Office 365 Weekly Digest | Week of November 27 - December 3, 2016

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Welcome to the November 27 - December 3, 2016 edition of the O365 Weekly Digest. Lots of Skype for Business information this week, including a new Meeting Migration Service, as well as new options for Exchange Online migrations, what's new with O365 ProPlus and Power BI related items are also included. With 2016 coming to a close, be sure to check out the events section, especially with the return of the Azure Active Directory webinars.

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Note: The information below may not be posted to your Office 365 tenant as not all notifications apply to all tenants.  

 

Updated Feature: Important change in Admin control for Docs.com

Posted: November 28, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Stay Informed | Action: Awareness | Docs.com is a consumer online service from Microsoft where users can publish and discover Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Sway, and PDF documents. We have recently enhanced the service to better ensure your organization’s security and privacy. As result, we are requiring that your Office 365 Tenant Administrator of record “opt-in” for your organization to continue enabling users with organizational accounts to use the service. As Docs.com is typically used to share information publicly and make it easily discoverable by search engines, we want to make sure that Office 365 customers are fully aware of the benefits and risks of using the service. “Opting in” means that any user will be able to sign-in into Docs.com with their work or school account and use it to share content with people using one of the following categories: (1) Organization: Sharing only with signed in users from the same organization, (2) Limited: Sharing a link that is not exposed to search engines by Docs.com but can be viewed by anyone who knows the link URL and (3) Public: Sharing openly including with search engines. We have also made improvements to ensure that when users choose to share publicly, they see the permission setting at least twice and need to manually confirm that their information will appear on the internet and in search engines. No actions are needed if your organization chooses to prohibit your users from signing-in to or publishing documents on Docs.com with their work or school accounts. If your organization has users who have used Docs.com to share documents in the past, they will not be able to modify their Docs.com pages or content unless you choose to opt-in beginning today. Should your organization prefer to remove all of your organization’s content from Docs.com please have the tenant administrator of record contact Docscom@microsoft.com with a statement to that effect and we will have it removed within 2 business days. For opt-in access instructions and to learn more, please visit https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=836570.

 

New Feature: Meeting Migration Service for Skype for Business Online

Posted: November 28, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Stay Informed | Action: Awareness | Meeting Migration Service for Skype for Business Online is a new Office 365 feature. You’ll begin seeing this new feature starting today with rollout expecting to be completed by mid-December, 2016. The Meeting Migration Service is an automated service that replaces the Skype for Business Meeting Migration Tool users have historically had to run on a one-off basis after migrations. The new Meeting Migration Service will automatically update meetings when moving users to Skype for Business Online from an existing on-premises Lync or Skype deployment or when adding Microsoft as a PSTN conferencing provider for Skype for Business Online users. The new Meeting Migration Service feature does require Exchange Online. While you do not need to do anything, we recommend you update your user training, and notify your helpdesk given this feature replaces a tool users may have been requested to run in the past. This feature does have administrative controls to enable and disable and is On by default. Please visit https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkid=836561 for additional information. | Additional Resources: Skype Academy Training for Meeting Migration Service

 

New Feature: SmartFilters for SharePoint Online

Posted: November 30, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Stay Informed | Action: Awareness | SmartFilters for SharePoint Online is a new Office 365 feature. First Release tenants will start seeing this feature beginning today and rolling out over the coming weeks, followed by worldwide rollout expected by the end of January, 2017. SmartFilter is an easier and faster way to find items within a list or library. This feature will improve column filtering workflows within lists and document libraries by allowing users to easily set multiple filters at once. To access this feature, a user can select the filter icon on the top right of a list or library and open the Smartfilter panel. Please visit https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=836912 for more details.

 

Mozilla removing support for Silverlight effective March 2017

Posted: November 30, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Prevent or Fix Issues | Action: Awareness | Mozilla, maker of the Firefox Browser, is removing support for Silverlight in version 52 of the Firefox browser, effective March, 2017. Administrators will no longer be able to login to the existing Intune console using Firefox versions greater than 51. We recommend using Internet Explorer 10 or 11 to access the administrative console, or a version of Firefox prior to version 52. Learn more at https://aka.ms/firefoxbrowser.

 

UPCOMING EVENTS Azure Active Directory Webinars for December

When: Multiple sessions currently scheduled through December 14, 2016 | Are you looking to deploy Azure Active Directory quickly and easily? We are offering free webinar briefings on key Azure Active Directory deployment topics! Sessions include: Getting Ready for Azure AD, Streamlining Password Management, Securing Your Identities with Multi-Factor Authentication, Managing Enterprise Applications and Accessing Your Organization’s Internal Apps. 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!

 

Microsoft IT Showcase: Skype for Business at Microsoft - SME Roundtable December 2016

When: December 7, 2016 at 10:00am PT | IT Showcase brings together subject matter experts from our Skype for Business at Microsoft course to answer your questions about how Microsoft IT implements, maintains, and supports Skype for Business at Microsoft. Get candid answers from our experts as they share insights and Skype for Business best practices developed by Microsoft IT.

 

Power BI: Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA)

When: December 8, 2016 at 10:00am PT | We are pleased to announce a Power BI Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) on the Power BI Community! This is your opportunity to ask questions and share feedback directly with the Power BI product team. The AMA will take place in the Power BI Community AMA board on Thursday, December 8, 2016 from 10:00 A.M. to 11:00 A.M.PST. Add the event to your calendar here. An Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) is the same as an “Ask Me Anything (AMA)” on Reddit, or YamJam on Yammer. It provides the opportunity for the community to ask questions and have a discussion with a panel of internal and external experts on a particular topic. In order to get the best value out of this hour, take a look at the flow & etiquette guidelines. We look forward to seeing you in the community and at the AMA!

 

Office Small Business Academy: New Year Inspiration - Taking the Leap into Entrepreneurship

When: Tuesday, December 13, 2016 @ 9:00am PT | Are you finally ready to be your own boss?  Take the leap into entrepreneurship with advice and business-minded motivation from our team of experts. In this episode, get strategies and expert advice for starting your new business in the new year. Plus, learn how to bring your presentations to life in a fraction of the time with PowerPoint Designer and Zoom—the newest additions to PowerPoint. | Episode Preview | Registration (direct link)

 

FastTrack Webinars: Learn how to do more, together

When: Multiple sessions currently scheduled through December 14, 2016 | 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 New to Office 365 in November—new collaboration capabilities and more

This month, we’re announcing several updates to the Office apps to help you easily and effectively collaborate with others. This includes real-time co-authoring in PowerPoint, the ability to upload attachments to the cloud directly from Outlook, mobile device notifications for activity on shared cloud documents for Word, Excel and PowerPoint as well as the addition of Shared with Me and Recent Folders tab in Word, Excel and PowerPoint.  Learn more about what’s new for Office 365 subscribers this month at: Office 2016 | Office for Mac | Office Mobile for Windows | Office for iPhone and iPad | Office on Android Phones and Tablets.

 

Merging intelligence with productivity—a demo tour of recent Office app updates

In this episode of Microsoft Mechanics, we look at the latest in intelligent Office app experiences spanning PowerPoint, Excel, Word, Outlook and the browser. Ben Walters presents how Office can bring in intelligence via the Microsoft Graph, Azure Machine Learning and Delve to save you time. | Video (direct link)

 

New Exchange Online migration options

We are in the process of rolling out a new migration experience that will greatly simplify your journey to Office 365 and Exchange Online. This new experience will help any customer running at least one Exchange 2010, 2013 and/or 2016 server on-premises to migrate to the cloud seamlessly. When you initiate the migration, we evaluate what you have configured already in Exchange Online and we walk you through the Hybrid Configuration Wizard to evaluate the on-premises environment. Once all the information on your current state is collected, we ask a couple of questions about your desired state (things like how fast you want to move to Exchange Online and whether you require advanced features). The hybrid wizard then walks you through the configuration needed to migrate your users to Exchange Online.

 

New cloud storage options for Office on Android

We are excited to announce that the Cloud Storage Partner Program (CSPP) is now available for the Office apps on Android devices. Office on Windows desktops has long supported partner integrations that let you open and edit documents from a wide variety of storage locations. The CSPP, previously available for Office on iOS and Office Online, ensures that Office is the best way to get work done on all platforms, wherever your documents are stored. It’s easy to add a cloud storage provider from the Add a place menu in the latest versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint on Android. Then you can edit and share your documents stored with that provider as easily as you do with those stored on OneDrive. You can also launch Word, Excel or PowerPoint directly from the cloud storage provider’s app to edit your files, with changes automatically saved back to the cloud. Today, the list of available cloud storage options in Office for Android includes Dropbox, Box, Egnyte and 腾讯微云 (Tencent). We’ll add Citrix ShareFile, Edmodo and Learnium soon, and that list will continue to expand over time. Stay tuned for more.

 

Accessibility in Office 365—enabling greater digital inclusion

December 3rd marks the 2016 International Day of Persons with Disabilities (IDPD), and this year’s theme focuses on laying the foundation for a future of greater inclusion for persons with disabilities. In honor of IDPD, we invite all Office 365 customers to lay the foundation for a more inclusive digital environment by discovering and using accessibility capabilities built into Office 365. Office 365 empowers you to communicate information to your colleagues and customers in a variety of ways: documents, presentations, spreadsheets, emails, chats, notes, videos and more. As you communicate, it is important to meet the diverse needs of your audience. Making your content accessible ensures it can be used without barriers by people with varying levels of vision, hearing, cognition and mobility. Office 365 applications receive regular updates to ensure they can be used seamlessly with assistive technologies and ease of access settings, as outlined in our 2016 accessibility roadmap. Also, new settings are built into applications to empower you to personalize your experiences to suit your needs.

 

NOTEWORTHY

Updated: Office 365 URLs and IP Address Ranges

November 28, 2016: Updates for Exchange Online, O365 Authentication and Identity, O365 Portal and Shared, Office Online and Exchange Online Protection. 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.

 

A deeper look at Skype for Business integration with iOS CallKit

We recently announced deeper integration of Skype for Business with iOS devices using Apple’s CallKit framework, which enables a better experience for Skype for Business calls on the iPhone. The CallKit API with iOS 10 enables Skype for Business calls to work the same way as the native calling experience on iOS, allowing you to seamlessly extend your personal device as a business phone. Updates include answering Skype for Business calls from the lock screen, handling Skype for Business calls like any other call and built-in IT and user controls.

 

Skype Academy: Cloud PBX Auto Attendant (Preview) readiness training now available!

We’ve just published the latest Skype Academy training on Cloud PBX Auto Attendant, which is currently in Preview. Cloud PBX Auto Attendant is an intelligent virtual receptionist that helps callers navigate the system with interactive prompts. Currently Cloud PBX Auto Attendant is in Preview for Skype for Business Online. Watch the readiness session to learn what this functionality can do, what the user experience is, and how you can configure it.

 

O365 Support Corner: OneDrive for Business - Fixing credential issues

Format: Video (3 minutes) | Are you experiencing repeated credential pop-ups or different credential issues that might cause OneDrive for Business syncing issues?  In this short video, we’ll provide some steps that could help resolve these types of issues. The Office 365 Support Corner is intended to provide technical support insights and proactive guidance for Office 365.

 

Driving Power BI adoption in your organization – Learn how Microsoft does this at scale

At Microsoft leaders across the company have committed to fostering a data culture and are often asked how to drive this type of change. An internal program designed to drive adoption of Power BI internally has been at the center of this cultural shift. Through a combination of training, a comprehensive communication strategy, and user-centric features and design, BI@Microsoft drives adoption of our data culture with Power BI. This program enables our employees to use data visualization, business intelligence and statistical analysis in their day-today jobs. Employees were previously limited by a mindset that they didn’t have the technical skills or time necessary to model data. Or they thought the data was not available or accessible. The BI@Microsoft program has proven that data driven decisions are possible at every level of the organization, while also creating loyal fans that influence their teams to use data to make informed decisions. The purpose of this blog post is to explain how we drive adoption of Power BI at scale so that you can learn from our best practices and implement a similar method. That way you too can get the most value out of your Power BI licenses. Like you, we are always striving do more with less.  For that reason, our program is focused on reaching and influencing the behavior of employees at scale.