Office 365 Weekly Digest | May 28 - June 3, 2017

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Welcome to the May 28 - June 3, 2017 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest. Please see below for a reminder on a change regarding the inclusion of Message Center notification details in these weekly posts.

A friendly reminder that the Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) session with the Office 365 Adoption Content Pack in Power BI product team is on Wednesday, June 7, 2017. There seems to be a lot of GDPR-related content of late, and it will also be the focus of the next Modern Workplace episode on Tuesday, June 13, 2017.

Blog highlights from last week include general availability of the Office 365 Centralized Deployment service, which allows administrators to deploy Office web add-ins. Microsoft Planner apps for Android and iOS were also announced, in addition to Immersive Reader for Outlook on the web and per-group sharing controls in OneDrive for Business.

Updated Office 365 URLs and IP addresses, the Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) Summary Library, a technical deep dive on a specific error for Exchange Online migrations and updates to Power BI, PowerApps and Microsoft Flow fill out the noteworthy items for the week of May 28 - June 3, 2017.

MESSAGE CENTER

As Office 365 increases the relevance of change communications to be more tenant-specific, a broad publication of this information becomes less useful and potentially inaccurate. Please be sure to check the Message Center in your Office 365 tenant for details on changes for awareness or that may require admin attention. Additional resources are included below:

Note: A Message Center weekly digest email is currently available for Office 365 admins set to First Release.

Also see: Send weekly Message Center email to Microsoft Teams

UPCOMING EVENTS Office 365 Adoption Content Pack in Power BI: Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA)

When: Wednesday, June 7, 2017 at 9:00am PT | Please join the Office 365 Adoption Content Pack in Power BI product team for an “Ask Microsoft Anything” (AMA) on Wednesday, June 7, 2017 from 9am to 10am PST. 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 the FastTrack team who will be on hand to answer your questions and listen to feedback regarding the recent announcement of the public preview availability. Add the event to your calendar and join us in the Office 365 Adoption Content Pack in Power BI AMA group. We hope to see you there!

 

Azure Active Directory Webinars for May - June

When: Multiple sessions currently scheduled June 6 – June 15, 2017 | Sessions include Azure AD Connect Health, Getting Ready for Azure AD, Securing Your Identities with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), Accessing Your Organization’s Internal Applications via Azure AD App Proxy and more. Each 1-hour or 75-minute 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.

 

Explore Microsoft Teams, Windows 10 and Office 365 in an interactive online session

When: Wednesdays June 7, 2017 through June 21, 2017 at 10am PT & 12pm PT | Today’s fast-paced workplace requires you to transition between tasks seamlessly and find things quickly. As work and collaboration evolve to become more web-based and complex, changing professional styles call for tools that provide agility across the full span of a workday. Instead of wasting time searching for your most-used features and content, you need technology that allows you to transition from email to collaboration to project work and back again with ease. Microsoft is now offering hands-on live sessions where you’ll have the opportunity to test drive Windows 10, Office 365 and our hottest new collaboration tool: Microsoft Teams. During these small-group sessions, you’ll have the opportunity to apply these tools to your own business scenarios and see how they work for you. Each 90-minute session starts with an online business roundtable, discussing your biggest business challenges with a trained facilitator, and then transitions into a live environment in the cloud. You will receive a link to connect your own device to a remote desktop loaded with our latest technology, so you can experience first-hand how Microsoft tools can solve your challenges.

 

Register for “GDPR: What you need to know” on Modern Workplace

When: Tuesday, June 13, 2017 at 8:00am PT | Join us for the next episode of Modern Workplace, “GDPR: What you need to know,” airing June 13, 2017 at 8 a.m. PDT / 4 p.m. BST. We’ll take a closer look at the global impact of this all-encompassing privacy law. Brendon Lynch, chief privacy officer for Microsoft, will share his tips on how to move your organization toward GDPR compliance. Karen Lawrence Öqvist, GDPR expert and CEO for Privasee, will offer an EU perspective on this new law and share what an organization needs to do to be prepared. Plus, we’ll showcase a hands-on demo of powerful security and privacy solutions—such as Office 365 Advanced Data Governance and Microsoft Azure Information Protection—which can help your organizations journey to compliance with the GDPR. Register now!

 

FastTrack Webinars: Learn how to do more, together

When: Multiple sessions currently scheduled from June 5 – June 23, 2017 | Ask questions, learn shortcuts and find out how Office 365 can make you and your team more productive. Each webinar is a live, instructor-led session offered at multiple dates and times. Facilitated discussion follows each session, with opportunities to ask questions and discuss specific scenarios to you. Direct registration links for each webinar are provided below.

 

 

BLOG ROUNDUP Announcing general availability of the Office 365 Centralized Deployment service

Office add-ins help Office users to personalize their work experience and streamline data access. Late last year, we announced the Centralized Deployment service in preview, which allows administrators to deploy Office web add-ins. We are excited to announce general availability of Centralized Deployment. From the Office 365 admin center or by using PowerShell scripts, administrators can deploy Office web add-ins to individual users, groups or an organization with ease, using Centralized Deployment. Users can simply open Office applications—such as Word, Excel or PowerPoint on Windows, Mac or Office Online—to see the add-ins installed on their ribbon. This allows organizations—large and small—to easily extend Office with high-value services across all platforms. Add-ins built internally for use within an organization, as well as add-ins from the Office Store or Microsoft AppSource, can be deployed using Centralized Deployment to tenants worldwide. | Additional Resources: Microsoft Tech Community: Deploy custom business applications with ease with the Office 365 Centralized Deployment service | Configuration Requirements | Compatibility Add-In Checker

 

Announcing the Microsoft Planner mobile app for iPhone and Android

We are pleased to announce that the new Microsoft Planner mobile app is now available for iPhone and Android phones. Current Planner users can use this companion app to view and update their plans on the go, addressing feedback we’ve heard since the launch of the Planner web app. For people who are new to Planner, you can first get started by visiting tasks.office.com. Once you’ve created your plans in the web app, you can view and update those plans in the mobile experience. Planner is available to customers with Office 365 Enterprise E1–E5, Business Essentials, Business Premium and Education subscription plans. Current Planner users can download the app for Android and iOS.

 

Immersive Reader comes to Outlook on the web and the OneNote for Windows 10 app, and expands its global reach

In February, we announced the availability of the Microsoft Learning Tools Immersive Reader on Word Online and OneNote Online. As a result of customer demand, we are pleased to announce that Immersive Reader is now available for Outlook.com, Outlook on the web and the OneNote Windows 10 app. Immersive Reader includes a view that utilizes techniques proven to help people read more effectively, such as: Read Aloud, Spacing, Syllables, and Parts of Speech. In addition to the Immersive Reader rollout across new apps and platforms, we are also adding new language and geographic availability for the Read Aloud, Syllables and Parts of Speech features. This expanded language support—coming to Word Online, OneNote Online, Outlook on the web and the OneNote Windows 10 app—will allow more customers across the world to experience the benefits of both the Learning Tools and the Immersive Reader.

 

OneDrive for Business: New feature - Per Group Sharing Controls

The per-group sharing controls are a new Office 365 feature that allows SharePoint Online administrators to limit the ability to share with external users to those in specified security groups. These controls affect OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online in Office 365. Per-group sharing controls will appear in two phases. First, you will notice a new setting that allows users to specify a set of security groups that are allowed to share to authenticated external users and via anonymous links. Second, another option will appear that allows admins to specify a set of security groups that are allowed to share to authenticated external users only. We'll be gradually rolling this out to First Release customers in early June, and then continue the roll-out to all other tenants over the following weeks.

 

SharePoint filters pane updates – filtering and metadata navigation for lists and libraries

As we continue to update user experiences and customizability in SharePoint document libraries, we are pleased to announce the inclusion of metadata-driven filtering to the filters pane, originally introduced in late 2016. The filters pane provides a powerful way to find content in modern lists and libraries. Columns configured in metadata navigation settings will now appear in the filters pane automatically. The pane also uses machine learning to suggest the most likely columns to be used for filtering. You can also permanently add chosen columns to persist in the filters pane view. Clicking the options menu (“…”) next to the name of each field in the pane, opens a context menu that lets a user pin the field permanently to the filters pane. The filters pane allows you to filter on one or more column values, and if the column is based on Managed Metadata term hierarchies, you can also filter on parent terms in addition to single terms. We expect to start the rollout of this feature around June 12, 2017. Please continue to watch the TechCommunity for the latest rollout news.

 

How to use Office 365 threat protection services to help prevent WannaCry related attacks

Many organizations were impacted by a ransomware attack known as WannaCry. While Microsoft’s threat analysts have found that thus far WannaCry spreads mostly over local networks and the Internet, and while we are not seeing the campaign propagating via email, the attacks have the potential of leveraging common email phishing tactics and or emails which include malicious attachments. Customers should use vigilance when opening documents from untrusted or unknown sources. In March, Microsoft released a security update which addresses the vulnerability that these attacks are exploiting. Customers who have Windows Update enabled are protected against attacks on this vulnerability. For those organizations who have not yet applied the security update, we suggest you immediately deploy Microsoft Security Bulletin MS17-010. Additionally, Microsoft has provided a security update for all customers to protect Windows platforms that are in custom support only, including Windows XP, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2003. Customers running Windows 10 were not targeted by the attack. For our customers using Office 365, please note how the following services can help protect you against WannaCry attacks: (1) Exchange Online Protection, (2) Advanced Threat Protection, (3) Office 365 Threat Intelligence, and (4) Office 365 Advanced Security Management.

 

NOTEWORTHY

Updated: Office 365 URLs and IP Address Ranges

June 1, 2017: Updates for Exchange Online Protection, Microsoft Teams, Office 365 portal and shared, and Skype for Business Online. Details on the updates are available on the RSS feed and the complete list is located here. | Additional Resources: Managing Office 365 Endpoints, Content Delivery Networks and Client Connectivity.

 

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) Summary Library

An “Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA)” or a YamJam provides the opportunity for you to ask questions and have a discussion with a panel of Microsoft experts on a particular topic. This library includes a compilation of links to AMA summaries which are created after the event so the community can review and share the conversations that happened within the AMA. Please note that the information provided in each document is valid as of the original published date.

 

TooManyBadItemsPermanentException error when migrating to Exchange Online?

Some of you may have noticed that more migrations might be failing due to encountering ‘too many bad items’. Upon closer review, you may notice that the migration report contains entries referencing corrupted items and being unable to translate principals. We wanted to take a few minutes and provide more information to help understand what this means, why these are now occurring, and what can be done about them. Ready to geek out?

 

Power BI: Measure and Magnify Your Impact with Usage Metrics for Dashboard and Report Authors

Power BI makes it easy to deliver valuable insights across your organization. We’ve heard many stories from customers who’ve made a tremendous impact by publishing content that became critical to every day decision making. But sometimes it has been hard to precisely quantify the impact and understand what data is being used, by whom, and for what purpose. We are excited to announce the availability of usage metrics in the Power BI service for dashboard and report authors. This feature gives you one-click access to key usage metrics for your dashboards and reports, allowing you to pinpoint how your end users are interacting with your content. We hope these metrics can help you justify your investments and prioritize your efforts on the most impactful, widely used content.

 

PowerApps and Microsoft Flow now available in Office 365 Enterprise K1 plan

As previously announced, we have added new value to the Office 365 Enterprise K1 plan. This plan is designed to maximize the impact and contribution of frontline workers with tools for schedule and task management, communications and community, training and onboarding, and identity and access management. In a mobile-ready world, workforce dynamics have shifted. A growing number of team members work without a standard workstation or even a dedicated computer, laptop or tablet. They may be on their feet all day, without even a standard seat. If your scenarios include healthcare staff, restaurant crews, construction, manufacturing, or retail, for example, your users need immediate access to productivity tools and business process as soon as they log in at a walkup workstation. The Office 365 Enterprise K1 plan is focused specifically on solving those business challenges, without friction.