Office 365 Weekly Digest | Week of August 21 - 27, 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: Video based Screen Sharing enabled on Skype for Business for Office 365

Posted: August 22, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Stay Informed | Action: Awareness | Video based Screen Sharing is a new feature for Skype for Business in Office 365. This feature has begun rollout and is expected to complete by the end of October. With this new feature, you’ll see improvements in meeting set-up times, screen refresh rates, and session reliability when screen sharing in Skype for Business. There are some actions we strongly encourage to optimize for this new feature. Learn more at https://support.office.com/article/Video-based-screen-sharing-in-Skype-for-Business-071affc5-5482-4be1-930e-744fad71b73d.

 

Visio Online Preview for First Release

Posted: August 22, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Stay Informed | Action: Awareness | Visio Online Preview is a new Office 365 feature and will be rolling out to First Release customers at the end of August, completing by the end of September. Visio Online Preview offers access to Visio diagrams in a web browser. Users will be able to easily share their processes, floor plans, organizational structure and more with anyone across the organization. For IWs who do not have Visio client installed, they can also view the diagrams in full fidelity from nearly anywhere. Please visit https://support.office.com/article/e6647040-2fca-42ec-9fa5-d16a4e39e0ee for additional information.

 

New Feature: Focused Inbox

Posted: August 24, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Stay Informed | Action: Awareness | Focused Inbox is a new feature coming to Office 365. Focused Inbox helps you take control of your inbox and focus on the emails that matter most. This is coming to all versions of Outlook to give you one consistent view of the important items in your inbox. We'll be gradually rolling this out to First Release customers in September, and to the rest of the world in October. We will communicate, again, when we begin the roll-out of Focused Inbox. Focused Inbox is a refinement and improvement of a previous feature called Clutter. As Focused Inbox rolls out, we’ll stop moving messages to the Clutter folder. You will have mailbox and tenant level control of the feature to stage the rollout in a manner that works best for your organization. Update your user training, and notify your helpdesk, as needed. More details are available at https://blogs.office.com/2016/07/26/outlook-helps-you-focus-on-what-matters-to-you.

 

UPCOMING EVENTS Azure Active Directory Webinars for September

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: September 7th & 14th, 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.

 

FastTrack Webinars: Learn how to do more, together

When: Multiple sessions currently scheduled through September 28, 2016 | 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 Productivity and inclusion—Office 365 accessibility update

Over the past year, hundreds of engineers from the Office 365 team have been working hard to make progress towards the plans outlined in our 2016 accessibility roadmap. Key enhancements releasing this quarter bring us closer to two goals: (1) People with disabilities can communicate, consume and create content on any device and (2) Everyone can easily create content that is accessible for all people. As we make Office 365 accessible by design and make it easy for everyone to create accessible content, we hope that people of all abilities will feel empowered to achieve more with our productivity technologies, have equal access to digital information and have fulfilling interactions with each other. This post outlines some of the key accessibility improvements releasing this quarter...

 

Important notice for Office 365 email customers who have configured connectors

If you’re an Exchange Online or Exchange Online Protection (EOP) subscriber and you have configured connectors, this post contains important information that might impact your organization. To make sure that your mail flow isn’t interrupted, we strongly recommend that you read this post and take any necessary action at your earliest convenience. This post details the scenarios for which a change on February 1, 2017 will no longer, by default, support the relaying of messages.

 

Microsoft IT Showcase: Migrating on-premises SharePoint sites to the cloud

Format: Video (21 minutes, 46 seconds) | TechNet Radio host Yung Chou welcomes David Johnson, Senior Program Manager, to discuss how Microsoft IT migrated more than 185,000 on-premises internal SharePoint sites and portals to the cloud. Learn how Microsoft IT approached its move to the cloud as David shares best practices, tips and tricks, and lessons learned that you can take to your own IT environment.

 

Microsoft IT Showcase: Cloud at Microsoft (SME roundtable - June 2016)

Format: Video (58 minutes, 37 seconds) | IT Showcase brought together subject matter experts from our Cloud at Microsoft course to answer questions about how Microsoft IT designs, develops, implements, monitors, and supports cloud solutions at Microsoft. In this session, they discuss evaluating applications for PaaS or SaaS, monitoring your cloud infrastructure, migrating to Office 365, and using SharePoint Online compliance and records management—and lots more!

 

NOTEWORTHY Office 365 Network Shutdown on Yammer - Extended by 2 weeks! + Roadmap Update

Thank you for all of your feedback on the Office 365 Network. We are on track to release the new community on the evening of September 1st. We are excited to be welcoming communities representing Azure, Windows Server and SQL Server to our new community and you will be able to join them on September 1st. As such, we will be re-branding the Office 365 Network and this calls for a URL change. There will be redirects in place on network.office.com to the new URL and to ease the transition to our existing community to the new destination, we are extending the shutdown of the network by two weeks - the Office 365 Network will shut down on September 15th. We will share the new name and URL before September 1st PST.

 

Help with Office 365 advanced security capabilities and EMS integration at Ignite 2016

Do you have Office 365 E5 and/or Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) suite and need help to fully implement your plans? Are you going to Ignite 2016? Nominate your organization for a customer solution session! The Office 365 content team—together with subject-matter experts—is hosting individual customer solution sessions at Ignite in Atlanta, September 26-30. These sessions are designed to help IT teams plan and implement advanced capabilities with Office 365 and Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) suite. Each session is 60 minutes. If you are selected, you will meet with one or more product experts (Microsoft product team members, consultants or MVPs) and one or more Office 365 content team members to discuss your goals, get advice on current challenges and envision how to enhance your solution using Office 365 and EMS. This year, we’re offering sessions in two main focus areas: enterprise security and mobility.  Note: Due to a limited number of available sessions for each focus area, not every customer will be accepted. We will review nominations and select those that best fit the focus area, and that look like they will lead to a meaningful discussion for both the organization and Microsoft.