Office 365 Weekly Digest | July 15 – 21, 2018
Welcome to the July 15 - 21, 2018 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.
There were only a few additions to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including Customer Key for GCC, GCC High and DoD environments, improved subsite creation in SharePoint Online, and a new Project Home page.
New events include three Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) sessions - Office 365 Message Encryption, SharePoint + OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams.
General availability of Microsoft 365 usage in Power BI is the spotlight post from last week. Additional blog posts cover new features in Workplace Analytics, and a new way to license on-premises Exchange hybrid servers.
Wrapping up the post are noteworthy items on the latest Message Center notifications for OneDrive, a couple of Microsoft IT Showcase videos, and the public preview of Azure Active Directory Password Protection and Smart Lockout.
OFFICE 365 ROADMAP
Below are the items added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week:
Feature ID |
Title | Description | Status |
Added |
Estimated Release |
More Info |
31249 |
Customer Key for GCC, GCC High and DoD | Customer Key is a feature that allows you to provision and manage the keys used to encrypt data at rest in Office 365. Customer Key is now available for Exchange Online in Office 365 Government Community Cloud instances: GCC, GCC High and DoD. | Launched |
07/16/2018 |
Q2 CY2018 |
n / a |
32588 |
SharePoint: Improved subsite creation settings | In the past, subsite creation settings were enabled for all SharePoint Online templates and could be disabled for Office 365 Group-connected team sites. These settings only appear in the menus display on site contents page. With this change, we've extended these settings to apply only to "classic" site templates and we are enabling the option for you to disable them for all site templates. If you have elected to hide the subsite menu command for Office 365 Group-connected team sites, the setting title will change to "Show the subsite command only for classic sites" and when selected, will hide the option for all modern site templates. | In development |
07/19/2018 |
July CY2018 |
What's new for your intranet in Office 365 |
32460 |
Project Home | When a user clicks on the Project icon from the application launcher or from Office.com they will be taken to the new Project Home. The Project Home will provide users the ability to access all their recently accessed projects, favorite projects to get back to them quickly and to create new projects all in a single place. They will also be able to navigate to the default Project Web App by clicking the link at the bottom of the page, which will take them to where the Project icon previously took them. | In development |
07/19/2018 |
August CY2018 |
n / a |
UPCOMING EVENTS
When: On-demand, registration required | Microsoft is updating the publishing of Office 365 network endpoints and has new guidance about optimizing network connectivity for end users to achieve optimal performance. In this talk we will describe the new network principles and guidance and share how the updated endpoint publishing makes end user performance easier to achieve. We will outline the timeline and transition from the current manually published data to the new system and how customers can take advantage of this. | Resource: Office 365 endpoint categories and Office 365 IP Address and URL web service
Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Office 365 Message Encryption
When: Wednesday, August 1, 2018 from 9am PT | We are very excited to announce an upcoming opportunity to 'Ask Microsoft Anything' (AMA) about Office 365 Message Encryption! An AMA is a live online event similar to a "YamJam" on Yammer or an "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit. The AMA will take place on August 1, 2018 at 9am PT. In the past few months we've seen great momentum with customers using Office 365 Message Encryption to protect and control their sensitive emails – and we continue to invest in more capabilities that are aimed to make it more simple to encrypt and rights protect your sensitive emails, which you can find here in the Office 365 Roadmap. As we continue to innovate in this space, come and talk to us about your wish list for OME – what you would like to see why. Or just come engage with us! Bring your burning questions and get them answered by our product experts. There is no bad question so bring them all! Join in the Office 365 Encryption AMA space, or add it to your calendar. We look forward to seeing you there!
Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): SharePoint + OneDrive - Shipping SPC18 into Production
When: Thursday, August 2, 2018 from 9am PT | Announcing the SharePoint + OneDrive "Shipping SPC18 into Production" Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA)! An AMA is a live online event similar to a "YamJam" on Yammer or an "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit. Join the SharePoint and OneDrive teams on the Microsoft Tech Community! OneDrive and SharePoint community leads – Stephen Rose, Bill Baer, Mark Kashman and others – will be primed and ready to answer all your questions – don't be shy. The AMA will begin on Thursday, August 2nd at 9am PT. Join in the SharePoint + OneDrive space, or add it your calendar. We look forward to seeing you there!
Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Microsoft Teams
When: Thursday, August 9, 2018 from 9am PT | We are very excited to announce a Microsoft Teams 'Ask Microsoft Anything' (AMA) for Microsoft Teams! An AMA is a live online event similar to a "YamJam" on Yammer or an "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit. The AMA will take place on Thursday, August 9th, 2018 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. PT. This AMA gives you the opportunity to connect with members of the product engineering team who will be on hand to answer your questions and listen to feedback. Join in the Microsoft Teams AMA Group, or add it to your calendar. We look forward to seeing you there!
Productivity Hacks to Save Time & Simplify Workflows
When: Wednesday, August 22, 2018 at 12pm ET and 3pm ET | This 90-minute hands-on experience will give you the opportunity to test drive Windows 10, Office 365 and Dynamics 365. A trained facilitator will guide you as you apply these tools to your own business scenarios and see how they work for you. During this interactive session, you will: (1) Discover how you can keep your information more secure without inhibiting your workflow, (2) Learn how to visualize and analyze complex data, quickly zeroing in on the insights you need, (3) See how multiple team members can access, edit and review documents simultaneously, and (4) Gain skills that will save you time and simplify your workflow immediately. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.
BLOG ROUNDUP
Realize the full value of your IT investment with Microsoft 365 usage analytics in Power BI
You've deployed the latest and greatest in tools for collaboration and creativity. Now what? Are people using them? How? Microsoft 365 usage analytics illustrate adoption patterns to help you empower your business and realize the full value of your IT investment. We're excited to announce the general availability of Microsoft 365 usage analytics in Power BI, with new data and reports for Microsoft Teams. You can get started with usage analytics in Power BI right away, or read on for more details. We first announced the public preview of usage analytics in Power BI last year, and we've received a tremendous response from admins. Usage analytics in Power BI is now generally available and ready for you to start unlocking insights. In addition, new data and reports for Teams and Groups are included in this latest release.
New Workplace Analytics Feature Releases - July 2018
The Microsoft Workplace Analytics team is excited to announce our feature updates for July 2018. In this update, you'll learn about new feature releases, including: (1) Meeting-organizer attributes available in query output, and (2) Redesign of the chart settings panel to make it easier to use.
Project, Project Online and Planner Accessibility
The Project and Planner engineering teams have been hard at work improving the accessibility of our products. A set of documents is now live that walks through some of the screen reading functionality that has been added to help users relying on Narrator or Jaws to navigate Project and Planner – as well as other accessibility features. Landing pages for Project Web App in Project Online, the Project desktop client and Microsoft Planner are now available. All the articles also include links to both the Microsoft Disability Answer Desk and for our government, commercial and enterprise customers the enterprise Disability Answer Desk – where links to all Microsoft's accessibility resources can be found.
Hybrid Configuration Wizard and licensing of your on-premises server used for hybrid
A few years ago, we created a web site that would allow our hybrid customers to obtain what's generally known as the "hybrid key". This self-service site would validate your O365 tenant and after a few clicks, give you the key to license your on-premises server used for hybrid purposes. This site is no longer available for use, and we've come up with a better way for you to get the key. We are excited to inform you we are now working on a feature that will allow the Hybrid Configuration Wizard (HCW) to detect and license your designated on-premises "hybrid server", without having to go to a separate web site or call our support team. When you choose the "Detect the optimal Exchange server" option, HCW will perform the license check on the server and give you a new "license this server now" option, if the server is currently not licensed. Note: HCW will not let you continue from this point on if this server is not licensed unless you specify an alternate Exchange server to run Hybrid against. We expect this change to be live in HCW by August 7, 2018.
NOTEWORTHY
OneDrive Message Center Updates for July 1 - 15, 2018
This post is a recap of OneDrive Message Center posts from the past two weeks. We are excited to announce three new updates coming to the OneDrive desktop client in July 2018. These features will help users feel more in control, empowered to provide feedback, and better educated about what's happening with their files. The post for July 1 - 15, 2018 includes information on the following features: (1) Pause OneDrive sync when Battery Saver is on, (2) Send Feedback, and (3) Updated Activity Center.
Microsoft 365 Live Events Use Cases - Michael on the Go
Format: Video (8 mins) | In this episode of Michael on the Go, Microsoft's Michael Gannotti discusses three separate use cases around the newly announced Live Events for Office 365. Use cases discussed include Corporate Communications, Training, and Employee Engagement. Additionally, Michael discusses extending Live Events usage with custom pages and more.
Microsoft IT Showcase: Launching Microsoft Teams to the company - How we got ready (Expert Q&A)
Format: Video (46 mins) | Published: July 20, 2018 | In our recent IT Showcase webinar, Launching Microsoft Teams to the company: How we got ready, we talked about our overall strategy for delivering business impact by using collaboration and Teams' capabilities, and addressed questions we considered as we planned for integrating Teams in our existing environment. The audience was great, and we received many questions throughout the presentation. During this webinar, we address some of the common themes we heard you ask about and provide resources where you can learn more about Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft IT Showcase: IT Expert Roundtable - Information protection at Microsoft (June 2018)
Format: Video (57 mins) | Published: July 25, 2018 | Microsoft security experts answer questions about how we protect information at Microsoft. We developed and implemented a data classification schema that consists of five labels to help protect data and documents. They describe how we use the labels, our efforts to educate people about classifying data and preventing data loss, and tools for automating information protection.
Azure AD Password Protection and Smart Lockout are now in Public Preview!
We're really excited to announce the public preview of Azure AD Password Protection and Smart Lockout. Azure AD Password Protection helps you eliminate easily guessed passwords from your environment, which can dramatically lower the risk of being compromised by a password spray attack. Smart Lockout is our lockout system that uses cloud intelligence to lock out bad actors who are trying to guess your users' passwords. That intelligence can recognize sign-ins coming from valid users and treats those differently than ones that attackers and other unknown sources. This means smart lockout can lock out the attackers while letting your users continue to access their accounts and be productive.