Office 365 Weekly Digest | Week of December 25 - 31, 2016

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Welcome to the December 25 - 31, 2016 edition of the O365 Weekly Digest. Message Center and blog activity was light due to the holidays, but there are tons of upcoming events to review and register for if you find something that piques your interest!  One highlight from the upcoming events is an opportunity to test drive Microsoft Teams. The Microsoft Flow Team released an update that now includes integration for three highly requested services. Information on the Microsoft Tech Summit events and public content round out this week's post. Happy New Year and best wishes for 2017!

MESSAGE CENTER

Note: The information below may not be posted to your Office 365 tenant as not all notifications apply to all tenants.

 

Updated Features: Outlook on the web

Posted: December 27, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Stay Informed | Action: Awareness | We’re updating several features for Outlook on the web. These features include: (1) Share calendar availability, (2) Sweep enhancements, (3) Up Next, (4) OneDrive sharing improvements and (5) OneDrive sharing tips. You’ll begin seeing these changes over the coming weeks. This message is associated with Office 365 Roadmap items: 51996, 54471, 51995, 61795, 61796. Your users will be able to take advantage of these feature enhancements in Outlook on the web. Familiarize yourself with these new features with more information available on the Office 365 Roadmap at https://fasttrack.microsoft.com/roadmap#I-51995.

 

Updated Feature: What's new in Office 365 admin center

Posted: December 27, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Stay Informed | Action: Awareness | In December, we continued our work to evolve the new Office 365 admin center to make it easier for you to manage your subscriptions and users. This month, we introduced the new OneDrive for Business admin center, created new settings to manage Microsoft Teams and GigJam, and added improvements to the new Service Health Dashboard. Log into the new admin center and try the new functionality. Provide feedback using the feedback button in the admin center. Learn more in the recent blog post at https://blogs.office.com/2016/12/22/whats-new-in-office-365-administration-december-update/.

 

UPCOMING EVENTS Azure Active Directory Webinars for January

When: Multiple sessions currently scheduled through January 19, 2017 | 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: Getting Ready for Azure AD, Streamlining Password Management, Securing Your Identities with Multi-Factor Authentication, Managing Enterprise Applications and Accessing Your Organization’s Internal Apps. Each 1-hour or 75-minute webinar 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 include an anonymous Q&A session with our Engineering Team. So come with your questions!  Capacity is limited. Sign up for one or all of the sessions today!

 

Modern Workplace: Visualize - The power of data storytelling

When: Tuesday, January 10, 2017 at 8:00am PT | According to a recent study conducted by Glassdoor, data scientists are the most in-demand job of 2016. But gathering the information is only half of your organization’s challenge—it’s what you do with it that counts. How can you be sure your data isn’t just telling you the story you want to hear, but showing you what you urgently need to know? Join us for the next episode of Modern Workplace,” Visualize: The power of data storytelling" and learn how to unlock the hidden potential within your data through visualization. Plus, get an exclusive demonstration of Microsoft intelligent tools, such as Power BI and PowerPoint Designer. Industry analyst at Altimeter Group, Susan Etlinger, shares how to strategize your data into actionable tips you can use today and provides insights into creating your organization’s most insightful data yet. Data visualization specialist for The Washington Post, Gabi Steele, explains how to communicate insights through design and data storytelling.

 

Online Customer Immersion Experience: Test Drive Microsoft Teams

When: Wednesday, January 11, 2017 and Wednesday, January 18, 2017 at 10:00am PT & 12:00pm PT | The way people work together is evolving, and unique projects, workstyles, functional roles and workforce diversity call for a complete set of collaboration tools. As the appetite for new ways of working together grows, new developments in communications, mobility, and cloud services are enabling professionals to communicate and collaborate in ways that were previously not possible. Join Microsoft to test drive Windows 10, Office 365 and get your hands-on our hottest new collaboration tool: Microsoft Teams. Each 90-minute session starts with an online business roundtable, discussing your biggest business challenges with a trained facilitator and then transitions into a live environment in the cloud.  You will receive 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. Space is limited: each is session is only open to 12 participants.  Reserve your seat now.

 

Skype Academy: What's new in Skype Operations Framework (SOF) - January 2017 edition

When: Tuesday, January 17, 2017 at 8:00am PT | Audience: CTOs, Architects, partner portfolio leads | Level: 200 | Customer Journey: Get Deployed, Cloud Migration | This session introduces you to the Skype Operations Framework (SOF) Operate Release, which covers what’s new in SOF since September 2016. This session covers updates to existing assets in the interim and new features that we have added to the SOF web site to make it easier to consume and use SOF.

 

Skype Academy: Managing a high quality and reliable service delivery

When: Wednesday, January 18, 2017 at 8:00am PT | Audience: Collaboration Lead / Architect, Service Owner, IT Admins | Level: 300 | Customer Journey: Get Deployed, Cloud Migration | This session helps you to find answers for “How do I run a Skype for Business Online deployment to deliver great experience to my end users and value to the business?”. What’s involved in user experience, what is delivered by Microsoft and where are you responsible? This session helps you to be prepared for ongoing operations and decide on an operations model.

 

Skype Academy: Roles and Responsibilities beyond Skype for Business operations

When: Thursday, January 19, 2017 at 8:00am PT | Audience: Collaboration Lead / Architect, Service Owner, IT Admins | Level: 300 | Customer Journey: Get Deployed, Cloud Migration | Which teams are involved in running a Skype for Business Online deployment, what tasks need to be performed? This session helps you to identify the operational roles and map them to teams delivering these operational roles/functions. This allows you to align for operations early and make sure that all teams are ready to engage as soon as the pilot starts.

 

FastTrack Webinars: Learn how to do more, together

When: Multiple sessions currently scheduled through January 26, 2017 | 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 The new Office.com gets first major update

Back in April, we started rolling out a new Office 365 home page experience that provided a redesigned environment for commercial, education and home users to collaborate and work across every device. The update also delivered improved access to recent files and folders and introduced a new platform for faster delivery of innovative features. We’re now rolling out new changes that will greatly increase the ease of navigating apps and improve access to frequent and recently opened documents. These changes started rolling out in December and will continue through early 2017.

 

Are you ready to host large-scale virtual presentations?

Large-scale virtual meetings have unique needs and considerations that your IT team should keep in mind to ensure you can deliver a high-quality virtual experience. Beyond selecting the right virtual meeting software, what does your IT department need to do to ensure successful large-scale virtual presentations? This post details three major considerations and highlights Skype Meeting Broadcast as a potential solution. | Additional Resource: Ultimate Meeting Guide (ebook)

 

Power BI Desktop – 2016 Year in Review

2016 has been quite the year for the Power BI Desktop. Over the course of our 11 releases this year, we’ve delivered over 190 features and improvements based on your feedback. For December, we are taking a break from our monthly releases to focus on quality. We’ll start the new year with another Desktop release. In this month's post, we’ll take a look back at the past year, recapping several of our favorite features, and taking a look at our big focus areas from this past year such as Analytics, Visual formatting, Slicers and filters, security, data connectivity and data preparation.

 

Microsoft Flow: Adding DocuSign, SurveyMonkey, and OneNote (Business) support

For our last update in 2016, we are adding support for three highly requested services. DocuSign is the most widely used eSignature and Digital Transaction Management platform in the world, and now, with Microsoft Flow integration, signing and getting documents signed can be even easier. SurveyMonkey is the world's leading provider of web-based survey solutions. SurveyMonkey is used by companies, organizations, and individuals to gather the insights they need to make more informed decisions. Microsoft Flow can be triggered in a number of different scenarios: such as when a new survey is created, or when someone adds a response to an existing survey. Finally, we are adding support for OneNote for notebooks that are hosted on Office 365 or OneDrive for Business. You can now to track new sections, create notes and more. | Additional Resource: Flow of the Week – DocuSign Streamlined Process

 

NOTEWORTHY Video: Threat Intelligence for Office 365

Format: Video (5 minutes) | Program Manager Phil Newman introduces Office 365 Threat Intelligence, which provides actionable intelligence to understand an organization’s risk profile, and respond to changing threat conditions.

 

Microsoft Tech Summit: Register for a city near you

Free, two-day technical training for IT professionals and developers with experts who build the cloud services across Microsoft Azure, Office 365, and Windows 10. Whether you know your way around the cloud or are just getting started, learn from over 70 technical training sessions and hands-on labs to help you build your cloud skills. Connect with Microsoft engineering experts from Redmond, technology partners and your industry peers who can help you get the most out of the cloud. Deep dive into the latest innovations covering a range of topics across Microsoft Azure and the hybrid platform including security, networking, data, storage, identity, mobile, cloud infrastructure, management, DevOps, app platform, productivity, collaboration and more.

 

All Office 365 Sessions at Tech Summit

Microsoft Tech Summit isn’t coming to a city near you, or you can’t make it on the scheduled dates if you’re nearby? This post on the Microsoft Tech Community includes a directory of all of the Office 365 sessions and provides links to each session and the associated content. You can click the link to see the session post, view the slide decks and ask questions. Sample sessions include: Powering IT Transformation with Office 365, Connect your company with Yammer – a vision and roadmap update, Discover Office 365 Groups – overview, what’s new and roadmap, Explore OneDrive for Business key features and roadmap, Keep your OneDrive and SharePoint content safe, What’s new in Office 365 management – usage reporting, change management and service health, and many more!