Office 365 Weekly Digest | Week of May 22 - 28, 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.

 

Office 365 for Business Community is joining Microsoft Community

Posted: May 23, 2016 | Action: Awareness | The Office 365 for Business Community (community.office365.com) is joining the Microsoft Community (answers.microsoft.com). This merger itself is scheduled for mid-to-late June, with additional integration taking place through August. Instead of looking in two different communities for answers, you only have to go to one place. Microsoft Community is the largest support community hosted by Microsoft, and it already includes Windows and Office support. Once we bring Office 365 into the Microsoft Community, you’ll be able to search all forums at once, so you won’t miss anything the community is saying about your problem. We’re implementing these changes in two phases: (1) Mid-to-late June, 2016: Office 365 for Business Community joins the Microsoft Community, and begins using a new set of forum topics dedicated to Office 365 for Business admins and users. For details, including how we’ll migrate accounts, avatars, and posts, click Additional information below. (2) August, 2016: Office and Office for Mac forum topics will be simplified, and all topics for Office, Office for Mac, and Office 365 for Business will be organized under one main forum category called “Office.” Dedicated Office 365 for Business Administration topics will remain unchanged. Visit the Microsoft Community Integration FAQ Wiki for answers to questions you may have, and subscribe to the wiki to stay updated.

 

Office 365 Planner is on by default

Posted: May 23, 2016 | Action: Awareness | This week you will begin seeing Office 365 Planner Preview on by default. In December, we rolled out Planner Preview to select First Release customers, to sign-up and assign Planner licenses their users. Today, we are rolling Office 365 Planner Preview out to all of First Release, without the need to sign-up and assign licenses. Office 365 Planner Preview is now available, on by default, for you and your users. Planner Preview brings together teams, tasks, documents, and conversations for better planning and collaboration. There is nothing you need to do to prepare for this change. Log in and get yourself familiar with Planner. To learn more, please visit https://support.office.com/article/What-is-Office-365-Planner-Preview-4a9a13c6-3adf-4a60-a6fc-15c0b15e16fc.

 

What’s New: April 2016

Posted: May 24, 2016 | Action: Awareness | Collaboration got a big boost this month with the initial release of the Skype for Business for Mac Preview, sharing and messaging updates to the Office 2016 desktop client, the ability to create external Yammer groups and more. So did mobility, with the new Calendar Apps for Outlook on iOS and Android, new Project Portfolio Dashboard apps, and support for mobile application management (MAM) and conditional access capabilities for Skype for Business mobile apps. Plus, a new home page is rolling out to all Office 365 users, Safety Tips for email are here, FastTrack is expanding, and Get & Transform in Excel 2016 and the Power Query add-in for Excel got a host of updates. For teachers, the OneNote Class Notebook add-in now includes LMS assignment and grade integration. And for developers, there are presentations on Office add-ins, 2016 Build, authentication, Angular 2, and Cordova. For more details about the new features and improvements released for Office 365 during April, please visit https://blogs.office.com/2016/05/10/whats-new-april-2016/.

 

Known Issue: Microsoft-initiated Office upgrade experience

Posted: May 26, 2016 | Action: Awareness | On May 9th, we identified an issue with the Microsoft-initiated upgrade experience of Office 365 ProPlus, to the Office 2016 version. If your users are running the Office 2013 version of Office 365 ProPlus, your users will not see the “GET THE NEW OFFICE” notification that appears just under the ribbon. If you want Microsoft-initiated upgrades as soon as possible, there is no action at this time. The issue found in the May product update (PU) is expected to be resolved with the June PU. If you do not want Microsoft-initiated upgrades for now, you can take steps to prevent the upgrade but still get updates from the CDN. Once you’re ready, reverse these steps. If you never want Microsoft-initiated upgrades, you can take steps to prevent the upgrade but still get updates from the CDN, and then choose another upgrade method, such as from an internal network using the Office Deployment Tool. You can continue to receive updates for the Office 2013 version of Office 365 ProPlus until February 2017. After February 2017, there will be no additional updates for the Office 2013 version. To prepare to upgrade Office 365 ProPlus to the Office 2016 version, please review the information located at https://technet.microsoft.com/library/mt422981.aspx.

 

UPCOMING EVENTS Azure Active Directory Webinars for June

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.

 

BLOG ROUNDUP New to Office 365 in May - updates to Skype for Business, Outlook, SharePoint and more

This month, our updates to Office 365 include real-time chat integration into Office 365 web experiences, as well as new capabilities in Outlook and Visio. We also cover key announcements for SharePoint and OneDrive for Business made earlier this month.

 

Office Online - chat with your co-editors in real-time

We recently announced the ability for co-editors to chat with one another directly within a OneDrive document when working in Office Online. Now, we’re pleased to extend this capability to our Office 365 Business and Education customers for documents stored in OneDrive for Business or SharePoint Online. Built on the same technology as Skype for Business, the new chat feature is available in all the Office Online applications—Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote.

 

Microsoft IT Showcase: How Microsoft IT manages its move to the cloud

Published: May 24, 2016 | Learn how Microsoft IT has transitioned from classic, on-premises IT hosting to a hybrid cloud management organization. Senior Program Manager Lyle Dodge discusses the evolution of Microsoft IT from on-premises hosting to a cloud services broker.

 

3 things businesses can learn about email security from the Panama Papers hack

In today’s IT environment, data breaches are a constant threat. According to Gemalto’s 2015 Breach Level Index, last year 1,673 data breaches around the world led to 707 million data records being compromised. And though email has come a long way over the last decade, it’s still one of the greatest threats to data security. We don’t have to look far to see what kind of damage hackers can do when a business does not ensure secure email. In what’s being called “the biggest leak in whistleblower history,” the Panama Papers hack made international headlines last month. This hack enabled 2.6 TB of data to be stolen through the email servers of Mossack Fonseca, a legal firm based in Panama City. So how did the hacker get access to the legal firm’s email servers in the first place? According to ITPro, security and privacy expert Christopher Soghoian ran a test showing Mossack Fonseca did not follow Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols for email encryption. Whether you believe the Panama Papers leak was a good or bad thing, a more important question remains: What can IT security professionals learn from this?

 

NOTEWORTHY Microsoft Mechanics: Introducing Office 365 auditing and investigation workflow with eDiscovery

Published: May 24, 2016 | The latest Microsoft Mechanics video provides a walk-through of the Security and Compliance Center; enabling search and investigation in the Office 365 service. These new capabilities give you transparency into the actions taken against your data and allow you to investigate and respond to potential issues.

 

Defending Office 365 Against Denial of Service Attacks

Published: May 24, 2016 | This white paper discusses the different types of Denial of Service attacks and how Microsoft defends Office 365, Azure and their networks against these attacks.

 

Microsoft Cloud Security for Enterprise Architects

Published: May 23, 2016 | Microsoft has developed leading-edge best practices in the design and management of online services. Learn what IT architects need to know about security in Microsoft cloud services and platforms with the Microsoft Cloud Security for Enterprise Architects poster. And, be sure to check out the other Microsoft cloud IT architecture resources as well as Microsoft’s Enterprise Cloud Roadmap. | Microsoft Virtual Academy course: Security in a Cloud-Enabled World