changes in Cloud services. Guided learning sessions delivered by the project team or an appropriate champion can reinforce by sharing tips on getting started and best practices. In this session, we'll review a typical one-hour orientation session and how to deliver it. We'll then review the end-user training resources available to your organization and discuss how to promote them, including in-app prompts and guidance, learning from peers, and published learning resources. Join live, or add the event to your calendar. Note: The top-level link has information and links to the recording for previous sessions in this Spring Adoption Series. May 2019 v-meet up for Women IT Pros - Building your personal brand with storytelling with Miri Rodriguez When: Friday, May 24, 2019 at 12pm PT | Have you been thinking about building your personal brand but don't know exactly how or where to get started? Miri Rodriguez, Storyteller for CSEO and Brand Coach, will help you craft your "why" and brand prototype using the design thinking method to help you get started on your personal brand journey. A distinctive story helps define and successfully communicate unique personal and business attributes. Storytelling has become a powerful business tool in today's digital age because it drives an immersive and emotional experience for stakeholders and audiences, inspiring them to action. In this dynamic and interactive session, Miri will share practical tools to help you become a skilled storyteller and tell your story in a compelling way. Microsoft Teams Spring Adoption Series: Measuring and Communicating Success When: Thursday, May 30, 2019 at 11am PT | This week we'll discuss how to collect and communicate success stories, qualitatively and quantitatively. Qualitative success stories are anecdotal points of feedback from stakeholders, champions, and users. These may be examples of improved collaboration, reduced internal email, faster team member onboarding, and similar stories. Quantitative success examples come from the Office 365 Microsoft Teams usage reports built into the Office 365 Admin portal. This information can show the usage of Microsoft Teams in your company. Communicating real-world examples and quantitative data is critical to reinforcing project success and getting buy-in and additional resources from leadership. In this session we'll walk through several examples of one-page or one-slide summaries you can create, and how to secure the data and examples you'll use to reinforce the message. Join live, or add the event to your calendar. Note: The top-level link has information and links to the recording for previous sessions in this Spring Adoption Series. 10 time saving tips and tricks with Outlook mobile When: Thursday, June 6, 2019 at 9am PT | Outlook mobile brings together your email, calendar, contacts, documents and more in one fast, fluid experience so you can accomplish the most important tasks in just a few seconds. All backed by enterprise-grade security you can trust. Join the Outlook mobile team for a webinar that will highlight cool tips and tricks that save you time and spark joy. You also get to ask any questions and share feedback with the team directly. In this webinar, you will learn: (1) Why Outlook mobile is the right choice for you, (2) Best practices for getting started, (3) Cool tips and tricks that spark joy and let you accomplish the most important tasks in just a few seconds, and (4) Ask questions or share your feedback directly with the Outlook team. There are also sessions from previous months that can be viewed on demand. Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Microsoft Planner When: Thursday, June 6, 2019 at 9am PT | We are very excited to announce a Microsoft Planner 'Ask Microsoft Anything' (AMA). An AMA is a live online event similar to a "YamJam" on Yammer or an "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit. This AMA gives you the opportunity to connect with members of the product teams who will be on hand to answer your questions and listen to feedback. Join in the Planner AMA space, or add the event to your calendar. We look forward to seeing you there! Microsoft Teams Spring Adoption Series: Ongoing Adoption - Tips and Best Practices When: Friday, June 7, 2019 at 11am PT | As your user base becomes more comfortable with teams, they'll start to explore functionality beyond basic Chat and Collaboration. "Where should I put my files in Office 365" will become a recurring question as they use Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive. When more Teams come online, best practices like Favoriting a Team, Following a Channel, and using the Activity Feed will help users get the most out of Teams. Your core Project Team should begin to transition from initial enablement to service management and monitoring for service changes and usage issues. Being able to rely/leverage your Champions community for ongoing "best practices" sessions, tips, and communications. Join live, or add the event to your calendar. Note: The top-level link has information and links to the recording for previous sessions in this Spring Adoption Series. Customer Immersion Experience: Hands-on with security in a cloud-first, mobile-first world This 2-hour hands-on session will give you the opportunity to try Microsoft technology that secures your digital transformation with a comprehensive platform, unique intelligence, and partnerships. A trained facilitator will guide you as you apply these tools to your own business scenarios and see how they work for you. During this interactive session, you will: (1) Detect and protect against external threats by monitoring, reporting and analyzing activity to react promptly to provide organization security, (2) Protect your information and reduce the risk of data loss, (3) Provide peace of mind with controls and visibility for industry-verified conformity with global standards in compliance, (4) Protect your users and their accounts, and (5) Support your organization with enhanced privacy and compliance to meet the General Data Protection Regulation. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

BLOG ROUNDUP

Get notifications about your Planner task assignments in Microsoft Teams We're happy to announce the availability of Planner notifications in Microsoft Teams. These notifications ensure you won't have to leave Teams to stay on top of your work. We've heard you're feedback about using the Planner tab in Teams, which is the hub for teamwork in Office 365, and we're excited to power up the Planner-in-Teams experience with notifications. If you're an Office 365 Enterprise or Office 365 Education customer, you'll receive Teams notifications whenever you're assigned a Planner task (so long as that Planner plan has a tab in Teams). Your assignment notifications will appear in your Teams Activity feed and the Teams Chat pane. You'll receive Teams notifications no matter where your task is assigned from, whether that's the Planner mobile app, Planner on the web (tasks.office.com), or our SharePoint web part. Teams notifications are not replacing Planner's existing mobile push and email notifications. You'll continue to receive both in addition to the notifications in Teams. | Resource: Use Planner in Microsoft Teams Stay connected to your VIPs with Outlook mobile Our time, attention, and people in our lives are precious. We need to stay connected, organized and do so in a way that keeps us focused on what matters while keeping sensitive information secure. We are pleased to announce the capability to customize your Outlook mobile email notifications from your favorite people (VIPs), enhancements to Outlook for Android Contacts, and additional use of intelligent technology from Office Lens. Outlook mobile is designed to help you focus on what matters and stay connected with your important people, so you can organize and get things done, safely. Yammer conversations web part for SharePoint now generally available! In December we announced that the Yammer conversations web part for SharePoint was in preview for target release customers. Now, we are excited to announce that it is generally available, making it easier than ever to bring a fully interactive Yammer experience into any SharePoint page, news article, or SharePoint site. The new Yammer conversations web part can integrate conversations from any Yammer group, topic, user, or home feed, and compliments the Yammer Highlights web part already in production. | Related: Behind the scenes of building Yammer: Focus on the movie, not the picture Section is available in Microsoft Forms Recently, we have enabled Section for all customers. Section is one of the top asks from Microsoft Forms UserVoice community. With section, customers could organize their forms in a better way. When customers fill a form with sections, they could navigate all questions in pages, with additional description or multimedia context. Customers could create section from the "…" menu of the "Add New" action bar. They could use the same capability to add and edit title, description, images and video. Additional management functions could be found in the "…" menu in section header.

NOTEWORTHY

Microsoft Mechanics: Monitor inappropriate communication through Microsoft 365 Format: Video (7 minutes) | Join us for a quick look at the new and improved Supervision policies in Microsoft 365. Learn how to create policies to help enforce corporate communications policies, monitor risk management, and meet regulatory compliance requirements. Use custom and intelligent policy conditions, such as the offensive language data model, to capture and flag all email and Microsoft Teams communications. Learn how to easily review and classify captured messages with the new management and reporting experience in the Security & Compliance Center. Microsoft IT Showcase: Improving employee engagement with live events in Microsoft 365 Employee engagement is a major contributor to workplace satisfaction, loyalty, and productivity at any company, and Microsoft is no exception. Interactive live events allow program leaders to effectively communicate business updates, training opportunities, announcements, and more in a way that makes an impact on the daily lives of employees and fosters ongoing collaboration and knowledge-sharing. With the new live event capabilities in Microsoft 365, the Core Services Engineering and Operations (CSEO) team at Microsoft began offering event producers a modern, seamless event-production solution for employee engagement. From small-team webcasts to all-hands meetings involving thousands of attendees, the solution increases the size and types of events that Microsoft employees can host, and improves employee engagement across organizational and geographical boundaries. Outlook for iOS and Android Default App Signature App Configuration Policy Enhancement Several customers, especially in the government sector, have requested the ability to remove the default app signature, "Get Outlook for iOS" or "Get Outlook for Android". For these customers, the default signature may act as an endorsement of a technology and/or provider, which may violate regulatory compliance requirements. Building on our announcement in March regarding general app configuration support for Outlook for iOS and Android, we're pleased to announce the availability to disable Outlook's default app signature through app config. Like with the previously announced general app configuration settings, the default app signature is delivered through the Managed App Configuration for iOS or the Android managed configurations allowing deployment by any MDM solution. Like with our other app configuration experience, Intune's App Configuration Policy experience has been updated to include this new setting for both iOS and Android Enterprise managed devices. In addition, we also added the "Allow user to change setting" for "Require Biometrics to access app" for iOS managed devices. Removal of the 16-character limit for passwords in Azure AD Many of you have been reminding us that we still have a 16-character password limit for accounts created in Azure AD. While our on-premises Windows AD allows longer passwords and passphrases, we previously didn't have support for this for cloud user accounts in Azure AD. We are pleased to announce that we have changed this limit, allowing you to set a password with up to 256 characters, including spaces. You can see more details on password requirements in our password policy documentation. Conditional access for the Azure AD combined MFA and password reset registration experience More and more organizations are using Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to protect their access and self-service password reset (SSPR) to reduce support costs and empower their users to manage their credential recovery. Our internal studies show that customers can cut their risk of account compromise by 99% by enabling MFA, so we're REALLY happy to see this growing trend. With this increasing usage, we also heard loud and clear that you want to control the conditions in which security sensitive MFA or SSPR information can be registered. This helps ensure it's the right user—not an attacker—registering this security sensitive info. We are excited to announce the public preview of Azure AD conditional access for our combined registration experience for MFA and SSPR. Many of our largest customers have already been using this while it was in private preview to simplify rolling out MFA and SSPR and we're looking forward to making it more broadly available as part of Azure AD Premium P1 subscription.

Office 365 Weekly Digest | May 5 – 11, 2019

Thomas C. Finney — Mon, 13 May 2019 06:00:52 GMT

Welcome to the May 5 - 11, 2019 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest. Fourteen features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, with most related to Microsoft Teams and SharePoint. One feature of note is the updates to password reset in the Microsoft 365 admin center, which now supports a 256 character maximum length and password writeback for hybrid customers. There are three new events - the May 2019 virtual meetup for Women IT Pros, a Microsoft Security Intelligence Report webinar, and a Planner Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA). The spotlight event this week is the Microsoft Compliance and Security Virtual Conference on Tuesday, May 14, 2019 from 9am - 2pm Pacific. Microsoft Build 2019 was last week, which means that most of the blog content was related to announcements from the conference. In addition, there is an April 2019 "What's new" in Microsoft 365 user management post, and information on Planer and To-Do integration rolling out now. Noteworthy items from last week include the new "My Library" and notifications features in the Service Trust Portal, a new home and updates for Microsoft Secure Score, general availability of Microsoft Search, and more.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

Below are the items added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week…

Feature ID	App / Service	Title	Description	Status	Added	Estimated Release	More Info
33603	SharePoint	SharePoint: lists from lists / lists from Excel	Build new lists from Excel, templates, or other lists	In development	05/10/2019	May CY2019	n / a
46184	Flow	Export Visio diagrams to Flow	Open an existing BPMN/Flowchart diagram or create a new one in Visio and export it to Microsoft Flow to automate.	In development	05/10/2019	Q4 CY2019	Export workflows designed in Visio to Flow to quickly automate business processes
50692	Teams	Microsoft Teams - Share system audio in a Teams meeting	Do you need to share a video or audio clip as part of a presentation? Sharing your system audio lets you stream your computer audio to meeting participants through Teams.	In development	05/10/2019	May CY2019	n / a
50796	Teams	Microsoft Teams: Music on Hold	Music for users on hold.	In development	05/10/2019	June CY2019	n / a
51089	Teams	Microsoft Teams: Secondary Ringer	Provides the capability to configure a second ringer for calling. This allows for headsets to be plugged in but still be able to hear a incoming call ring your device.	In development	05/10/2019	June CY2019	n / a
51186	Teams	Microsoft Teams: Single toolbar for controls in Meetings and Calling	Microsoft Teams is improving discoverability and reducing clutter for users in meetings and calls. The session controls will be unified to one toolbar at the bottom of the screen. This will affect Windows, Mac, and web clients. There is no impact for mobile or Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) devices.	In development	05/10/2019	June CY2019	n / a
51230	Teams	Microsoft Teams - Shared links	Streamline sharing with Microsoft Teams. You can now create a shareable link for any file stored in Teams and directly set the appropriate permissions. Additionally, you can also set permissions for files stored in SharePoint or OneDrive while composing a private chat or starting a channel conversation.	In development	05/10/2019	May CY2019	n / a
51235	Teams	Microsoft Teams - Add up to 100 people to a group chat	Do you need to have an ad-hoc discussion with a large number of people? Group chats can now accommodate up to 100 users.	In development	05/10/2019	June CY2019	n / a
51259	SharePoint	Move SharePoint sites to a new location	Beginning in June 2019 SharePoint Online administrators will be able to leverage the new invoke-spositeswap Windows PowerShell cmdlet to move SharePoint sites between locations within an Office 365 tenant. This feature will allow administrations to move a site to the location of an existing site. For example, move a modern site to become the root site at [tenant].sharepoint.com.	In development	05/10/2019	June CY2019	n / a
51262	SharePoint	SharePoint Migration Tool Site Migration Support	The SharePoint Migration Tool lets you migrate content from SharePoint Server 2013 or from on-premises file shares and easily move them to either Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, or OneDrive in Office 365. This update to the SharePoint Migration Tool provides support for complete site migrations with SharePoint Server 2013 in addition to support for migrations from SharePoint Server 2010 (preview).	In development	05/10/2019	May CY2019	SharePoint Migration Tool
51326	Teams	Microsoft Teams - Announcements	Do you have an announcement that needs to stand out from all other posts in a channel? The new "Announcement" post type allows you to add a headline with a background to your message. You can choose from our available backgrounds or upload your own custom image.	In development	05/10/2019	June CY2019	n / a
51332	Microsoft 365	Updated feature: reset password in the Microsoft 365 admin center	We're updating reset password so that it supports a 256 character maximum password length. For our hybrid customers, we have also implemented support for password writeback. This Azure Active Directory Premium feature allows admins to reset passwords for users synced via AAD connect. This means that you can now reset passwords in the online portal for these users.	Rolling out	05/10/2019	May CY2019	What's new in Microsoft 365 user management for April 2019
51358	Exchange Outlook	Outlook Calendar - new APIs	New capabilities will be available so you can better manage your organization's resources. SetPlace cmdlet - This feature will let you update information about rooms and add metadata like what devices are in the room. This functionality is only available for admins and will be performed through an Exchange Online PowerShell cmdlet. The changes made to the rooms will sync into Azure Active Directory as well. Places - Get all the information about rooms and roomlist like devices, floor and capacity. Room Naming schema- Room names will now be auto generated based on attributes admins can set.	In development	05/10/2019	Q4 CY2019	n / a
51372	SharePoint	Improvements to Default Retention Label inheritance for SPO Move/Copy actions	Now when moving or copying a file in SPO, if the file does not have a retention label, the default retention label at the library, folder or docset level will be inherited whether the target location is within the same site collection or is a different site collection.	In development	05/10/2019	June CY2019	n / a

UPCOMING EVENTS

Azure Active Directory Webinars for May When: Multiple sessions currently scheduled from May 14 - 22, 2019 | Are you looking to deploy Azure Active Directory quickly and easily? We are offering free webinars on key Azure Active Directory deployment topics to help you get up and running. Sessions include Getting Ready for Azure AD, Azure AD Connect Health, Streamlining Password Management Using Azure AD, and more. Each 1-hour webinar is designed to support IT Pros in quickly rolling out Azure Active Directory features to their organization. All webinars are free of cost and will include an anonymous Q&A session with our Engineering Team. So, come with your questions! Capacity is limited. Sign up for one or all of the sessions today! Note: There are also some sessions available on-demand. Microsoft Compliance and Security Virtual Conference When: Tuesday, May 14, 2019 from 9am – 2pm PT | In the present, ever-evolving threat landscape, many organizations find their biggest challenges in digital transformation to be ensuring security, privacy, and compliance. With the number of cybersecurity attacks on the rise, tighter local and global data privacy regulations, and the constant demand to ensure employees productivity, the need for an effective solution has never been greater. The Virtual Conference on Compliance and Security is coming on May 14. We invite you to register for a live event where you'll learn how to transform your business while remaining secure and compliant in a rapidly evolving world. Visit the registration page to learn more details about the event, including a preview of the agenda and session overviews. Invite your colleagues and register today to reserve your spot. We hope to see you at the Compliance & Security Virtual Conference! Microsoft IT Expert Roundtable: SharePoint at Microsoft - portals and publication When: Tuesday, May 14, 2019 at 10am PT | Join us for this live webinar where experts from both the business, and IT side of Microsoft will share candid insights and best practices around Enterprise Search, and how we manage our internal portals. They will also answer your questions about our strategy for modernizing employee experiences, delivering targeted communications, and enabling employees to find the authoritative content they need. Microsoft Teams Spring Adoption Series: Awareness Campaign - Broad When: Friday, May 17, 2019 at 11am PT | We'll review the responses and feedback we got from the pilot Awareness Campaign and discuss any needed adjustments. Depending on your organizations size, this may take time and be approached in phases by region, user profile or organization. We'll also discuss where outside communications and adoption partners can help the project team scale. Join live, or add the event to your calendar. Note: The top-level link has information and links to the recording for previous sessions in this Spring Adoption Series. Microsoft Security Intelligence Report (SIR) Webinar Want us to walk you through the most important insights from our Security Intelligence Report (SIR)? In the 24th edition of the SIR, we have shared key findings on threats based on our research and observations during the past year, covering topics such as cloud-based attacks, endpoint threats, phishing, and supply chain compromises. In addition to actionable insights, you'll learn about the brand new interactive web site that allows you to easily filter the data for threat trends by country and time period to share with your peers and customers. We will be posting recordings of the webinar on our community at https://aka.ms/SIRRecordings.

BLOG ROUNDUP

New people-centered experiences in Microsoft 365, the world's productivity cloud At Microsoft Build 2019, we announced the latest innovations in Microsoft 365. With Microsoft 365, we're building the world's productivity cloud—a solution to help people work smarter together on any device. The updates announced at Microsoft Build 2019 are our next step in creating a new way to work by breaking down barriers between people and across apps and devices. Underpinning all of this innovation is the Microsoft Graph, our customers' secure and compliant record of their productivity activity in the Microsoft Cloud. It helps developers create people-centered, cross-platform experiences by providing context about an organization's work that flows across documents, apps, and devices. The Microsoft Graph powers the most important components of Microsoft 365, from "born in the cloud" experiences like Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Search, and MyAnalytics, to modern, cloud-connected collaboration in existing apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Read on for the latest updates to these experiences and the underlying developer technologies that make them possible. Related:

Minimize distractions and stay focused with AI-powered updates in Microsoft 365 It's no secret that work and life are speeding up. It's not uncommon to spend all day in meetings, writing emails, or on the phone, leaving little time to focus on what is most important to you. Many of us have never-ending to-do lists and spend time working after hours to complete pressing tasks. MyAnalytics, your source of personal productivity insights in Microsoft 365, was built to help with these very challenges—and today it's getting a refresh. Via a dashboard, Insights in Outlook, and weekly email digests, MyAnalytics provides insights and AI-powered suggestions to help you work smarter. A new MyAnalytics experience—generally available starting today—makes the insights more outcome-oriented in four key areas: focus, wellbeing, network, and collaboration. For example, insights that previously showed you the hours you spent on email, chats, calls, and meetings outside your working hours over the past week now show you the number of days you successfully disconnected after work over the past month. That way, you can set goals and build habits that help you achieve more quiet days. What's new in Microsoft 365 user management for April 2019 We've updated quite a few features in user management in the Microsoft 365 admin center in April. These updates will help make completing your day to day tasks more efficient, and we're continuing to improve these core experiences over the next few months. You may have noticed that the way passwords work has changed a bit. We now support a maximum password length of 256 characters, which can help you improve the security of your organization by making your passwords harder to hack. For our hybrid customers, we have implemented support for password writeback. This Azure Active Directory Premium feature allows admins to reset passwords for users synced via AAD connect. This means that you can now reset passwords in the online portal for these users. We've also been busy ensuring that the efficiency improvements you've seen us apply to the Active users list will span across all our user management features. Updated experiences include: (1) Add user, (2) Delete user, (3) Block user, and more. The changes are rolling out now, and you should see them soon. Planner and To-Do integration: bringing you a more cohesive task management experience in Office 365 Starting in early May 2019, Planner tasks assigned to you will appear in To-Do under a new Assigned to Me list. This integration, which is available to anyone with an Office 365 Enterprise or Office 365 in Education plan, addresses your most popular request: integration with Outlook tasks. It also continues our efforts to build a seamless task management experience between Planner and other Microsoft 365 tools, like we've already done with Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Flow, Microsoft SharePoint, and others. To get started, you need to enable Planner connectivity within To-Do; it cannot be enabled within Planner. Once enabled, the Planner-integrated Assigned to Me list will appear across all major To-Do platforms: web, Windows, Android, and iOS mobile apps. To-Do integration with Planner bridges the gap between individual and team tasks. We are integrating with To-Do because Outlook tasks is being replaced with the To-Do app. This experience has already shipped for Outlook Web users, and the To-Do team is working on bringing this to Outlook Desktop apps as well. To-Do is your hub for organizing and focusing on all of your tasks. Planner is a collaborative space for you and your team to see how everyone's tasks fit into a plan. Together, To-Do and Planner simplify work management by allowing you to focus on your tasks at hand and easily jump back into Planner to collaborate with your team.

NOTEWORTHY

Introducing My Library on the Service Trust Portal —a new service for Microsoft users We are excited to announce some great new functionality to the Service Trust Portal (STP)! To support our effort to be transparent in how we manage customer data, we make available several resources. One of those resources is the Service Trust Portal, where we host tools such as Compliance Manager and a robust set of documents. These documents are updated frequently, and before now customers had to manually search within STP to find the most current versions of documents. After signing in, our customers are now able to save documents that are of particular relevance to them in one single place called My Library, and receive notifications when these documents are updated. A new home and an all-new look for Microsoft Secure Score In April 2019, we announced that Microsoft 365 Security Center had reached general availability and we provided our readers with a quick end to end tour of the top experiences. Since then it's been exciting to see the number of new customers using Microsoft Secure Score for the very first time almost tripling while the blog became one of the top viewed items for the month of March. In this month's blog we'd like to provide additional details on Microsoft Secure Scores' redesign and new capabilities. For this release your feedback on suggested we should focus on following four priorities and that's exactly what we decided to do: (1) Integrating it within Microsoft 365 security center instead of having it be a stand-alone console, (2) Organizing the experience around the Microsoft Threat Protection pillars, (3) Improving usability and decreasing decision-making time, and (4) Enriched the API so it has complete access to all Microsoft Secure Score data. Create SharePoint lists from Excel or other lists Changing the way business gets done – digital transformation – begins with great data. Microsoft 365 offers powerful tools for building workflows, automation and reporting – PowerApps, Flow, and Power BI. But you need a great place to store all that data. Every month, millions of users turn to SharePoint lists to store critical business data. Lists are secure, easy to use, and high capacity, with up to 30 million items in a single list. Today, across Microsoft 365, SharePoint lists store billions of rows of data to house information for scenarios like customers, audits or emergency room availability and more across Microsoft 365. Now, we're making it easier than ever to get started with a list – using Excel or other lists as a starting point. We'll start rolling out the new list creation experience to Targeted Release in mid May 2019. Welcome to Microsoft Search, intelligent search for the modern workplace We're announcing general availability of Microsoft Search, an intelligent, enterprise search experience from Microsoft that applies the artificial intelligence technology (AI) from Bing and deep personalized insights surfaced by the Microsoft Graph, to make search more effective for you – so whether you're looking to complete a task, pick up where you left off, or discover answers or insights, it's just a click away, across all of your applications, your desktop, and your browser. Microsoft Search is everywhere you are, in the header of the apps you're already using including Office, Outlook, SharePoint, OneDrive, Bing and Windows to name a few. It's a single, unified and consistent search experience that evolves the definition of search in the enterprise. We believe search is more than just a list of links, search needs to work both for and with you, anticipating your needs where you are working, with answers and insights in the flow of your work. Microsoft Search brings you natural language understanding, instant query predictions, contextual results, and more. Actionable Messages in Outlook mobile help you act fast on the go We are announcing the support of Actionable Messages in Outlook for iOS and Android to further help customers get things done quickly on the go. When you receive an email that has an option to take action, such as approving a timesheet, granting system access or quickly answering a survey, you can act on it right inside the email without leaving your inbox and switching apps. Microsoft is working with the developer community to integrate the tools, tasks and experiences of leading applications in a way that brings the work you would normally do in other apps right to your email. Using Actionable Messages with Adaptive Cards, developers can deliver messages in Outlook so customers can stay in context of what they doing and quickly take action. Outlook for Windows and Outlook on the web already support Actionable Messages and rolling out over the next few months, customers will be able to take action with Outlook for iOS and Android on a mobile device.

Office 365 Weekly Digest | April 28 – May 4, 2019

Thomas C. Finney — Mon, 06 May 2019 06:00:47 GMT

Welcome to the April 28 – May 4, 2019 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest. There were eight additions to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including updates for Microsoft Teams, Outlook on the web, FindTime, and Message Encryption in Office 365. A Microsoft IT Expert Roundtable on SharePoint at Microsoft - portals and publication is the only brand new event. The spotlight event this week is another Microsoft IT event, Speaking of Security - Device Health, on Tuesday, May 7, 2019 at 10am Pacific. In this session, you will learn about device health, the current state of device security at Microsoft, and more. "What's New" is the theme from last week's blog posts, including April 2019 updates for Microsoft Teams, OneDrive for Business, SharePoint, and Microsoft 365 overall. In addition, the Microsoft Security, Privacy & Compliance teams were busy with several announcements including new privacy controls in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Office, Advanced eDiscovery general availability, and the public preview of data investigation capabilities in Office 365. Noteworthy item highlights include The Microsoft 365 Update for April 2019 video, calendar updates in Outlook for Windows, info and an e-book on how to understand and improve your security posture with Microsoft 365, and the public preview of authentication sessions management capabilities for Azure AD conditional access.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

Below are the items added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week…

Feature ID	App / Service	Title	Description	Status	Added	Estimated Release
44370	Teams	Microsoft Teams - Manage discovery of private teams	Teams is making it easy to discover and join private teams. Admins and team owners can control whether they want to allow private teams to be discovered by Teams users. When a private team is discoverable, it shows up in search results and is included in suggestions in the team gallery alongside public teams in Teams. This makes it easy for people to search for and find the private teams that they want to join. People can request to join a private team which a team owner can then approve or deny.	In development	04/30/2019	June CY2019
50971	Outlook Web	Outlook on the web - agenda in Calendar	We are bringing back the daily agenda view in your Outlook calendar when you set up monthly view. Get a rich view of your day while seeing your full month.	In development	04/30/2019	June CY2019
50988	Teams	Multiteam Support in Shifts	Many Firstline Workers work on more than 1 team, and now with multiteam support in Shifts, employees will be able to access their shifts, other user's shifts, requests, open shifts, their profile, other user's profiles in a multi-team manner. This feature will save them both time and potentially data usage if they are switching teams often.	Rolling out	04/30/2019	May CY2019
50835	Teams	Time clock in Shifts	Enable your Firstline Workforce to clock in and out of their shifts and breaks from their mobile device. Additionally, you can set up Time clock using a geofenced location and collect GPS data to validate that someone has clocked in/out at the appropriate worksite.	Rolling out	04/30/2019	May CY2019
31061	Office 365	Payments in Outlook: Support for Office 365	Outlook Pay support was enabled for certain Outlook.com customers previously and we are continuing to roll out support for additional customers. Office 365 customers will be able to take advantage of paying invoices, right in email, without switching services. This functionality will be available for Outlook on the web initially and we will continue to roll out support for more platforms in the coming months.	Rolling out	04/30/2019	May CY2019
50078	FindTime	FindTime - online meeting support	We are updating the online meeting support for FindTime - With this update, FindTime will use the default online meeting provider your organization has set up between Skype for Business or Teams. If you have a stored Skype link in your FT settings, you will need to remove that link if your organization's default online meeting tool is Teams.	Rolling out	04/30/2019	Q2 CY2019
46098	Office 365	Advanced Message Encryption in Office 365: admin-controlled message revocation	We are enabling the ability for admins to revoke encrypted emails. Revocation of encrypted emails is only possible if the recipient received a link-based branded email experience for the encrypted email. Organizations will have the ability to force a link-based experience regardless of the recipient identity. This way, all recipients will get a branded email with a link to the Office 365 portal where they will be able to read and reply to encrypted emails. All such encrypted emails will be revocable. Once an email has been revoked, the recipient will get the following message when trying to access the encrypted email through the Office 365 portal: "The message has been revoked by the sender."	Rolling out	04/30/2019	Q2 CY2019
46099	Office 365	Message encryption: admin-controlled message expiration	We are releasing the ability for admins to expire encrypted emails. Expiration of encrypted emails is only possible if the recipient received a link-based branded email experience for the encrypted email. If the recipient received a native inline experience in a supported Outlook client, then those emails cannot be revoked. Organizations will have the ability to force a link-based experience regardless of the recipient identity. This way, all recipients will get a branded email with a link to the Office 365 Message Encryption portal where they will be able to read and reply to encrypted emails - and if the message is expired they will no longer be able to read and reply to the encrypted email. Once an email has been expired, the recipient will get an error when trying to access the encrypted email through the Office 365 Message Encryption portal: "The message has been expired by the sender."	Rolling out	04/30/2019	Q2 CY2019

UPCOMING EVENTS

Microsoft Teams Tips and Tricks Designed for those who are familiar with Microsoft Teams but want to understand some creative ways to optimize Teams in their day-to-day work, our Tips and Tricks session will teach you how to: (1) Filter and find information relevant to you, (2) Keep important resources at your fingertips, (3) Reduce "noise" so you can focus on work, (4) Create effective teams to keep projects moving forward and ensure everyone is in-the-know, (5) Make meetings more efficient by managing the pre, during, and post-meeting experience all within Teams, and more. The session is also available on demand at https://aka.ms/teamstipsandtricksondemand.

Microsoft IT: Speaking of Security - Device Health When: Tuesday, May 7, 2019 at 10am PT | In today's client-to-cloud world, device health is a foundational pillar of security. Unmanaged devices are a powerful entry point for malicious parties, and it is vital that only healthy devices can access critical applications and data. During this webinar you will learn about device health, the current state of device security at Microsoft, and our thinking behind key investment areas we are pursuing. There are other sessions now available on demand at the Speaking of Security webinar series site. Microsoft Teams Spring Adoption Series: Awareness Campaign - Pilot When: Friday, May 10, 2019 at 11am PT | Good communication is critical for successful adoption. In this session we'll build a simple campaign of awareness materials targeting your stakeholder team and champions that we'll refine for the broader organization. These include email templates, posters, digital signage, and learning events. We'll share the out-of-the-box resources available from Microsoft and walk through how to customize for your organization. We'll also discuss the importance of curating self-help and training information in a single location, and what to include in a 1-hour kickoff meeting for a department, division, or working group. Join live, or add the event to your calendar. Note: The top-level link has information and links to the recording for previous sessions in this Spring Adoption Series. Azure Active Directory Webinars for May When: Multiple sessions currently scheduled from May 14 - 22, 2019 | Are you looking to deploy Azure Active Directory quickly and easily? We are offering free webinars on key Azure Active Directory deployment topics to help you get up and running. Sessions include Getting Ready for Azure AD, Azure AD Connect Health, Streamlining Password Management Using Azure AD, and more. Each 1-hour webinar is designed to support IT Pros in quickly rolling out Azure Active Directory features to their organization. All webinars are free of cost and will include an anonymous Q&A session with our Engineering Team. So, come with your questions! Capacity is limited. Sign up for one or all of the sessions today! Note: There are also some sessions available on-demand. Microsoft Compliance and Security Virtual Conference When: Tuesday, May 14, 2019 from 9am – 2pm PT | In the present, ever-evolving threat landscape, many organizations find their biggest challenges in digital transformation to be ensuring security, privacy, and compliance. With the number of cybersecurity attacks on the rise, tighter local and global data privacy regulations, and the constant demand to ensure employees productivity, the need for an effective solution has never been greater. The Virtual Conference on Compliance and Security is coming on May 14. We invite you to register for a live event where you'll learn how to transform your business while remaining secure and compliant in a rapidly evolving world. Visit the registration page to learn more details about the event, including a preview of the agenda and session overviews. Invite your colleagues and register today to reserve your spot. We hope to see you at the Compliance & Security Virtual Conference! Microsoft IT Expert Roundtable: SharePoint at Microsoft - portals and publication When: Tuesday, May 14, 2019 at 10am PT | Join us for this live webinar where experts from both the business, and IT side of Microsoft will share candid insights and best practices around Enterprise Search, and how we manage our internal portals. They will also answer your questions about our strategy for modernizing employee experiences, delivering targeted communications, and enabling employees to find the authoritative content they need. Microsoft Teams Spring Adoption Series: Awareness Campaign - Broad When: Friday, May 17, 2019 at 11am PT | We'll review the responses and feedback we got from the pilot Awareness Campaign and discuss any needed adjustments. Depending on your organizations size, this may take time and be approached in phases by region, user profile or organization. We'll also discuss where outside communications and adoption partners can help the project team scale. Join live, or add the event to your calendar. Note: The top-level link has information and links to the recording for previous sessions in this Spring Adoption Series. Microsoft Teams Spring Adoption Series: End User Training When: Friday, May 24, 2019 at 11am PT | We have to help users adopt a self-service mindset to learning and discovery in order to keep up with changes in Cloud services. Guided learning sessions delivered by the project team or an appropriate champion can reinforce by sharing tips on getting started and best practices. In this session, we'll review a typical one-hour orientation session and how to deliver it. We'll then review the end-user training resources available to your organization and discuss how to promote them, including in-app prompts and guidance, learning from peers, and published learning resources. Join live, or add the event to your calendar. Note: The top-level link has information and links to the recording for previous sessions in this Spring Adoption Series. Microsoft Teams Spring Adoption Series: Measuring and Communicating Success When: Thursday, May 30, 2019 at 11am PT | This week we'll discuss how to collect and communicate success stories, qualitatively and quantitatively. Qualitative success stories are anecdotal points of feedback from stakeholders, champions, and users. These may be examples of improved collaboration, reduced internal email, faster team member onboarding, and similar stories. Quantitative success examples come from the Office 365 Microsoft Teams usage reports built into the Office 365 Admin portal. This information can show the usage of Microsoft Teams in your company. Communicating real-world examples and quantitative data is critical to reinforcing project success and getting buy-in and additional resources from leadership. In this session we'll walk through several examples of one-page or one-slide summaries you can create, and how to secure the data and examples you'll use to reinforce the message. Join live, or add the event to your calendar. Note: The top-level link has information and links to the recording for previous sessions in this Spring Adoption Series. 10 time saving tips and tricks with Outlook mobile When: Thursday, June 6, 2019 at 9am PT | Outlook mobile brings together your email, calendar, contacts, documents and more in one fast, fluid experience so you can accomplish the most important tasks in just a few seconds. All backed by enterprise-grade security you can trust. Join the Outlook mobile team for a webinar that will highlight cool tips and tricks that save you time and spark joy. You also get to ask any questions and share feedback with the team directly. In this webinar, you will learn: (1) Why Outlook mobile is the right choice for you, (2) Best practices for getting started, (3) Cool tips and tricks that spark joy and let you accomplish the most important tasks in just a few seconds, and (4) Ask questions or share your feedback directly with the Outlook team. There are also sessions from previous months that can be viewed on demand. Microsoft Teams Spring Adoption Series: Ongoing Adoption - Tips and Best Practices When: Friday, June 7, 2019 at 11am PT | As your user base becomes more comfortable with teams, they'll start to explore functionality beyond basic Chat and Collaboration. "Where should I put my files in Office 365" will become a recurring question as they use Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive. When more Teams come online, best practices like Favoriting a Team, Following a Channel, and using the Activity Feed will help users get the most out of Teams. Your core Project Team should begin to transition from initial enablement to service management and monitoring for service changes and usage issues. Being able to rely/leverage your Champions community for ongoing "best practices" sessions, tips, and communications. Join live, or add the event to your calendar. Note: The top-level link has information and links to the recording for previous sessions in this Spring Adoption Series. Customer Immersion Experience: Hands-on with security in a cloud-first, mobile-first world This 2-hour hands-on session will give you the opportunity to try Microsoft technology that secures your digital transformation with a comprehensive platform, unique intelligence, and partnerships. A trained facilitator will guide you as you apply these tools to your own business scenarios and see how they work for you. During this interactive session, you will: (1) Detect and protect against external threats by monitoring, reporting and analyzing activity to react promptly to provide organization security, (2) Protect your information and reduce the risk of data loss, (3) Provide peace of mind with controls and visibility for industry-verified conformity with global standards in compliance, (4) Protect your users and their accounts, and (5) Support your organization with enhanced privacy and compliance to meet the General Data Protection Regulation. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

BLOG ROUNDUP

New to Microsoft 365 in April—new tools to streamline compliance and make collaboration inclusive and engaging This month, we released new features and services in Microsoft 365 to help you meet your compliance requirements, manage security policies, and reach more audiences with your content. We're releasing new solutions designed to help you assess your compliance risk and manage policies to protect sensitive data both inside and outside of your organization. New capabilities help you connect with more people and create more engaging content across multiple languages. | Related: Edit your content faster with OneNote What's New in Microsoft Teams | April 2019 In case you missed it… here is a round of up of what's new with Microsoft Teams in the past month, including Microsoft Teams on Surface Hub, availability of Microsoft Whiteboard in commercial preview, org-wide teams now have larger size limits, show and hide teams to stay organized, general availability of the Microsoft Teams PowerShell module, and more. | Related: Information Barriers Preview | New to Microsoft Teams? Start here with a full Teams demo and tutorial OneDrive Roadmap Roundup – April 2019 The OneDrive team has been hard at work so you can more easily access, share, and collaborate on all your files from anywhere. April 2019 brought a slew of updates to OneDrive in Office 365 including: (1) New golden folder icon design, (2) Improvements in the OneDrive sync client such as Incident Deflection, (3) Updated "manage access" pane for classic user interface, and more. SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop: April 2019 SharePoint is off and running into the second quarter of calendar year 2019 - so hang on! This is the comprehensive recap for all things SharePoint and related technology. Our goal is to provide change management excellence, with clear, concise and timely resources. All the features listed below began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Office 365 as of April 2019 (possibly early May 2019). These updates include: (1) Files restore for SharePoint and Teams, (2) Yammer Conversations web part, (3) Modern document sets, (4) Office 365 Group card enhancements, (5) Per-Machine OneDrive sync client for Windows, and many more! | Related: Manage email notifications in SharePoint Grow and protect your business with more privacy controls in Microsoft 365 Being a customer-obsessed business means being privacy-obsessed. Customers are more aware and sensitive than ever before about your data privacy policies, making decisions to do business with you based on the trust they have about how you handle their data. According to industry analysts such as Forrester, companies with more advanced privacy practices are growing faster today than their peers with less mature policies. In this environment, privacy and compliance professionals play an increasingly strategic role within organizations. As data continues to grow exponentially and travel across organizational boundaries, providing your teams with the right tools to maintain control and manage risk across data, wherever it lives, is our priority. We are excited to share updates in Microsoft 365 that provide organizations with more control and options to strengthen their data privacy practices. Related:

NOTEWORTHY

Video: Microsoft 365 Update for April 2019 Format: Video (11 minutes) | Jim Naroski covers recent enhancements to Office 365, including new icons in Office 365, message encryption, Compliance Manager, Multi-Geo, Security Policy Advisor, Azure AD Password Protection, and more. The video transcript, complete with links to additional information on everything covered, is available at http://aka.ms/m365update-blog. Calendar updates in Outlook for Windows gives time back We've made updates to the Calendar in Outlook for Windows to help you effectively manage your most valuable resource, your time. We listened to your suggestions and made improvements so you can schedule meetings faster and easier and better personalize your experience. All the enhancements are available now to Monthly Channel Office 365 subscribers! Announcing Office 365 Advanced Message Encryption Our goal continues to be to protect our customers' sensitive data, by making it easier to apply and consume encrypted messages, regardless if your recipient is inside or outside your organization. Unfortunately, protecting and controlling sensitive data that's shared outside your organization is more challenging than if it was shared inside your organization. That's why we are investing in capabilities that not only enhance encryption, but also provide more control over access to encrypted emails by external recipients. We are excited to share new Office 365 Advanced Message Encryption capabilities that enable admins to apply multiple custom email templates, and to expire and revoke encrypted emails accessed through the Office 365 web portal. Understand and improve your security posture with Microsoft 365 The fourth e-book in this series, Understand & improve your security posture, delves into the tools available in Microsoft 365 to measure and improve enterprise security. It also shows how security professionals can use the data to instill confidence in executive teams and boards of directors, who worry about cybersecurity but may not understand all the issues. Told through the lens of Evan, a (fictitious) Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), the e-book illustrates how he uses Microsoft 365 to evaluate his company's security posture and improve protection against emerging threats. Manage authentication sessions in Azure AD conditional access is now in public preview! We're excited to announce public preview of authentication sessions management capabilities for Azure AD conditional access. Authentication session management capabilities allow you to configure how often your users need to provide sign-in credentials and whether they need to provide credentials after closing and reopening browsers—giving you fined-grained controls that can offer more security and flexibility in your environment. Authentication session management capabilities require Azure AD Premium 1 subscription. Note: This feature replaces the Configurable Token Lifetimes feature currently in public preview. If you're using Configurable Token Lifetimes, please make plans to transition to conditional access for authentication sessions management. Configurable Token Lifetime will be retired six months from now on October 15, 2019.

Office 365 Weekly Digest | April 21 – 27, 2019

Thomas C. Finney — Mon, 29 Apr 2019 06:00:14 GMT

Welcome to the April 21 - 27, 2019 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest. Ten features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, most focused on SharePoint Online and compliance / eDiscovery. There is also an update for Office Online Account Manager targeted for release in April 2019. There are several new events listed this week, including the Azure AD webinars for May, and a new Spring Adoption series for Microsoft Teams that runs weekly through early June 2019. The spotlight event for this week is a Microsoft IT Expert Roundtable on Wednesday, May 1, 2019 at 10am Pacific. This webcast shares insights and best practices for migrating from Skype Meeting Broadcast to Live Events in Microsoft 365. Highlights from last week's blogs include the release of the new cloud-based policy management service for Office 365 ProPlus, the preview of Security Policy Advisor for Office, the April 2019 updates for SharePoint News, and the rollout of files restore for SharePoint and Microsoft Teams. The April 2019 features for Workplace Analytics, new insertable icons in Office, general availability of the Microsoft Teams PowerShell module, and an article on the "Top 5 Benefits of the OneDrive mobile app" are all last week's items of note.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

Below are the items added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week…

Feature ID	App / Service	Title	Description	Status	Added	Estimated Release	More Info
50420	Outlook Android	Outlook for Android: People contact information	Detailed contact information about people in your organization (people card) including organizational reporting structure for businesses, people they work with or those you email with frequently.	In development	04/24/2019	Q2 CY2019	n / a
50753	Office 365	Office Online Account Manager is getting updated	Office Online Account manager is available in the authenticated experience and enables you to access your account, profile and sign out. The current experience is different from Account Manager on other Microsoft Products. We are updating Office Online Account Manager to be consistent with other account experiences across all of Microsoft.	In development	04/26/2019	April CY2019	n / a
50759	Office OneDrive	Improvements to how Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint client) handles Properties	Users will now be able to save Office files with missing required properties. This change will apply only to the Office files synced by the OneDrive sync client. The document properties will continue to be available for viewing and editing through the document backstage by going to File Info. This change will lead to performance improvements.	Rolling out	04/26/2019	April CY2019	n / a
50795	Office 365	Records Management solution in Microsoft 365 Compliance Center	Now take advantage of Microsoft 365 records management capabilities in one place with specific permissions model and tailored experience for records management including file plan, event-based retention, and defensible disposition. Enable your records management requirements in-place within Microsoft 365.	In development	04/26/2019	May CY2019	n / a
50805	SharePoint	News & page targeting	With audience targeting, site owners and intranet managers can deliver rich experiences to various audiences from within the same site with intelligence on what content to show specific people based on role, region, status, etc.	Rolling out	04/26/2019	May CY2019	April 2019 Updates to SharePoint News
33594	SharePoint	Organization assets	Centralized curated view of digital images for reuse in page authoring	Rolling out	04/26/2019	May CY2019	April 2019 Updates to SharePoint News
50794	Office 365	Advanced Record Versioning in Advanced Data Governance	Now users with correct permissions can lock and un-lock a record to enable collaboration on records within SharePoint online. Use the advanced record versioning feature to ensure records retention policies are met, while supporting collaboration and productivity on records in your organization. At each lock or un-lock action a snapshot of the record is taken and preserved to ensure records retention requirements are met.	In development	04/26/2019	Q3 CY2019	n / a
50754	Office 365	Advanced eDiscovery delegated access	Now add external counsel to a specific case within Advanced eDiscovery. This feature will help organizations ensure their partners of choice are able to execute eDiscovery related tasks within Microsoft 365 directly.	In development	04/26/2019	Q4 CY2019	n / a
50755	Office 365	Advanced eDiscovery threaded chat and email review	Now eDiscovery managers can review chats and emails in context of the thread and full context of the collaboration or discussion. This will help speed the efficiency of the review process with communications in full context of the conversation.	In development	04/26/2019	Q4 CY2019	n / a
50536	MileIQ	New Feature: MileIQ admin center for managing MileIQ users	MileIQ admin center, a portal for managing mobile workers who are using the mileage-tracking app MileIQ. Business Premium and other large company Office 365 plans include access to the MileIQ admin center. The MileIQ admin center enables more-efficient workflows with MileIQ users. It enables admins to quickly provision employees to use MileIQ, bulk import new users, revoke access to employees, as well as to quickly adjust your corporate reimbursement rate.	In development	04/27/2019	May CY2019	n / a

UPCOMING EVENTS

Customer Immersion Experience: Communicating more effectively & working better together During this session, you will have the opportunity to experience Windows 10, Office 365 and Microsoft's newest collaboration tool: Microsoft Teams. A trained facilitator will guide you as you apply these tools to your own business scenarios and see how they work for you. During this interactive session, you will explore how to use Microsoft Teams and Office 365 to: (1) Create a hub for team work that works together with your other Office 365 apps, (2) Build customized options for each team, (3) Keep everyone on your team engaged, (4) Coauthor and share content quickly, and (5) Gain skills that will save you time and simplify your workflow immediately. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Tuesday, April 30, 2019 from 12pm - 2pm PT

Microsoft IT Expert Roundtable: Migrating to live events in Microsoft 365 from Skype Meeting Broadcast When: Wednesday, May 1, 2019 at 10am PT | Experts at Microsoft Core Services Engineering and Operations (CSEO) answer your questions about how we migrated to the live events capability in Microsoft 365. They share candid insights and best practices around the new video and interactive discussion capabilities available in Microsoft Teams, Yammer and Microsoft Stream, including planning, technical considerations and communications that were needed to ensure an optimal experience for both event producers and Microsoft employees. 10 time saving tips and tricks with Outlook mobile Outlook mobile brings together your email, calendar, contacts, documents and more in one fast, fluid experience so you can accomplish the most important tasks in just a few seconds. All backed by enterprise-grade security you can trust. Join the Outlook mobile team for a webinar that will highlight cool tips and tricks that save you time and spark joy. You also get to ask any questions and share feedback with the team directly. In this webinar, you will learn: (1) Why Outlook mobile is the right choice for you, (2) Best practices for getting started, (3) Cool tips and tricks that spark joy and let you accomplish the most important tasks in just a few seconds, and (4) Ask questions or share your feedback directly with the Outlook team. There are also sessions from previous months that can be viewed on demand.

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Live Events with the Stream, Teams and Yammer Teams When: Thursday, May 2, 2019 at 9am PT | We are very excited to announce a Live Events 'Ask Microsoft Anything' (AMA) with the Stream, Teams and Yammer teams! An AMA is a live online event similar to a "YamJam" on Yammer or an "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit. This AMA gives you the opportunity to connect with members of the product teams who will be on hand to answer your questions and listen to feedback. Join in the Live Events AMA space, or add the event to your calendar. We look forward to seeing you there! Microsoft Teams Spring Adoption Series: Creating a Champions Program When: Friday, May 3, 2019 at 11am PT | Champions are not only passionate about what they do, but are also excited to evangelize and help their peers to learn more effective solutions. In this week's session, we'll discuss how to find enthusiastic Champions who help the core project team drive engagement to the broader community. We'll discuss how to organize a Champions kick-off activity, maintain regular engagement, and how to recognize their efforts and contributions. Join live, or add the event to your calendar. Note: The top-level link has information and links to the recording for previous sessions in this Spring Adoption Series. Microsoft IT: Speaking of Security - Device Health When: Tuesday, May 7, 2019 at 10am PT | In today's client-to-cloud world, device health is a foundational pillar of security. Unmanaged devices are a powerful entry point for malicious parties, and it is vital that only healthy devices can access critical applications and data. During this webinar you will learn about device health, the current state of device security at Microsoft, and our thinking behind key investment areas we are pursuing. There are other sessions now available on demand at the Speaking of Security webinar series site. Microsoft Teams Spring Adoption Series: Awareness Campaign - Pilot When: Friday, May 10, 2019 at 11am PT | Good communication is critical for successful adoption. In this session we'll build a simple campaign of awareness materials targeting your stakeholder team and champions that we'll refine for the broader organization. These include email templates, posters, digital signage, and learning events. We'll share the out-of-the-box resources available from Microsoft and walk through how to customize for your organization. We'll also discuss the importance of curating self-help and training information in a single location, and what to include in a 1-hour kickoff meeting for a department, division, or working group. Join live, or add the event to your calendar. Note: The top-level link has information and links to the recording for previous sessions in this Spring Adoption Series. Azure Active Directory Webinars for May When: Multiple sessions currently scheduled from May 14 - 22, 2019 | Are you looking to deploy Azure Active Directory quickly and easily? We are offering free webinars on key Azure Active Directory deployment topics to help you get up and running. Sessions include Getting Ready for Azure AD, Azure AD Connect Health, Streamlining Password Management Using Azure AD, and more. Each 1-hour webinar is designed to support IT Pros in quickly rolling out Azure Active Directory features to their organization. All webinars are free of cost and will include an anonymous Q&A session with our Engineering Team. So, come with your questions! Capacity is limited. Sign up for one or all of the sessions today! Note: There are also some sessions available on-demand. Microsoft Compliance and Security Virtual Conference When: Tuesday, May 14, 2019 from 9am – 2pm PT | In the present, ever-evolving threat landscape, many organizations find their biggest challenges in digital transformation to be ensuring security, privacy, and compliance. With the number of cybersecurity attacks on the rise, tighter local and global data privacy regulations, and the constant demand to ensure employees productivity, the need for an effective solution has never been greater. The Virtual Conference on Compliance and Security is coming on May 14. We invite you to register for a live event where you'll learn how to transform your business while remaining secure and compliant in a rapidly evolving world. Visit the registration page to learn more details about the event, including a preview of the agenda and session overviews. Invite your colleagues and register today to reserve your spot. We hope to see you at the Compliance & Security Virtual Conference! Microsoft Teams Spring Adoption Series: Awareness Campaign - Broad When: Friday, May 17, 2019 at 11am PT | We'll review the responses and feedback we got from the pilot Awareness Campaign, and discuss any needed adjustments. Depending on your organizations size, this may take time and be approached in phases by region, user profile or organization. We'll also discuss where outside communications and adoption partners can help the project team scale. Join live, or add the event to your calendar. Note: The top-level link has information and links to the recording for previous sessions in this Spring Adoption Series. Customer Immersion Experience: Hands-on with security in a cloud-first, mobile-first world This 2-hour hands-on session will give you the opportunity to try Microsoft technology that secures your digital transformation with a comprehensive platform, unique intelligence, and partnerships. A trained facilitator will guide you as you apply these tools to your own business scenarios and see how they work for you. During this interactive session, you will: (1) Detect and protect against external threats by monitoring, reporting and analyzing activity to react promptly to provide organization security, (2) Protect your information and reduce the risk of data loss, (3) Provide peace of mind with controls and visibility for industry-verified conformity with global standards in compliance, (4) Protect your users and their accounts, and (5) Support your organization with enhanced privacy and compliance to meet the General Data Protection Regulation. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

BLOG ROUNDUP

The new cloud-based policy management service for Office 365 ProPlus has been released! The Office cloud policy service allows administrators to define policies for Office 365 ProPlus and assign these policies to users via Azure Active Directory security groups. Once defined, policies are automatically enforced as users sign in and use Office 365 ProPlus. No need to be domain joined or MDM enrolled and works with corporate owned devices or BYOD. This service is now generally available and supported for all Office 365 ProPlus customers. If you are an administrator, you can start using this service today by signing into the Office client management portal and creating policy configurations. | Resource: Overview of the Office cloud policy service for Office 365 ProPlus Announcing Security Policy Advisor Preview for Office 365 ProPlus We're excited to announce the public preview of Security Policy Advisor—the first in a series of security investments to further strengthen the apps in Office 365 ProPlus. Security Policy Advisor is a service that offers an easier, more effective way to manage your security policies. It provides custom policy recommendations, supported with rich data insights into how these policies would impact your group's use of features in Office—allowing you to make decisions with full information. Security Policy Advisor enables IT admins who have deployed Office 365 ProPlus, to manage the security of their Office applications with confidence. This service is now available as a preview in English and will be available in additional locales in the coming weeks. | Resource: Overview of the Security Policy Advisor (Preview) for Office 365 ProPlus April 2019 Updates to SharePoint News SharePoint news helps you enhance communications and engagement with employees and stakeholders. Here are our latest enhancements for pages and news in SharePoint: (1) Audience targeting - starting April 2019, (2) Email notification for engagement with news and pages - starting late April 2019, (3) Organization assets - starting May 2019, and (4) Call to action links on hero web part - starting May 2019. Files restore for SharePoint and Microsoft Teams Data loss is non-negotiable. Period. As innovation in the cloud drives business value, it delivers new capabilities to the IT professionals and site admins who work tirelessly to support, configure, administer, and secure their organizations' and teams' content. And it is important that you are empowered to recover from accidental deletions or version issues at the speed business productivity requires. We have started to roll out Files Restore for SharePoint and Microsoft Teams – a new Microsoft 365 feature. This is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap: ID 33714 and originally announced at Ignite 2018. Files Restore is now available for SharePoint document libraries, protecting your shared files in SharePoint, Teams, Outlook groups, and Yammer groups connected to Office 365 groups and uses the same recovery capabilities that protect your individual files in OneDrive for Business. Files restore for SharePoint has begun Targeted Release to customers in Office 365. We plan to extend release to all full Targeted Release customers by the end of April 2019. We then plan to fully release to all full production Office 365 customers by the end of May 2019.

NOTEWORTHY

Workplace Analytics - April 2019: New feature releases The Workplace Analytics team is excited to announce our feature updates for April 2019. In this update, you'll discover the latest, including: (1) New redundancy metric, (2) New videos help admins prepare organizational data, (3) Improvements to the organizational-data upload process, and (4) Changes to add clarity to query usage. Your Feedback in Action: New Insertable Icons in Office When we first added Icons to Office, we got tons of great feedback that people loved them! You used them to add visual flare to your documents and presentations, to replace boring bullet points, to draw attention to key parts of your slides. But we also heard you loud and clear: you wanted more! And you noticed some key areas where we just didn't have anything that fit the bill. So, we got to work. And the result? 350 brand new icons that add to some old categories and create some entirely new ones! And that's just some of it! Find all of the new icons by going to the Insert Ribbon and clicking on Icons in PowerPoint, Word, and Excel on Mac, Windows, and iOS; in Outlook on Windows; and in PowerPoint Online on the web. Microsoft Teams PowerShell Module General Availability We are excited to announce the general availability of the Microsoft Teams PowerShell module. This PowerShell module, first released in Beta last year, allows you to manage the lifecycle of teams within your organization. As a Global Administrator or Teams Service Administrator, you can identify and manage teams on behalf of your users, and make bulk updates to teams faster – including changing memberships or managing team settings. This new version of our module leverages only 1.0 Graph APIs. Going forward, we will be maintaining both a Preview and Generally Available versions of the Microsoft Teams PowerShell module. This will allow us to deliver new, preview functionality to our customers faster for testing, while ensuring that our Generally Available module continues to leverage only 1.0 APIs. | Related: Quantifying the value of collaboration with Microsoft Teams Top 5 benefits of the OneDrive mobile app In an era of rapid digital transformation, how we work is changing. Work does not solely revolve around an office space. Tech-savvy millennial and information workers expect to be productive even when they are working remotely- be it at a client's location, a cafe, their home (on the porch in the sun preferably 😉), or while traveling. This means that they need to stay connected, updated and access and share their corporate content especially when beyond the walls of the office. Our 4.5 star rated OneDrive app for iOS and Android are here to help. Let us look at the 5 key benefits of the OneDrive mobile app – especially when on the go...