Office 365 Weekly Digest | Week of June 12 - 18, 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.
Updated Feature: What’s new in Office 365 Groups Administration – June 2016
Posted: June 13, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Stay Informed | Action: Awareness | For June, we continued our work to improve Office 365 Groups to help administrators govern and manage Office 365 Groups, which provides cross-application group membership to enable teams to easily collaborate in their favorite apps. The latest updates include the ability to manage group creation policy in Azure Active Directory, set usage guidelines, define data classification, and leverage mobile application management. For more details, please see the "What's New in Office 365 Groups Administration - June 2016 Update" post in the "Blog Roundup" section below.
Updated Feature: Announcing a new version of the Office 365 Admin app
Posted: June 14, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Stay Informed | Action: Awareness | We're introducing a design update for the Office 365 admin app that will make it easier and more efficient for you to manage your service using the app. With the new update, we are further improving and modernizing the design and UX of the app. Enhancements include: feature grouping, quick links, and an aligned design across the admin app and the new Office 365 admin center. The new version is available now for Windows Phone and Android, and will come to iOS in 1–2 weeks. If you don’t have automatic updates turned on, please go to your app store to download the updated version. For additional information, please see the "Announcing a new version of the Office 365 Admin app" post in the "Blog Roundup" section below.
Temporarily rolling back feature: New Alert email design for OneDrive for Business and SharePoint
Posted: June 16, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Stay Informed | Action: Awareness | We are temporarily rolling back updates we made to alert emails, for OneDrive for Business and SharePoint. We’ll be implementing improvements to alert emails in the near future, based on the great feedback we received. The previous alert emails will continue to be sent. There is nothing you need to do to prepare for this change. We’ll be sending another communication when we roll out the new design. Learn more at https://support.office.com/article/Change-the-settings-for-your-alerts-49629CFE-88D0-4DFB-8766-B89861D12731.
Office 365 for Business Community is joining Microsoft Community
Posted: June 16, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Stay Informed | Action: Awareness | 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 questions. The Office 365 for Business Community site will be in read-only mode from Friday, June 17, 12:30 PM UTC, until the migration is complete, on or before June 18 at 7:00 PM UTC. After migration, the current site will automatically redirect to Microsoft Community. Please do not create a new account in Microsoft Community. If you’ve started threads in the Office 365 for Business Community within the past nine months, or replied to threads which were created in the past nine months, your account will automatically move to the Microsoft Community. There will be one more update in 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. Some data will not be migrated to the Microsoft Community such as followers, following lists, and favorites. You may want to save any affected data that you’d like to keep. Visit the Microsoft Community Integration FAQ Wiki for answers to questions you may have, and subscribe to the wiki to stay updated.
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!
A Walkthrough of Power BI Security & Administration Considerations
When: June 23, 2016 @ 10:00am PT | This session will share everything you should know around security and Power BI including how to secure your data, share dashboards outside of your organizations, etc.. You can also view on-demand webinars and register for other upcoming webinars at the Power BI webinars page.
Test drive Office 365 and take your teamwork to the next level
An online immersion session is not your typical online event. These 90-minute interactive sessions start with an online roundtable discussing your business challenges and then launch into a live environment in the cloud. A skilled facilitator guides you through simulated business scenarios that are customized to your interests. We will send you a link to connect your own device to a remote desktop loaded with our latest and greatest technology, so you can experience first-hand how Microsoft tools can solve your biggest challenges in a collaborative, fun environment. There are 4 upcoming sessions – 2 on Wednesday, June 22nd and 2 on Wednesday, June 29th. Each session is only open to 20 participants, so reserve your seat now and learn how you can be more productive anywhere, anytime with Office 365.
Insights to Action: PowerApps & Microsoft Flow
When: June 30, 2016 @ 10:00am PT | Microsoft Power BI provides insights into your data, helping bring it to life. With PowerApps and Flow you can now also take actions on that data. PowerApps is a service for building and using custom business apps that connect to your data and work across the web and mobile - without the time and expense of custom software development. Microsoft Flow is a service for business users and specialists to work smarter by automating processes across applications and services that are used every day. This webinar will introduce the vision behind PowerApps and Flow and demo key scenarios. Product team members will be available throughout the presentation to take questions from the audience. You can also view on-demand webinars and register for other upcoming webinars at the Power BI webinars page.
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
- Bring your team together with Yammer: 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
BLOG ROUNDUP What's new in Office 365 Groups administration - June 2016 update
Last December, we announced that Office 365 Groups are now supported by eDiscovery. Since then, we’ve delivered a number of updates to help administrators govern and manage Office 365 Groups, which provides cross-application group membership to enable teams to easily collaborate in their favorite apps. This post outlines new capabilities available now, others that are rolling out and are targeted to complete by the end of July, in addition to ones that are on the roadmap.
Announcing a new version of the Office 365 admin app
As an Office 365 admin, you sometimes find yourself in a situation when you’re not at your desk but you still want to act quickly. For example, if your CEO has forgotten their Office 365 password or an employee left the company, you want to take action right away. To help you in these situations and to easily stay up to date on the latest changes in Office 365, we developed the Office 365 admin app, which gives you access to all common admin features on the go. We are happy to announce a design update for the Office 365 admin app that will make it easier and more efficient for you to manage your service using the app. | Download the Office 365 admin app (Windows Phone, iOS and Android)
June Office 365 security and compliance update
In the last month, we’ve delivered a number of enhancements to Office 365 security and compliance capabilities, including the introduction of Advanced Security Management, a new set of capabilities powered by Microsoft Cloud App Security that gives you greater visibility and control over your Office 365 environment. This post includes a roundup of recent Office 365 security and compliance news.
The Deferred Channel June updates for the Office 365 client now available
The June Office 365 client update (version 1602) includes a number of new features and capabilities for those receiving updates from the Deferred Channel. As you might recall from a previous post, 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. New features are available in the Deferred Channel three times per year, on “Patch Tuesday,” in February, June and October. For information on the updates available in this month’s Deferred Channel, visit the Office 365 client release notes. In addition, the existing Office 365 ProPlus version (1509) within the Deferred Channel will continue to be serviced for an additional four months. For information on how to download and install these builds, visit our Office 365 ProPlus TechNet site.
The future of video conferencing—3 trends breathing new life into a decades old industry
For decades, video conferencing has been a nice-to-have feature for most businesses, but not a necessity. Thanks to advances in both hardware and software—as well as the growing demand for visual communications among millennials in the workforce—that’s all about to change. Despite the decrease in bandwidth costs, both hardware and software continue to improve video quality while using better compression methods that eat up even less bandwidth. This has helped reduce the costs of video conferencing services and devices, which has led to a widespread adoption in the workplace. Today, virtual meetings can be held in large video conferencing rooms dedicated to cross-team collaboration, on mobile devices like tablets and cell phones or while simply sitting at a desk using VOIP or a conference phone. As technology continues to improve, here are three trends to expect for the future of video conferencing...
NOTEWORTHY
Updated: Office 365 URLs and IP Address Ranges
June 13, 2016: Updates for Exchange Online, Office 365 authentication and Office Online. Details on the updates are available on the RSS feed and the complete list is located here.
Free e-book: Introducing Microsoft Power BI
Get started quickly with Microsoft Power BI! Experts Alberto Ferrari and Marco Russo will help you bring your data to life, transforming your company’s data into rich visuals for you to collect and organize, allowing you to focus on what matters most to you. Stay in the know, spot trends as they happen, and push your business to new limits. This free e-book introduces Microsoft Power BI basics through a practical, scenario-based guided tour of the tool, showing you how to build analytical solutions using Power BI. Read the e-book to get an overview of Power BI, or dig deeper and follow along on your PC using the book’s examples. Introducing Microsoft Power BI enables you to evaluate when and how to use Power BI. Get inspired to improve business processes in your company by leveraging the available analytical and collaborative features of this environment. | Additional Resource: Microsoft IT Showcase – Getting started with Power BI
4 new videos were posted last week, with a focus on delivering insights into various aspects of Office 365: