Office 365 Weekly Digest | Week of February 7 - 13, 2016
MESSAGE CENTER
Note: The information below may not be posted to your Office 365 tenant as not all notifications apply to all tenants.
Updated Feature: Junk E-mail Reporting Add-in for Outlook
Posted: February 8, 2016 | Action: Awareness | We’ve updated the Junk E-mail Reporting Add-in for Outlook to support Outlook 2016 along with new reporting capabilities. This add-in enables your users to easily report missed junk, phish, or not-junk messages to the Office 365 security team for analysis. For additional information and to download the latest version of the add-in, please visit https://technet.microsoft.com/library/jj723139(v=exchg.150).aspx.
Updated Feature: Office 365 Deferred Channel for Office 2016
Posted: February 9, 2016 | Action: Required by February 23, 2016 | The February release of the Office 365 Deferred Channel for Office 2016 (previously known as Current Branch for Business) is now available. The Admin Center is now updated to give you the ability to choose the update channel for new installations from the user’s Home Page and Software Download Page. To give you time to evaluate the best settings for your users, any changes you make to the Software Settings page won’t take effect until Feb. 23rd. Any other change you make in the Admin Center will take effect immediately. Your users will see the results of the Admin Center configuration changes on February 23rd on the Home and Software Downloads page. February 23rd will also be the first day that Office 2016 is available to ProPlus users on the portal unless you turn off those install links. Please visit https://technet.microsoft.com/library/mt422981.aspx to learn more about update channels for Office 365 desktop applications.
Do the following to confirm the correct update channel for licensed users:
- Sign into the Admin Center at https://portal.office.com/Admin/Default.aspx.
- Click on “Service Settings”
- Click “User software” to adjust the version and branch default settings and options.
New Feature: Office 365 Groups dynamic membership
Posted: February 11, 2016 | Action: Awareness | Office 365 Groups dynamic membership is a new Office 365 feature. You’ll begin seeing this new feature starting today. Administrators can now create groups with rule-based memberships using the Azure Management Portal. Group membership is updated within a minute as users’ properties change. This allows easy management for larger groups, or the creation of groups that always reflect the organization’s structure. Please visit https://azure.microsoft.com/documentation/articles/active-directory-accessmanagement-simplerulegroup/ for additional details.
New Feature: Office 365 Groups files quota management
Posted: February 11, 2016 | Action: Awareness | Office 365 Groups files quota management is a new Office 365 feature. You’ll begin seeing this new feature today. Today, Office 365 Groups files consume from your organization’s SharePoint shared storage quota; team sites and groups share the same available capacity. You now have the ability to set quotas on groups’ underlying sites to help manage the consumption of shared storage by Office 365 Groups’ files. https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Use-PowerShell-to-manage-Office-365-Groups-aeb669aa-1770-4537-9de2-a82ac11b0540?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US has information on the various options available for managing Office 365 Groups.
UPCOMING EVENTS Azure Active Directory Webinars for February
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: Pre-requisites, SSPR, MFA, SaaS Application Integration and Reporting. Each 1-hour briefing 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 be followed by Q&A with our Engineering Team. Capacity is limited. Sign up for one or all of the sessions today!
When: February 23, 2016 @ 9:00am PT | Join the Yammer product team for a Yammer YamJam on February 23, 2016 from 9:00am - 10:00am PST in the Enterprise Social Service Updates group. We encourage you to ask questions and share feedback during the hour of live Q&A. We look forward to seeing you there!
SME Roundtable on Cloud at Microsoft
When: March 3, 2016 @ 10:00am PT | IT subject matter experts from our Cloud at Microsoft IT Showcase course will answer your questions on how Microsoft IT designs, develops, implements, monitors, and supports cloud solutions at Microsoft. Get candid answers from our experts as they share their insights and best practices.
Achieve More - Learn Key Functions of Office 365
When: Wednesdays, February 10 – March 23, 2016 @ 9:00am PT | Want to understand how Office 365 can help you achieve more in your work? This session will show how you can use Office 365 to accomplish particular tasks during your working day. Viewers will understand how to use Office 365 to take effective notes, work together on documents, discuss projects with co-workers and understand what's happening around the rest of their organization. Facilitated discussion will follow, with opportunities to ask questions and discuss specific scenarios to you. This course is a live, instructor-led session offered at multiple dates and times, detailed at the registration link above.
Microsoft Technology Centers: Drive Business Results with Intelligent Tools Series
When: Thursdays, February 11 – March 31, 2016 @ 10:00am PT | Join us for a virtual event series, live from a Microsoft Technology Center, covering sales and cloud productivity solutions. We are thrilled to announce that in partnership with MTC studio our live events during the months of February and March will revolve around Driving Business Results with Intelligent Tools. Covering both Office and Dynamics solutions this event proves to be exciting, as organizations can increase customer satisfaction by creating intelligent workplace by utilizing intelligent tools. With a great line up of speakers, this eight-part MTC webcast series will allow customers to see how innovations can help them drive maximum impact across multiple teams, impacting customer loyalty, agent efficiency, employee satisfaction, and cost savings to their organization. Join us on Thursdays in February and March, and we’ll show you how to do more with less using new solutions that increase customer loyalty, boost employee satisfaction, and cut costs.
- February 18, 2016 – Reinventing Productivity: Enterprise Knowledge from Microsoft
- February 25, 2016 – Intelligent Insights Create Intelligent Organizations
- March 03, 2016 – Power to the Customer with Omni-Channel Service
- March 10, 2016 – Security is Not a Privilege, It’s a Right
- March 17, 2016 – Reinventing Customer Experience: Create Agent “Superheroes” via the Modern Service/Call Center
- March 24, 2016 – What’s Next in SharePoint 2016
- March 31, 2016 – Reinventing Customer Experience: Field Service and the Modern Dispatch Technician
BLOG ROUNDUP Deferred Channel build now available for the Office 365 Client apps
The first Office 365 Deferred Channel build (previously known as Current Branch for Business) is now available for Microsoft Office 365 for Windows (including Office 365 ProPlus, Office 365 Business, Project Pro for Office 365 and Visio Pro for Office 365). The Deferred Channel allows organizations to choose an update schedule that reduces the frequency of feature changes for the Windows desktop apps, enabling IT admins and developers to have more time between releases to validate Office against their line-of-business applications, add-ins and macros. For information on the updates available in the Deferred Channel build, visit the Office 365 Client Release Notes. Starting on Feb 9, 2016, you can download the Deferred Channel build directly from the Office CDN, and on Feb 23, 2016, the build will be available in the Office 365 User Software Page. For information on how to download the Deferred Channel build from the CDN, visit our Office 365 ProPlus TechNet site.
Cloud-Accelerated Hybrid Scenarios with SharePoint and Office 365
If you’re interested in SharePoint hybrid solutions, this FREE e-book is for you! This pocket guide provides an overview of Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Office 365 hybrid scenarios, including basic details on successfully configuring one or more hybrid workloads. For detailed documentation and support for these scenarios, refer to Microsoft TechNet.
Exchange Server Deployment Assistant Updated with New Exchange 2016 Scenarios
We’re happy to announce the latest addition to the Exchange Server Deployment Assistant! You can now use the Deployment Assistant to help you configure an Exchange 2016-based hybrid deployment in organizations where Exchange 2010 is already installed. Configuring an Exchange 2016-based hybrid deployment gives you access to features like cross-premises e-discovery, enhanced secure mail, multiple Active Directory forest support, OAuth federation support, and more! In case you're not familiar with it, the Exchange Server Deployment Assistant is a web-based tool that helps you deploy Exchange in your on-premises organization, configure a hybrid deployment between your on-premises organization and Office 365, or migrate to Office 365. Supported on most major browsers, the tool asks you a small set of simple questions and then, based on your answers, creates a customized checklist with instructions to deploy or configure Exchange. Instead of trying to find what you need in the Exchange library, the Deployment Assistant gives you exactly the right information you need to complete your task.
NOTEWORTHY
Updated: Office 365 URLs and IP Address Ranges
February 8 - 12, 2016: Numerous updates for Office 365, including endpoints, authentication / identity, Exchange Online Protection, Planner, Yammer, Office Online, Exchange Online, Skype for Business Online, SharePoint Online, portal and shared. Details on the updates are available on the RSS feed and the complete list is located here.
Update on new Skype for Business Mac client
Microsoft continues its work on creating a brand new client built from the ground up for a modern experience. Public preview is coming in Q2CY16 and the functionality for Preview is currently planned to be delivered in 3 phases. The first phase will be focused on Meeting experiences only. Phases 2 and 3 will come later and will add messaging (contacts and IM) with the final phase adding Voice related features. We expect General Availability for the Mac client in Q3CY16. During this time we continue to support Lync Mac for 2011 as it does support the latest Skype for Business deployments. We are offering a Preview Program now for Lync for Mac 2011 updates – interested customers should sign up now (see URL below). For those who want a deeper understanding on Skype for Business Mac, please review the video stored on at the SfB You tube channel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3iehNz5E5o - this was created last November and still is current. We intend another public update when we are ready to announce public preview. Customers interested in any Skype for Business preview program should register now at https://www.skypepreview.com.