Office 365 Weekly Digest | Week of May 27 – June 2, 2018

Welcome to the May 27 – June 2, 2018 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

Big update for the Office 365 Roadmap last week with thirty-six additions, including lots of new features announced at the recent SharePoint Conference North America, as well as several for Outlook on the web.

There is one new event, a Microsoft IT Showcase webinar on how Microsoft rolled out Teams, which is on Tuesday, June 5, 2018. A friendly reminder about "Modern Workplace Fire Away Friday" taking place on Friday, June 8, 2018. This event provides the latest Microsoft 365 news, as well as an open forum session for you to ask questions.

Blog posts in last week's roundup include a look at what's new for Microsoft 365 and Teams in May, roadmaps from SharePoint Conference North America 2018, new threat trackers for Office 365 Threat Intelligence, and best practices for using assigned Office 365 DNS records.

Wrapping up the noteworthy items are updates to the Office 365 URLs and IP address ranges, the latest Teams On Air episode focused on security, privacy and compliance in Teams, a look at recent updates to Teams to add Skype for Business capabilities and updates to Sway for iOS.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

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

UPCOMING EVENTS

Microsoft Security & GDPR Workshops

When / Location: Varies | Spend the day at your local Microsoft Technology Center with our Cyber Security & Compliance Workshops. Find your local event for Security in a Day Workshops or General Data Protection Regulation Forums below. Events will be updated as they are added! Upcoming locations include Boston and Philadelphia on June 5^th, San Francisco and Seattle on June 6^th, and Detroit, Dallas and Irvine on June 7^th.

Azure Active Directory Webinars for June

When: Multiple sessions currently scheduled from June 5 - 14, 2018 | 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, Choosing the Right Authentication Method for Azure AD, Securing Identities with Azure AD MFA, Azure AD Identity Protection and Privileged Identity Management, 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 IT Showcase: Launching Microsoft Teams to the company - How we got ready

When: Tuesday, June 5, 2018 from 10am PT | Rolling out Teams at Microsoft required strategies to promote adoption, create awareness, and engage our employees. At the same time, our IT pros worked behind the scenes to make sure Teams would work well with existing telephony, messaging, and meeting room systems. Learn how we planned our pilot project and deployment strategies with our infrastructure in mind—we tested functionality, confirmed that we met security and compliance standards, and structured phases for adoption.

Productivity Hacks to Save Time & Simplify Workflows

When: Wednesday, June 6, 2018 and Wednesday, June 13, 2018 at 1pm ET | This 90-minute hands-on experience will give you the opportunity to test drive Windows 10, Office 365 and Dynamics 365. 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) Discover how you can keep your information more secure without inhibiting your workflow, (2) Learn how to visualize and analyze complex data, quickly zeroing in on the insights you need, (3) See how multiple team members can access, edit and review documents simultaneously, and (4) Gain skills that will save you time and simplify your workflow immediately. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Modern Workplace Fire Away Friday

When: Friday, June 8, 2018 at 12pm ET | You are invited to join Michael Gannotti, Microsoft Principal Technology Solutions Professional, for "Modern Workplace Fire Away Friday" on Friday, June 8, 2018 at 12 noon eastern. "Fire Away Friday" is an open forum session online focusing on the Modern Workplace. In each session Michael covers the latest in Microsoft 365 followed by an open forum session where you can ask all your questions around Office 365 and more! Since the June 8th session is following after the SharePoint Conference Michael will be breaking down some of the biggest announcements to come out of the conference and discussing them live with attendees. You can join the event via this link or grab the Outlook meeting invite to add it to your calendar.

Connecting, Organizing & Collaborating with Your Team

When: Tuesday, June 12, 2018 and Tuesday, June 19, 2018 at 12pm ET | 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.

Hands-on with security in a cloud-first, mobile-first world

When: Thursday, June 14, 2018 at 12pm ET and 3pm ET | 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.

Visualizing, Analyzing & Sharing Your Data Without Having to be a BI Expert

When: Tuesday, June 26, 2018 at 12pm ET | This 2-hour hands-on experience will give you the opportunity to test drive the latest business analytics tools. A trained facilitator will guide you as you apply these tools to your own business scenarios and see how they can work throughout your organization. During this interactive session, you will explore how to: (1) Locate and organize large amounts of data from multiple sources, (2) Visualize complex data and identify trends quickly without having to be a BI expert, (3) Find and collaborate with company experts on the fly, even if they work in another part of the country, and (4) Gather colleague's opinions easily and eliminate communication and process bottlenecks. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

BLOG ROUNDUP

New to Microsoft 365 in May—empowering and securing users

Each month on the Microsoft 365 Blog, we highlight key updates to Microsoft 365 that build on our vision for the modern workplace. This month, we introduced a number of new capabilities to help individuals produce accessible content, work together in real-time, and create a secure and compliant workplace. Here's a look at what we brought to Microsoft 365 in May including enhancements to the Accessibility Checker in Office 365, the ability to work in mixed reality in SharePoint, and achieving GDPR compliance with the Microsoft Cloud.

New apps in Microsoft Teams - May update

AppSource is the premier destination to find apps and add-ins that work with Dynamics, Office, Power BI, Azure, and more. Now you can search a list of apps available for Microsoft Teams in the same place. Check back regularly for updated listings to see what you can bring into to your hub for teamwork. We've also been busy adding several new integrations over the last two months. Apps to help support efficient team meetings and productivity, track customer support tickets and more such as Soapbox, Jell, Mural and Kronos Bot. With updated features and capabilities, now you can get more done in Teams with Planner, Meekan and Site24x7.

Related:

• Microsoft Teams now supports eDiscovery for Teams users in an Exchange Hybrid environment
  
• Join a Call or Meeting with Microsoft Teams Mobile App
  

SPC18 Wrapup - Content Services Updates and Roadmap

Last week at SharePoint Conference North America, we showcased our innovations and updates for Microsoft Content Services in Office 365. Many of the details were also covered in our blog post, Enrich your SharePoint Content with Intelligence and Automation. The most authoritative source for roadmap details is the Office 365 Roadmap. However, we've added the summary slide from presentation with Chris McNulty and Dan Kogan by popular request. We'll share more highlights - including demos - on our TechCommunity Content Services Resource Center soon. | Related: SPC18 Wrapup - SharePoint Business Apps Update and Roadmap

Best practices for using assigned Office 365 DNS records

As someone who reads through hundreds of support cases each month, nothing pains me more than seeing customers struggling with seemingly complex issues, only to discover that the root cause is quite simple. Never is this truer than it is with DNS. Some of the most complicated security and lost mail issues boil down to a few simple records. In fact, we get well over a thousand tickets per month that could be easily avoided by addressing DNS issues. This blog post could save you time, frustration, even money! Please note that we're focusing on Office 365 email DNS records here, especially those involved in routing & security decisions – but this advice may be applicable more broadly.

Announcing Threat Trackers for Office 365 Threat Intelligence

We launched Office 365 Threat Intelligence to help organizations become more secure by enhancing admin capabilities which offer greater visibility, deeper insights, and powerful executable actions. We're excited to announce 'Threat Trackers' for Office 365 Threat Intelligence, enabling efficient monitoring and management of threat investigations to help admins quickly remediate and respond to threats. The feature can be found under 'Threat Management' in the Security and Compliance Center. The four available 'Threat Tracker' categories are: (1) Noteworthy, (2) Trending, (3) Saved query of selected threats, and (4) Tracked query of selected threats. These 'Threat Trackers' enrich the admin experience, providing a powerful new tool for monitoring and managing, investigations, which ultimately enables quick response to threats. With this added feature, Office 365 Threat Intelligence provides admins to more efficiently and easily secure their organization. | Resource: On-Demand Webinar: Reducing IT Costs and Improving Security Operations Efficiency with Office 365 Threat Intelligence

NOTEWORTHY

Updated: Office 365 URLs and IP Address Ranges

June 1, 2018: Updates for Office 365 Portal and Shared effective July 1, 2018. 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, Client Connectivity, and Office 365 endpoint categories and Office 365 IP Address and URL Web Service.

Teams On Air: Ep. 69 - Security, Privacy and Compliance in Microsoft Teams

Format: Video (19 minutes) | In this episode of Teams On Air, Delanda Coleman, brings Principal Program Manager, Mark Longton to discuss security, privacy and compliance in Microsoft Teams. Mark dives into topics such as security features, custom compliance policies, eDiscovery in Office 365, Global Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and many more features that help you work confidently in Teams. To learn more about these features in Teams please visit http://aka.ms/TeamsSecurity.

Microsoft Mechanics: Microsoft Teams and recent updates to add Skype for Business capabilities

Format: Video (14 minutes) | Latest updates of Microsoft Teams at the one-year anniversary mark. Watch Anne Michels and Jeremy Chapman show you the Microsoft Teams evolution from a persistent chat-based workspace, to an integrated hub for teamwork with complete meeting and calling capabilities built in. See the new ways to bring your favorite apps into Teams and their updated user experiences. Also, if you're an IT admin, we're going to give you a first look at the unified experience to manage Microsoft Teams, along with Skype for Business going forward.

Create on the go with the new Sway for iOS

Our biggest update in the history of Sway for iOS is here—making it easier than ever to create a Sway from start to finish on iPhone or iPad. Visually, the app is cleaner and simpler, with new commands that make it a breeze to add and organize content. You can use drag-and-drop to group content together, tap to resize images, and instantly share your Sway with Sways Near Me. With the latest release of Sway for iOS, we added a toggle between Edit and Preview at the top of the screen—making switching between editing your Sway content and previewing your Sway design a breeze. In Edit, you can add and reorganize media and text. In Preview, you can see your Sway as others will see it, as well as change the Design to fit your personal style. In addition, we redesigned the Edit mode in the app to have a simple look with an all-white canvas. This simple look showcases your media and text allowing you to take delight in seeing your masterpiece come to life.