Welcome to the May 14 – 20, 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.
There are three new events for this coming week – a new Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) webinar focused on mobile management for Office 365, a webcast on data privacy rights and compliance with privacy regulations such as GDPR, and an Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) session with the Yammer Team on all the new features announced during last week’s SharePoint Virtual Summit.
Speaking of the SharePoint Virtual Summit – there are tons of content and resources in the Blog Roundup section of this week’s digest, including several related posts from the Microsoft Tech Community and pertinent Microsoft Mechanics videos with demonstrations and details on lots of the announcements from last week’s Summit.
Wrapping up this week’s post are a few noteworthy items including PowerApps in Microsoft Teams and general availability for the new Azure Active Directory admin console.
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:
- Stay on top of Office 365 changes
- Message Center in Office 365
- Manage messages in Message Center
- Turn on language translation for Message Center posts
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
EMS: Managed mobility for Office 365 and beyond
When: Monday, May 22, 2017 at 10:00am PT | See Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) in action. This webinar will explore how EMS extends and adds new capabilities to Office 365 for complete and secure management of mobile apps and devices, while delivering advanced rights management and collaboration capabilities. This webinar will also cover: (1) MDM optional mobile application management, (2) Multi-identity support, (3) Advanced mobile application management, (4) Advanced rights management and classification, and (5) Document tracking, reporting and revocation capabilities. See you in the session!
Yammer: Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA)
When: Tuesday, May 23, 2017 at 9:00am PT | Please join us on Tuesday, May 23, 2017 at 9 a.m. PDT for a special Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) in the Microsoft Tech Community. Our product and engineering teams will be available to answer questions you have about new features in Yammer. Add the event to your calendar and join us in the Yammer AMA group next week. To keep up with Yammer releases and connect with our product teams on an ongoing basis, please join the Yammer Service Updates External Group.
Microsoft on Trust, Privacy and the GDPR
When: Wednesday, May 24, 2017 at 6:00am PT | Every organization is impacted by the recent increased focus on data privacy rights. Microsoft has long been champion of individuals’ privacy rights and views the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as an important step forward in clarifying and enabling individual data privacy rights. Join Brad Smith, Microsoft President, and Brendon Lynch, Microsoft Chief Privacy Officer as they discuss data privacy rights and how Microsoft can help advance your organization’s privacy practices to align with privacy regulations such as the GDPR.
Azure Active Directory Webinars for May – June
When: Multiple sessions currently scheduled May 23 – 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 May 31, 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.
FastTrack Webinars: Learn how to do more, together
When: Multiple sessions currently scheduled through May 26, 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.
- Use Office 365 to achieve more: Discover how to get work done more efficiently with Office 365 | Video
- Your files anywhere: Discover new ways to achieve more by getting work done with your documents from anywhere | Video
- Make meetings matter: Discover how Office 365 can help you get the right people achieving more together by connecting online through Skype for Business | Video
- Bring your team together with Yammer: Discover how to successfully launch a Yammer Network within your organization | Video
- Get it done from anywhere: Discover how to access Outlook from anywhere and share your files to get things done in real time | Video
- Key roles in making Office 365 successful: Discover how different roles work together to execute a successful launch | Video
- Build awareness: Foster adoption of Office 365 in ways that matter to end users; understanding training resources and develop champions | Video
BLOG ROUNDUP
SharePoint Virtual Summit showcases growth, innovations and customer success
During the SharePoint Virtual Summit, we unveiled the latest innovations for SharePoint and OneDrive, including powerful integrations across Office 365, Windows and Azure. These developments build upon the vision we unveiled last year, and have been delivering on since, with innovations to reinvent content collaboration and usher in a new generation of mobile and intelligent intranets. We also showcased Office 365 customers who are using SharePoint to accelerate their digital transformation. Here’s a look at the four headline announcements: (1) Share files directly from File Explorer on Windows and Finder on Mac, (2) Inform and engage employees with SharePoint communication sites, (3) Create custom SharePoint forms with PowerApps and automate approvals with Microsoft Flow, and (4) Find people, expertise and content with powerful, personalized search. Additional resources are included below:
- SharePoint Virtual Summit 2017 – Microsoft Mechanics Video Playlist
- SharePoint Virtual Summit 2017 – Roadmap Slides (via @SharePoint on Twitter)
- Microsoft Mechanics: OneDrive for Business updates – simplified sharing and files on demand
- Microsoft Tech Community: Reach your audience via SharePoint communication sites in Office 365
- Microsoft Mechanics: An overview of SharePoint communication sites (Video, 14 minutes)
- Microsoft Tech Community: Reinventing business processes in SharePoint & Office 365
- Microsoft Mechanics: Zero code business process apps in SharePoint with PowerApps and Microsoft Flow (Video, 9 minutes)
- Embed PowerApps on SharePoint Pages
- PowerApps and SharePoint – the next wave of creating and running apps
New SharePoint and OneDrive capabilities accelerate your digital transformation
During the SharePoint Virtual Summit, we unveiled a new wave of innovations that build upon the vision we set forth last year to reinvent content collaboration and usher in a new generation of mobile and intelligent intranets. Customers’ successes inspire us and illustrate how SharePoint and OneDrive in Office 365 empowers individuals, teams and organizations to share with confidence, transform business process, inform and engage the organization, and harness collective knowledge. This post recaps the announcements in the “SharePoint Virtual Summit showcases growth, innovations and customer success” blog post, but also includes details on the following: (1) Connect SharePoint team sites with other Office 365 content and services such as Office 365 Groups and Microsoft Teams, (2) Empower administrators with the new SharePoint admin center, and (3) Feature Pack 2 for SharePoint Server 2016. Additional resources are included below:
- Microsoft Tech Community: Introducing the new SharePoint Admin Center
- Microsoft Mechanics: New admin controls for SharePoint and OneDrive for Business (Video, 11 minutes)
- Microsoft Tech Community: Personalize team sites in Office 365 and amplify teamwork using MS Teams and Office 365 Groups
- Microsoft Mechanics: New personalized, focused experiences across your SharePoint team sites (Video, 9 minutes)
- Microsoft Tech Community: Secure your information with SharePoint and OneDrive
- Microsoft Tech Community: SharePoint Server 2016 and Beyond…
- Microsoft Mechanics: SharePoint Server 2016 updates and advances in Cloud experiences (Video, 11 minutes)
New in Yammer—building a more connected and engaged organization
Yammer empowers every person in your company with an open space to connect, share and work out loud. With 70 percent annual growth in active groups, there’s greater momentum in Yammer than ever before. Yammer and SharePoint have always been natural complements, because together they deliver powerful connections and discoveries of people, content and information. During the SharePoint Virtual Summit, we unveiled several new capabilities that make it easier to connect and engage through Yammer, whoever and wherever you are in the organization – (1) Spark conversations on your intranet by bringing Yammer and SharePoint together, (2) Share, view and discuss videos from Office 365 Video and Microsoft Stream, (3) Discuss relevant information from third-party apps and services using Connectors in Yammer, (4) Keep group membership up to date by enabling dynamic groups in Yammer, and (5) Connect wherever you do your best work with new Yammer apps for iPad, Windows and Mac. Additional resources are included below:
- Microsoft Tech Community: Harnessing Collective Knowledge with SharePoint and Yammer
- Microsoft Tech Community: Yammer Updates from the SharePoint Virtual Summit
- Microsoft Mechanics: Update to Yammer – Integrating conversations into your SharePoint experiences (Video, 9 minutes)
Office 365 Directory Based Edge Blocking support for on-premises Mail Enabled Public Folders
Until now, our on-premises customers who use Mail Enabled Public Folders (MEPF) could not use services like Directory Based Edge Blocking (DBEB). If DBEB is enabled, any mails sent to Mail Enabled Public Folders (MEPF) will be dropped at the service network perimeter. This is because, DBEB queries Azure Active Directory (AAD) to find out if a given mail address is valid or not. Because Mail Enabled Public Folders (MEPF) are not synced to Azure Active Directory, all MEPF address are considered as invalid by DBEB. To resolve this issue, in the latest Azure AD Connect tool update, we are introducing an option to synchronize MEPFs from on-premises AD to AAD. Admins can do this through the newly introduced option – ‘Exchange Mail Public Folders’ in Optional Features page of Custom installation during Azure AD Connect tool installation / upgrade. When you select this option, and performs a full sync, all the Mail Enabled Public Folders from on-prem AD(s) will be synced to AAD. Once synced, you can enable DBEB. Mail Enabled Public Folders addresses will no longer considered invalid addresses by DBEB. And messages will be delivered to them like they are delivered to any other recipient.
NOTEWORTHY
Bring Stream Videos to SharePoint Pages and Yammer Conversations
You can now post a link to a video from Stream on Yammer and it will play inline directly in Yammer web. With this ability, you can use Yammer to broadcast out your internal messages using videos in Stream and users don’t have to leave Yammer web to watch the videos. In the coming weeks, we’ll be rolling out a Microsoft Stream web part for SharePoint Online. The Microsoft Stream web part will allow you to embed a single video or an entire channel into your SharePoint pages. With this web part, you can leverage the great streaming capabilities of Microsoft Stream while putting your videos in context in group sites, communication sites, or news articles.
PowerApps in Microsoft Teams – Make your team more productive
We are happy to announce availability of PowerApps within Microsoft Teams. If you are not aware, Teams is a chat-centered workspace in Office 365 that brings people, conversations, files, and tools into one place – go check it out. With the combined efforts of Microsoft Teams and PowerApps teams, you can now add a PowerApps app to a channel in your team. Teams will show all the apps available to you. You can narrow down your app list by searching for app name, author or environment. You can then choose the app that you want to add to your channel. Note: You will need to share the app and the data sources with your team members. Learn about sharing an app in PowerApps. And that is it, you will have your app running within your team channel. Go ahead and add your apps to your team channels. | Related: Release Notes for Microsoft Teams
The new Azure AD Admin Console is GA!
Last September, we kicked off the public preview of our new console and since over 750k admins from 500k organizations have tried it out. As we migrated the admin console to the new Azure portal, we began by listening to you, our customers. You told us you wanted a better view into your organization. To easily understand what kind of activity was occurring. To be able to quickly figure out what information was available. To understand who had access to what and to understand how and when users were granted access. Based on that feedback, we’re incredibly excited to announce that the Azure Active Directory Admin Console (in the new Azure portal) is now Generally Available! | Additional Resources: Channel 9 – Azure Active Directory Admin Experience in the Azure Portal (Video)