Office 365 Weekly Digest | Week of July 17 - 23, 2016

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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: Message Center Filtering

Posted: July 22, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Stay Informed | Action: Awareness | Message center now automatically filters out messages about services that aren’t part of your organization’s subscription. In addition, admins can set their own filters, which lets them decide which messages they need to see. For example, if you’re not the SharePoint admin for your organization, you can turn off SharePoint messages. To update your message filters, click the “Edit Message center preferences” link at the top of the Message center page. When you turn on a filter, you’ll see all active messages for that service. These new features are part of the new Message center, so you won’t see them if you’re still using the old Office 365 Admin center. With Message center preferences, we hope to make it easier for you to prepare for Office 365 changes that affect you. Please share your thoughts and feedback about this new feature by clicking Like or Dislike below and leaving us your comments. If you don’t do anything, we’ll automatically adjust your message filters so you see only the messages about services that are part of your Office 365 subscription. To set your Message center preferences right now, please visit https://portal.office.com/adminportal/home?ref=MessageCenter?showPref=1.

 

Updated Feature: Modern SharePoint Lists

Posted: July 22, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Plan For Change | Action: Awareness | We’re making some changes to lists in SharePoint. Modern lists offer many UI enhancements such as inline creation of custom views and columns; improved mobile support; PowerApps and Flow integration; and the information panel. We’ve replaced the Ribbon with a clean, responsive command bar. We’re going to start rolling out modern lists for First Release Users in early August, with First Release Tenants and Production rings following. The modern list will be the default experience for all lists except as noted below. Some customizations are not yet supported in the modern experience, and if we detect such a customization we will automatically redirect users to the classic experience. Administrators may choose to disable the modern lists experience on a per list, per site, or tenant wide basis, using the same control previously offered for modern document libraries. If modern experiences are enabled, any SharePoint user will be able to preview the modern lists experience, regardless of First Release or Production rollout schedule, starting next week. Please watch the Message Center for specifics when preview becomes available. Learn more at https://support.office.com/article/Switch-the-default-for-document-libraries-from-new-or-classic-66dac24b-4177-4775-bf50-3d267318caa9.

 

UPCOMING EVENTS Azure Active Directory Webinars for July

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!

 

Take your teamwork to the next level with Office 365 and Windows 10

When: Wednesday, August 3, 2016 @ 12:00pm – 1:30pm PT | Test drive Office 365 and Windows 10 from the comfort of your own office. 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. Please note: Each session is only open to 20 participants. Reserve your seat now and learn how you can be more productive anywhere, anytime with Office 365.

 

FastTrack Webinars: Learn how to do more, together

When: Multiple sessions starting July 12th and ending August 31st | 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 What Microsoft Stream means to Office 365

We are pleased to announce the preview of Microsoft Stream, a new business video service that makes it easier to access and discover video content inside your organization. Microsoft Stream builds upon the learnings and success of Office 365 Video, and over time the two experiences will converge, making Stream the de facto video experience in Office 365. We’ve seen tremendous success and adoption of Office 365 Video since launching it in Office 365 more than two years ago. With the introduction of Microsoft Stream, we can’t wait to provide new innovation that meets the evolving requirements of Office 365 customers, such as the ability to integrate video with business workflows. During the preview of Microsoft Stream, there will be no changes to the Office 365 Video experience. We will share more details on future enhancements and user updates closer to general availability of the Microsoft Stream service. To learn more about Microsoft Stream, read the full preview announcement on the Official Microsoft Blog.

 

Yammer updates—from new user experiences to new IT controls

The Yammer team is continually delivering new capabilities for users and admins as well as deeper integration with Office 365. This post with the latest Microsoft Mechanics episode takes a detailed hands-on look at updates to Yammer for enterprise social—from enhanced security and compliance to greater team productivity. Angus Florance, from the Yammer team, joins the show to demonstrate new integrated experiences, including Office 365 Video and Delve. And for admins, we’ll show you new controls for merging networks, managing users and tracking usage. Tune in to see all of this and hear what’s coming next!

 

OneNote July roundup

This month the OneNote team is pleased to release new capabilities to enhance inking (including inking in OneNote for Mac - one of our top user requests), clipping content from the web and working with others. We have a lot of great things to share with you, so let’s dive right in.

 

Sway accessibility milestones

The Microsoft mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, and we on the Sway team take this mission to heart. We built the Sway app to make it easy to bring in content from multiple sources, so you can convey a richer story with photos, videos and other multimedia. Our built-in design engine instantly puts your creations into cohesive layouts and designs, so you don’t have to spend hours on formatting. And our digital format makes it easy to share your Sway with a link and ensures that it adapts to different screens. On top of these, we’ve been working on several features to help users with vision, mobility and cognitive impairments use Sway in their personal and work lives. All of the following enhancements are now available on the Sway web and Windows apps.

 

NOTEWORTHY

Updated: Office 365 URLs and IP Address Ranges

July 20-22, 2016: Updates for Office 365 authentication and identity, Office Online, Outlook for Android/iOS and Skype for Business Online.  Details on the updates are available on the RSS feed and the complete list is located here.

 

Controlling Access to Office 365 and Protecting Content on Devices

Technical White Paper | Published: July 19, 2016 | This document describes the Conditional Access features in Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security, and how they are designed with built-in data security and protection to keep company data safe, while empowering users to be productive on the devices they love. It also provides guidance on how to address common concerns around data access and data protection using Office 365 features.

 

Preview of Certificate-Based Authentication (CBA) for Exchange Online

On-premises Exchange environments support the ability for certain mobile apps to utilize certificate-based authentication (CBA). We are pleased to announce that CBA is available in preview for customers using Office 365 Enterprise, Business, and Education plans. This feature is available in Outlook for Android and Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) protocol. Support for Outlook for iOS is coming soon. What is certificate-based authentication? CBA allows users to authenticate using a client certificate. The certificate is used in place of the user entering credentials into the device. By utilizing certificate-based authentication, administrators can allow their users to access resources without the need to enter credentials.