Office 365 Weekly Digest | June 18 - 24, 2017

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Welcome to the June 18 - 24, 2017 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest. Please see below for a reminder on a change regarding the inclusion of Message Center notification details in these weekly posts.

There are two Ask Microsoft Anything events scheduled - a "Top Secret" SharePoint AMA on June 28th and a Microsoft Stream AMA on June 29th. The last announced Microsoft Teams immersion sessions are scheduled for June 28th, one at 10am PT and the second at 12pm PT.

The biggest announcement from last week was the general availability of Microsoft Stream, an Enterprise Video service where people in your organization can upload, view, and share videos securely. The Microsoft Teams team continues to release new features, seemingly every week, and the latest is third-party file integration (Box, Dropbox, etc.), in addition to the Immersive classroom experience in Microsoft Teams rolling out to Office 365 for Education customers worldwide. Microsoft Forms is now rolling out in public preview to Office 365 Commercial customers, based on customer feedback. There are also posts detailing what's new to Office 365, Office 365 security and compliance and Microsoft Flow.

Wrapping up this week's post are noteworthy items related to Microsoft Planner, an upcoming change to SharePoint Online site collections that are connected to Office 365 Groups, and a number of new Office videos, just to name a few.

 

MESSAGE CENTER

As Office 365 increases the relevance of change communications to be more tenant-specific, a broad publication of this information becomes less useful and potentially inaccurate. Please be sure to check the Message Center in your Office 365 tenant for details on changes for awareness or that may require admin attention. Additional resources are included below:

Note: A Message Center weekly digest email is currently available for Office 365 admins set to First Release.

Also see: Send weekly Message Center email to Microsoft Teams

 

UPCOMING EVENTS Top Secret SharePoint: Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA)

When: Wednesday, June 28, 2017 at 9:00am PT | There aren’t many details to share since this is “TOP SECRET”. Join us on Wednesday, June 28th for a big SharePoint AMA. Topic: TBA soon. Details: ‘Create Site’.

 

Explore Microsoft Teams, Windows 10 and Office 365 in an interactive online session

When: Wednesday, June 28, 2017 at 10am PT & 12pm PT | Today’s fast-paced workplace requires you to transition between tasks seamlessly and find things quickly. As work and collaboration evolve to become more web-based and complex, changing professional styles call for tools that provide agility across the full span of a workday. Instead of wasting time searching for your most-used features and content, you need technology that allows you to transition from email to collaboration to project work and back again with ease. Microsoft is now offering hands-on live sessions where you’ll have the opportunity to test drive Windows 10, Office 365 and our hottest new collaboration tool: Microsoft Teams. During these small-group sessions, you’ll have the opportunity to apply these tools to your own business scenarios and see how they work for you. 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 technology, so you can experience first-hand how Microsoft tools can solve your challenges.

 

Microsoft Stream: Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA)

When: Thursday, June 29, 2017 at 9:00am PT | In conjunction with last week’s announcement that Microsoft Stream is now available worldwide, we are very excited to announce an upcoming opportunity to ‘Ask Microsoft Anything’ (AMA) about Microsoft Stream! The AMA will take place on Thursday, June 29, 2017 from 9am to 10am PST. An AMA is a live online event similar to a “YamJam” on Yammer or an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit. This AMA gives you the opportunity to connect with the Microsoft Stream product team. Add the event to your calendar and join us in the Microsoft Stream AMA space. We hope to see you there!

 

Azure Active Directory Webinars for July

When: Multiple sessions currently scheduled from July 11 – July 19, 2017 | Sessions include Azure AD Connect Health, Getting Ready for Azure AD, Securing Your Identities with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), Accessing Your Organization’s Internal Applications via Azure AD App Proxy and more. 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!  Note: There are also some sessions available on-demand.

 

BLOG ROUNDUP Microsoft Stream now available worldwide—new intelligent features take enterprise video to new heights

Video has become an increasingly important medium in both the consumer and business realms. In the workplace, video is a key way to share information, educate and train employees, drive engagement and build culture. Last year, we released a preview of Microsoft Stream, the intelligent enterprise video service that makes it easy for people inside any organization to securely upload, share, manage and view videos. We’re excited to announce that Microsoft Stream is now generally available as a standalone service and is rolling out to Office 365 Enterprise customers in 181 markets and 44 languages. We’re also announcing new intelligent features that take productivity and user engagement to new heights. | Microsoft Stream Blog | Office 365 Video will transition to Microsoft Stream

 

Microsoft Teams adds third party file integration

We’re pleased to announce new file storage options in Microsoft Teams, the chat-based workspace in Office 365. In addition to the OneDrive and SharePoint storage included in Teams, which gives every channel a SharePoint folder, users can now share and collaborate on files saved in 3rd party storage locations including Box, Citrix ShareFile, Dropbox, and Google Drive. The new storage options have started rolling out. Office 365 Admins can configure the individual storage providers in the Office 365 Admin Center. | Release Notes for Microsoft Teams

 

New to Office 365 in June—classroom experiences in Microsoft Teams

At the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Conference, Microsoft will showcase the latest ways we’re empowering the students of today to create the world of tomorrow. This month’s Office 365 updates are another step on this journey, with the broad availability of new classroom experiences in Microsoft Teams, security enhancements and more. Read on for the details. | Related: Immersive classroom experience in Microsoft Teams rolling out to Office 365 for Education customers worldwide

 

New in Office 365 security and compliance—June update

Recent updates for security and compliance include enhancements to threat protection visibility and controls, new features to streamline your compliance process using Office 365, announcing general availability of Supervision capabilities in Office 365 Advanced Data Governance, Windows Information Protection now supports Office desktop applications, and a SIEM (security information and event management) connector now available for Office 365 Advanced Security Management. Read on for more details about these updates.

 

Microsoft Forms Public Preview for Office 365 commercial customers

Following the launch of Microsoft Forms in Education last summer, we heard from businesses that they need an easy-to-use tool for creating surveys, quizzes and polls. We’re now rolling out the public preview of Microsoft Forms to our Office 365 commercial subscribers, so you can collect information from customers, employees and partners. The preview is currently rolling out to tenants whose entire organizations are signed up for First Release and will gradually be available to other tenants in a few months.

 

Microsoft Flow: View your sent approval requests, approvals on mobile, and Approvals and Teams from SharePoint

A little while ago, we launched our modern approvals experiences which enable you to quickly set up automated approval workflows and review those requests, as an approver, in the approvals center. We are proud to announce several new enhancements to further streamline your approval processes including viewing sent approval requests, approvals on your phone, new templates that allow you to request an approval, post to Teams, or add a task in Planner.

 

NOTEWORTHY New Office Videos!

There are several new videos posted to our Office Videos channel, with a focus on data governance and eDiscovery.

 

Microsoft Planner Year in Review and What's to Come

Happy Planner-versary! A year ago, we introduced Microsoft Planner, a simple, visual tool for organizing teamwork. Since then, we've added a variety of new capabilities to improve the Planner experience and help users get more done. As we look back, we would like to take a deeper dive into some of these announcements to review what we released and what's to come.

 

Managing user identities and secure access at Microsoft

Published: June 23, 2017 | At Microsoft, our hybrid environment requires a combination of tools and processes to manage identities and network access for all employees, suppliers, and partners. Microsoft IT uses features in the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security suite, Microsoft Azure Active Directory, and on-premises access and identity management solutions such as Windows Server Active Directory. Our people can work securely from any location.

 

Upcoming change: Updating default sharing setting for Office 365 Group connected SPO site collections

We would like to inform you of an upcoming change we are planning on making to the default value of the external sharing setting for Office 365 Group connected SPO site collections. Currently, the default sharing setting for these site collections is to allow sharing with external users already in your organization's directory. Since Office 365 Groups allow for guest members by default, we heard feedback from many customers that it was odd to allow for the addition of external guests as group members but not allow for external sharing of SharePoint resources. Based on your feedback, we are updating the external sharing setting to allow sharing with authenticated external users. Once updated in a tenant, all new group site collections will be created with the new default setting for external sharing. We will not retroactively change the setting for existing site collections.

 

Secure your telephony connections

IT security is a top priority at your organization, but now that you’ve moved your telephony to the cloud (or are considering the switch), how do you integrate it into your current network and security policies? Companies continue to make the transition to cloud telephony solutions, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. To ensure you and your IT team can successfully integrate and update your IT policies, here are several features and considerations to keep in mind with your new cloud telephony solution: (1) Security, (2) Internet support, and (3) New IT policies. Ensure that your new VoIP system, your internet bandwidth and your internal IT policies are ready to support all the features that are now available. Skype for Business Office 365 Cloud PBX provides what you need to successfully move away from your traditional PBX system, while also offering the full suite available in Office 365 and Skype for Business. Traditional phone functions such as making and receiving calls, transfers, hold/resume and conference calls are available from any internet-connected device. | Infographic: Why move voice to the cloud?