What’s new in Office 365 Education in March 2014

There have been numerous new updates launched in February in Office 365 Education. Here is a list of new functionality.

Office 365 Education updates shipped in February 2014:

New names: Office Web Apps are now rebranded as Office Online and SkyDrive Pro is now rebranded as OneDrive for Business.

OneDrive name now in Office 365 user portal.

Office Online name branded with each app – Word Online, Excel Online, PowerPoint Online, and OneNote Online.

Azure Multi-factor Authentication for Office 365 – This will be included with the A2 license at no additional charge with an Office 365 Education license. Now any users can be required to provide a second level of verification when logging into Office 365.  Users can opt to receive a call, SMS, or use a mobile app to verify their identity.  Multi-factor authentication adds an additional level of security to prevent unauthorized access to documents and email.  If Azure MFA is required outside of Office 365 Education, another license is required called ‘Windows Azure MFA’. See here for differences.

Office 365 Message Encryption (OME) now available – Customers with Windows Azure Rights Management included with Office 365 Education A3 license can now use transport rules to enforce message encryption (OME) on email leaving their organization. This feature replaces Exchange Hosted Encryption and will allow for secure external encryption outside of your institution.

Office Online – replacing the old name of Office Web Apps. The new names are Excel Online, Word Online,  PowerPoint Online, and OneNote Online all of these fold up into Office Online.  It is more of a branding rename since functionality is the same. See the recent improvements and real-time coauthoring, now with a new name.

Hierarchical Address Book now available – Institutions can setup the Address Book in Outlook to show an organizational hierarchy such as colleges, departments, etc, for purposes of showing segmented address book views related to that college or department, etc.

Data loss prevention capabilities extended – Two new DLP features available.  First, document fingerprinting lets organizations match and apply polices to documents derived from the same template to prevent leakage.  Second, Policy Tips are added to OWA so that you can see compliance policies related to your mail before it is sent from the browser now. DLP requires an A3 license.

S/MIME encryption now supported in Exchange Online – S/MIME standard now supported in Exchange Online across Outlook, OWA, and EAS so that organizations can send and receive S/MIME encrypted and digitally signed email from any compliant device.

Part of the new S/MIME support include the ability to push the user certificate from local AD to Azure AD now which then lights up S/MIME in Exchange Online OWA, Outlook, etc.

Power BI now available – to Office 365 Education customers or standalone.  Power BI for Office 365 is a new service that enables you to search and access data from both internal and external sources, do natural language queries on that data, automatically refresh data, and create and share interactive dashboards using PowerPivot, PowerView, PowerChart, PowerMap, and PowerQuery technologies. See here for some demos of Power BI.

power BI screenshots

Lync 2013 desktop client updates – The update adds an on or off option for displaying pictures in the IM window view, adds support for high-res displays with 200% scaling.

Exchange Online Protection enhancements – we added several new pieces to EOP: directory-based edge blocking, increased Office 365 domain limit, Message Trace extended for 90 days, improved mail protection reporting, Remote PowerShell for EOP standalone customers, and junk mail reporting for OWA and OWA for devices

Lync Mobile update for Android – This update gives you the option to rejoin a meeting or call you recently left or potentially dropped from, and lets you pick up an IM conversation right from where you left it, even if from another device.

OneDrive for Business for iOS update – with the rename occurring the iOS app has been updated to reflect the new name OneDrive for Business and enabled for authenticating with certain SharePoint Server 2013 configurations.

New start page in the Exchange Admin Center – A new dashboard view provides direct links to the most common administrator tasks and speeds up admin page performance.

Office 2013 Service Pack 1 released – Office 365 education customers using Office 365 ProPlus (e.g. Student Advantage, etc.) are automatically receiving all fixes and enhancements related to SP1. Any new Office 365 ProPlus download will automatically have SP1 slipstreamed in it so no need for users to download after install.