Office 365 Weekly Digest | Week of July 31 - August 6, 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: Migrate a distribution group to an Office 365 group with one click

Posted: August 03, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Stay Informed | Action: Awareness | Building on the scripts we released in June 2016 for DL migration, you can now migrate a distribution group to an Office 365 group directly from the Exchange Admin Center with one click. This feature is rolling out over the next few weeks. Office 365 Groups provides cross-application group membership to enable teams to easily collaborate in their favorite apps and offer a number of benefits compared to traditional distribution group such as the ability to access past conversations. For additional information, please visit https://technet.microsoft.com/library/bb124513(v=exchg.160).aspx.

 

Updated Feature: Office 365 Admin Universal App Reaches General Availability

Posted: August 04, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Plan for Change | Action: Required by September 5, 2016 | The Universal Windows Platform version of the Office 365 Admin app has reached general availability. The Universal App provides users with a consistent experience across devices and will replace the previous Windows Phone 8.1 app. If you have been using the Office 365 Admin Universal (Beta) app on Windows 10, you need to install the Office 365 Admin app to keep receiving updates. If you have been using the Office 365 Admin app on Windows 10 and if you don’t have automatic updates turned on, please go to your app store to download the updated version. If you are using Windows 10, download or update the Office 365 Admin app by clicking the Additional Information link below. If you are using Windows Phone 8.1, you can continue to use the app but you won’t receive any updates in the future. Download the app at https://office365adminmobile.azurewebsites.net/.

 

Updated Feature: OneNote Class Notebook

Posted: August 04, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Plan for Change | Action: Awareness | We are updating the OneNote Class Notebook with additional features. First, we are updating the Class Notebook Add-in for OneNote as generally available in the Class Notebook app in Office 365 Education. Second, we are also updating the Class Notebook app in Office 365 Education with a number of top educator updates like rename student sections, enable student teacher-only section group, and lock the Collaboration Space. These change will roll out to your tenant starting August 3rd. You are receiving this notification because you have teacher and faculty user licenses. The Class Notebook add-in is for OneNote 2013 or 2016 desktop, and is designed to help teachers save time and be even more efficient with their Class Notebooks. The add-in includes page and section distribution to students, quick review of student work, and easier access to the Class Notebook app. Inform your IT staff and helpdesk of this change. Update your user training, if you feel this change is important to you. Download the add-in now, and start using it. Learn more at https://aka.ms/ClassNotebookUpdatesBTS16Blog.

 

New Feature: External sharing notifications for OneDrive for Business

Posted: August 04, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Stay Informed | Action: Awareness | External sharing notifications for OneDrive for Business is a new Office 365 feature. We will begin rolling this feature out in late August, 2016 and expect to be completed by the end of September. This feature is controlled in the SharePoint Online admin center and only affects OneDrive for Business. Once this feature has been rolled out to your organization, OneDrive for Business owners will begin receiving e-mail notifications when 1) another user shares one of the owner’s files to an external user (either a new external user or one who has been shared with before) and 2) when an external user accepts an invitation to the owner’s resource. These notifications contain information about the sharing & receiving users to help them make smart decisions about external access to their content. The notifications also provide easy access to revoke the shared with user’s access to the content. This has administrative controls to enable and disable. This feature is on by default. | Resource: https://support.office.com/article/Configure-notifications-for-external-sharing-for-OneDrive-for-Business-b640c693-f170-4227-b8c1-b0a7e0fa876b

 

Office 2016 apps for Mac are moving to 64-bit

Posted: August 04, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Stay Informed | Action: Awareness | Apple has long encouraged application developers to adopt the 64-bit runtime environment, and we’ve been hearing from customers that 64-bit versions Office for Mac are desirable to enable larger address spaces, better performance, and new innovative features. In the next few weeks, we are releasing the Office apps for Mac in full 64-bit. If you are not using Office 2016 for Mac, this does not affect you. If you use Office 2016 for Mac, but don’t use any add-ins, you will be unaffected by this change. If you use or develop add-ins in Office 2016 for Mac, you may need to update those add-ins to 64-bit. Office add-ins using the JavaScript-based APIs, are not impacted by this change. Details on how to transition Office add-ins for Mac to 64-bit are available at https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=823766.

 

ADVISORY: Skype for Business Connectivity Requirement Update

Posted: August 05, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Plan for Change | Action: Required by August 12, 2016 | We have maintenance planned for Skype for Business, starting August 12, 2016, at 5:00 PM UTC, and ending August 13, 2016, at 2:00 AM UTC. As part of this planned maintenance, North American users will be unable to login to Skype for Business if their Firewall Rules are not current to the Skype for Business connectivity requirements. Skype for Business is migrating you onto new capacity. Connectivity requirements for the new capacity were published in July 2016. This advisory is to inform you the new capacity will be in production on August 12, 2016. Please validate any firewall or ACL rules are updated to current connectivity requirements. Please review the updates posted in July 2016 to Office 365 URLs and IP Ranges and implement any changes necessary. We’re updating Open With Explorer. We'll be gradually rolling this out in late July, and the roll out will be completed by the end of August.

 

UPCOMING EVENTS Azure Active Directory Webinars for August

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: Preparing for Azure AD, Azure AD Multi-Factor Authentication, Self-Service Password Management and more . 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!

 

Online Immersion Experience: Boost  your productivity with Windows 10 and Office 365

When: Every Wednesday in August, 10:00am – 11:30am PT or 12:00pm – 1:30pm PT | Boost your productivity with Office 365 and Windows 10. 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.

 

Modern Workplace: From Demo to Action - Tips from everyday users

When: Tuesday, August 9, 2016 @ 8:00am PT | Finding the right tools to improve productivity and communication in your company can be a challenge – but what about implementation?  In this episode, we share the best user tips from season two of Modern Workplace and demonstrate how innovations in Office 365 and Office 2016 are helping organizations stay secure, communicate more effectively, and get things done. Our featured guests are technology leaders with extensive experience in helping customers maximize the powerful tools provided by Microsoft.

 

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 New Security Analytics Service: Finding and Fixing Risk in Office 365

Microsoft is pleased to announce the preview availability of a new security analytics service called the Office 365 Secure Score. The Secure Score is a security analytics tool that will help you understand what you have done to reduce the risk to your data in Office 365, and show you what you can do to further reduce that risk. We think of it as a credit score for security. Our approach to this experience was very simple. First, we created a full inventory of all the security configurations and behaviors that our customers can do to mitigate risks to their data in Office 365 (there are about 77 total things that we identified). Then, we evaluated the extent to which each of those controls mitigated a specific set of risks and awarded the control some points. More points means a more effective control for that risk. Lastly, we measure the extent to which your service has adopted the recommended controls, add up your points, and present it as a single score. The Secure Score does not express an absolute measure of how likely you are to get breached. It expresses the extent to which you have adopted controls which can offset the risk of being breached. No service can guarantee that you will not be breached, and the Secure Score should not be interpreted as a guarantee in any way.

 

Stay safe in the cloud with Office 365 E5 plan

When data is in the cloud, organizations need a trusted partner to help defend against potential attacks. Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise E5 plan—with Advanced Threat Protection and Advanced Security Management—helps protect data and users from malware and detect anomalies, so IT can quickly respond to potential attacks. Advanced Threat Protection helps protect organizations from unknown malware and viruses. With Advanced Security Management, security administrators have access to the granular controls and policies they need to monitor access and reduce the possibility of attacks. | Resources: Video / Infographic | Related:  Improve compliance with Office 365 E5 plan

 

Announcing the general availability of the Microsoft Excel API to expand the power of Office 365

We are pleased to announce the general availability of the Microsoft Excel REST API for Office 365—now developers can use Excel to power custom apps. Excel is an indispensable productivity tool; users across all industries and roles embrace it. It is used for everything from simple task tracking and data management, to complex calculations and professional reporting. With our new interface, Excel for Office 365 can extend the value of your data, calculations, reporting and dashboards. The Excel REST API release is a continuation of our journey to make Office an open platform for developers. The Office developer framework uses modern web development standards, so developers can build smarter apps that operate as part of Office on mobile, web and desktop platforms. The new Excel interface is exposed through the Microsoft Graph to access to intelligence and insights from the Microsoft cloud.

 

Automate OneNote staff notebook creation and more with new API

We are excited to announce the launch of the new OneNote Staff Notebook API for Office 365! Since the launch of OneNote Staff Notebooks last year, the only way to create staff notebooks was through the OneNote Staff Notebook app. Thanks to all the feedback we’ve received from school leaders, teachers and IT admins, we made it possible to now create OneNote staff notebooks programmatically as well. What this means is that IT admins, Microsoft Education partners and others can automate the creation and updates of OneNote staff notebooks across a school or district. This allows for large time savings and efficiency for teachers, as well as school IT staff. Read the MSDN article on the OneNote Staff Notebook API for in-depth instructions.

 

NOTEWORTHY Video: Office 365 Updates for August 2016

Jim Naroski covers recent enhancements to Office 365, including the new Office 365 Network, Skype Meetings, email security and policy Tips as well as the SharePoint iOS App.

 

Help us test Exchange 2013/2016 to Exchange Online public folder migration

Right on the heels of our recent TAP program announcement, we wanted to see if there are customers who would like to help us validate migration of modern public folders from Exchange 2013/2016 to Exchange Online (EXO). This is a scenario that at this time we do not support, but plan on doing so. Estimated availability of bits for testing those topologies (subject to change): Exchange 2013 public folders > EXO: September 2016 and Exchange 2016 public folders > EXO: November 2016. We will review the details and see if we can on-board the organization into TAP/Beta program. We are looking for customers with <250GB of public folder data.