Office 365 Weekly Digest | Week of March 6 - 12, 2016

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Note: The information below may not be posted to your Office 365 tenant as not all notifications apply to all tenants.

 

New Feature: Office 365 Admin app for Windows 10

Posted: March 07, 2016 | Action: Awareness | The beta version of the Office 365 Admin app for Windows 10 is now available. The universal app is available for both Windows 10 Desktop and Mobile. You now have the ability to administer Office 365 directly from your desktop. You only have to sign in once as the app will keep you logged in. The app supports notification integration with Windows 10 as well as Microsoft Partner scenarios, allowing you to easily switch organizations if you manage Office 365 for multiple tenants. The mobile version has the exact same user experience making switching from desktop to the mobile app extremely easy. Try the Office 365 Admin Universal [Beta] app and let us know what you think by leaving feedback in the app. If you already run the Office 365 admin app on your phone, you can install the universal app as second app. For additional information and to download the app, please visit  https://www.microsoft.com/store/apps/office-365-admin-universal-beta/9nblggh5lc8f.

 

New Feature: Admin-Mandated Anonymous Link Expiration

Posted: March 9, 2016 | Action: Awareness | Mandatory Anonymous Link Expiration is a new feature for SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. This feature is now available worldwide. With this feature, administrators can now set a mandatory expiration limit for all anonymous links created in their company to help promote security and link hygiene. End users will be required to create links that match or are shorter than the stated value. There is no default value for anonymous link expiration. To begin using this feature, use the SharePoint Online Management Shell using the “RequireAnonymousLinksExpireInDays” parameter. Please visit  https://technet.microsoft.com/library/fp161390.aspx to learn more.

 

UPCOMING EVENTS Azure Active Directory Webinars for March

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!

 

Data Insights Summit - free online Excel and Power BI sessions

When: March 22 – 23, 2016 | If business data matters to you, here’s where to dig in deep—and at no cost. The Microsoft Data Insights Summit, the inaugural Power BI and Excel user conference, lets you participate virtually—your device is your free pass to the two-day event. The Data Insights Summit takes place on Tuesday, March 22 from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. PT and Wednesday, March 23 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. PT. Save the dates and then watch the live streams of the keynote and select sessions at PowerBI.com. The two-day summit is designed for you to learn the latest about Microsoft Power BI and Excel from our product development teams and offers 12 online sessions to help you gain the most insight from your organization’s data. While the event is aimed at business analysts, we welcome all who want to deepen their understanding of prediction science and technologies.

 

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 execute a successful launch
  • Build awareness: Foster adoption of Office 365 in ways that matter to end users; understanding training resources and develop champions

 

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.

  • 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 Collaboration in Office - chat with your co-editors in real time via Skype!

With the co-authoring capabilities of Office Online, you may find yourself in a OneDrive document with your friends and family at the same time. When this happens, you can now communicate with your fellow editors in real time via Skype, without leaving the document! We mentioned this in an earlier announcement, and today we are pleased to bring you more details.

 

New update options for Office 365 ProPlus using System Center Configuration Manager

IT admins can now manage Office 365 client updates—including those for Office 365 ProPlus, Visio Pro for Office 365 and Project Pro for Office 365—directly via the System Center Configuration Manager’s built-in software updates workflow engine. One of the top feature requests we hear from IT admins is to use System Center Configuration Manager to update Office. To accomplish this, we streamlined the ongoing update management for Office 365 clients by integrating with Configuration Manager and the Microsoft Update service to allow a consistent process to discover, view, deploy and track available software updates—similar to how you manage other apps in your organization. Each time an Office update is published, information is automatically sent to the Microsoft Update service. Configuration Manager automatically receives notifications when updates are available and validates whether your PCs require the update. IT admins can use the existing workflow engine to download and distribute the update.

 

Expanding the reach of Skype for Business meetings and voice services in Office 365

Three months ago, we launched Skype for Business Cloud PBX, Meeting Broadcast and PSTN services to provide a complete meetings and voice experience in Office 365. Already, thousands of Office 365 customers are using these services, and many more are trialing them. We're now announcing our first major geographic expansion of these services; new support for hybrid deployments; new, modern meeting room solutions; and improvements to our unified reporting, management and analytics.

 

Office 365 integration and updates to Dynamics CRM

Last May, we highlighted how Office 365 and Dynamics CRM work together to help boost productivity. Now, with capabilities spanning Office 365 Groups, the Office Graph and inherited Protection Center controls, the integration goes much deeper. This week, Microsoft Mechanics goes hands-on with the latest Dynamics CRM to highlight Office 365 integration for sellers, admins and developers. Eric Boocock from the Dynamics team joins me to demonstrate how CRM creates Office 365 Groups to improve collaboration and how you can access CRM data in the context of email with the Outlook add-in. The updated experiences can also leverage Azure Machine Learning to create cross-sell recommendations and Cortana to report interactive insights from Windows 10.

 

NOTEWORTHY

Updated: Office 365 URLs and IP Address Ranges

March 9-10, 2016: Updates for Exchange Online, Skype for Business Online, Yammer, SharePoint Online, Office 365 ProPlus and Office 365 endpoints.  Details on the updates are available on the RSS feed and the complete list is located here.

 

The Office 365 Admin Communications YamJam Summary is posted!

On March 2, 2016 the Yammer Team hosted an action-packed YamJam to answer questions and listen to feedback about Office 365 Admin Communications and the Admin app. | Office 365 Admin Resource Center | Office 365 Admin Readiness Videos: Welcome to Service Incidents and Welcome to Change

 

New Microsoft Virtual Academy Course: Yammer for the IT Professional

Level: 200 | Published: March 7, 2016 | IT Pros, are you wondering how Yammer differs from other communication tools? Wonder no more! Get helpful details and real-world examples, straight from the experts. In this informative, two-hour course, Chris Slemp, the Admin of the most active Yammer network in the world, joins Microsoft IT Service Engineer Darren Moffatt to walk you through practical examples. Plus, take a look at basic network configuration, managing accounts, key admin considerations, adoption, and integration. For a list of all available Office 365 courses for IT Professionals, please visit https://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/product-training/office-365.