Office 365 Weekly Digest | Week of February 14 - 20, 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: People profile experience in Office 365
Posted: February 16, 2016 | Action: Awareness | We’re updating the Office 365 profile experience. You’ll start to see this change this week for first release tenants, and over the coming weeks for all other customers. The updated profile experience brings together the profile and activity pages within Delve and makes it easier for you to discover relevant content, connect with your colleagues, and find experts inside your organization. Please see the Office blog post for additional information.
Office 365 Government update
Posted: February 16, 2016 | Action: Awareness | This is an important notice regarding a change to your Office 365 Government Services. Please share the contents of this message with your organization’s contracting officer. As part of our continuing commitment to the evolving needs and requirements of U.S. public sector customers as they move to cloud based services, we are extending our Office 365 Government Cloud offering to address Dept. of Defense requirements for securing data in cloud services, and will be modifying Government Cloud eligibility to address regulations applying to use of cloud services by government contractors holding US Government controlled data. These changes enable better alignment with evolving requirements for securing US Government data in cloud services, as well as with existing standards in Microsoft’s Azure and CRM Online Government Clouds. These changes include:
- L2 accreditation under the Dept. of Defense Security Requirements Guide
- Updated guidelines and improved support for Spillage Handling scenarios
- Support for commercial entities holding US Government controlled data, such as International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) regulated entities
Note that these compliance accreditation changes are all additive to existing Office 365 Government compliance commitments and controls as described in the Office 365 Trust Center, resulting in an overall compliance uplift for all Office 365 Government tenants.
No action is required from current Office 365 Government tenants related to these changes, which will take effect on or after April 1st 2016.
If you have questions about these changes, please consult your technical account manager. If you do not have a technical account manager, questions regarding this message can be directed to O365GFeb@microsoft.com. Please visit https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office-365-government.aspx to learn more.
New Feature: Common Attachment Types Filtering
Posted: February 19, 2016 | Action: Awareness | Common Attachment Types Filter is a new Exchange Online Protection feature. This feature will start rolling out now and should be completed over the coming weeks. There is a new feature that provides an easy-to-setup method of filtering out unwanted and potentially malicious attachments by their file types. This feature only requires one click to turn on, and can easily be configured from a list of the file types commonly found to be dangerous. This will also help in consolidating attachment filtering within a malware policy rather than through multiple Exchange transport rules. The feature resides within the Malware Policy page in the Exchange Admin Center, and can be accessed by going under the Protection tab on the left and the malware filter tab on the top. From there, you can choose between creating a new malware policy where the most commonly abused files are preselected by default or editing an existing one to include the new functionality. This feature has administrative controls to enable and disable in your Exchange admin portal. This feature is off by default. You may turn it on in an existing or newly-created malware policy. Additional information can be found at https://blogs.office.com/2016/01/14/leading-the-way-in-the-fight-against-dangerous-email-threats/.
Updated Feature: SharePoint Online theming
Posted: February 19, 2016 | Action: Awareness | We’re updating SharePoint Online to improve how we render site pages. You’ll begin seeing this change starting February 26. Most likely, you will not notice this change. Your SharePoint Online sites should continue to operate as they do currently. If you have customized your sites, by modifying the cascading style sheet (CSS) files, you may experience issues. If you have not done any customization to your SharePoint sites, there is nothing you need to do. If you are experiencing issues with your SharePoint site, please go to the support section in the Admin Center and open a new support ticket so we can investigate.
New Feature: Block users who don’t have Yammer licenses
Posted: February 19, 2016 | Action: Awareness | As Yammer gets further integrated in Office 365, you can manage key aspects of the Yammer service from Office 365, including identity, domain, and license management. As per the Message Center post on January 15, 2016, we have enabled phase two of per user licensing. This will allow you to block users who don't have Yammer licenses. In addition to this, over the coming weeks, you will be able to manage Yammer domain settings in Office 365. When you add or remove domains in Office 365, they will be automatically added to or removed from the corresponding Yammer network. If your Office 365 tenant has additional domains that have not yet been added to Yammer, we will automatically synchronize it. If Yammer has been activated for your Office 365 tenant, you, as the Office 365 administrator, can manage your Yammer domain and user license settings just like any other service in Office 365. Please refer to https://support.office.com/article/Manage-Yammer-user-licenses-in-Office-365-34a67e3a-3fd8-4e54-bffb-dd5ad0e48590 for additional information.
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!
FastTrack Webinars: Learn how to do more, together
The best productivity experience? It’s already in your Office. 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
- Your files anywhere: Discover new ways to achieve more by getting work done with your documents from anywhere
- Make meetings matter: Discover how Office 365 can help you get the right people achieving more together by connecting online through Skype for Business
- Work like a network: Discover new ways to use Yammer to create conversations and quickly communicate answers
- Get it done from anywhere: Discover how to access Outlook from anywhere and share your files to get things done in real time
- Key roles in making Office 365 successful: Discover how different roles work together to a successful launch
- Build awareness: Foster adoption of Office 365 in ways that matter to end users; understanding training resources and develop champions
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.
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 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 Auditing, reporting and storage improvements for SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business
Knowing who is taking action on content can be critical in helping your organization fulfill its compliance requirements. And as usage of a cloud service grows, it’s key for IT to strike the right balance between visibility and user enablement. We’re announcing an important update for admins—the ability to audit and report on numerous activities that take place within SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business, as well as new file size limits for files uploaded to SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business.
Office 365 Groups are shared workspaces where group members can collectively get things done. When you set up a group, it automatically creates a shared inbox, group calendar, a place to save and share files and group notes, plus planning tools. The Office 365 Groups experience also extends to other services like Power BI and Dynamics CRM, and can be accessed on the go using the Outlook Groups app. This week’s Microsoft Mechanics takes a tour of updates to Office 365 Groups—spanning user, IT and developer experiences. In addition to what we show in this episode, we also recently updated the Office 365 Groups header and discover page.
Important notice about certificate expiration for Exchange 2013 Hybrid customers
If you’re running Exchange 2013 and you’ve configured a hybrid deployment with Office 365, this post contains important information that might impact you. Please evaluate this information and take any necessary action before April 15, 2016. The Office 365 TLS certificate will be renewed on April 15, 2016. This certificate is used by Office 365 to provide TLS encryption between Office 365 and external SMTP servers. The new certificate, which will help improve the security of mail sent to and from Office 365, will be issued by a new Certificate Authority and it will have a new Issuer and Subject.
As part of our goal to take your feedback and make regular improvements to Sway, we’re excited to announce a number of new updates. Regular monthly updates are part of our commitment to develop Office as a cloud service, so please send us your ideas and questions on our UserVoice page if you want to get involved in making Sway better. Last month, we introduced the Recycle Bin, Send to Sway for OneNote and more. This month, we have another set of updates to help you more easily find your content, embed new forms of interactive material, adjust text in new, intuitive ways and more. Read on for the details.
NOTEWORTHY
Updated: Office 365 URLs and IP Address Ranges
February 16 - 18, 2016: Numerous updates for Office 365, including authentication / identity, portal and shared, Exchange Online Protection, Exchange Online, Skype for Business Online and SharePoint Online. Details on the updates are available on the RSS feed and the complete list is located here.
Office 365 Hybrid Configuration wizard for Exchange 2010
The Office 365 Hybrid Configuration wizard has been updated to support Exchange 2010. This new wizard comes with several enhancements including an updated user experience that simplifies the configuration process, a refined error handling experience and code efficiency corrections leading to improved and faster completion times. Please stop using the old HCW for Exchange 2010 that was bundled in the Exchange 2010 Exchange Management Console and instead use the Office 365 Hybrid Configuration wizard. The post also includes a video walkthrough of the new experience.
Published February 16, 2016 | This article includes numerous resources for Azure Active Directory Synchronization and single sign-on for Office 365. Resources include webcasts and videos, help and how-to information as well as troubleshooting content.
Azure AD Connect 1.1 is now GA - Faster sync times, automatic upgrades and more!
We're psyched to announce a significant update to Azure AD Connect —the simple, “one stop shop” for connecting your Windows Server Active Directory and Azure Active Directory. As I mentioned in my blog post earlier this year, we’ve already seen tremendous excitement and adoption growth of Azure AD connect. And since that blog post, nearly 10K new customers have used Azure AD Connect to integrate the directories across their hybrid enterprise. So it exciting to announce several enhancements to Azure AD Connect such as faster sync times, options for automatic upgrades and support for Domain and OU filtering within the wizard. In addition, we’re also announcing the General Availability the device write-back and schema extension support capabilities we announced before. Through the preview period of these features, we’ve gotten tremendous response and feedback and am thrilled to announce the GA of these features.