Office 365 Weekly Digest | December 9 – 15, 2018
Welcome to the December 9 - 15, 2018 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.
Seven features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, with three for Outlook (on web, Android and iOS) as well as a couple for SharePoint Online related to list and library web parts. Also of note is the consolidation of Microsoft 365 Security Center and Compliance Center into a centralized security and compliance workspace.
As expected, the week of December 17th wraps up the events for 2018, all related to Microsoft Teams.
Blog posts in last week's roundup include the availability of the new Teams Toolkit for accelerating your Teams adoption journey, SharePoint page management and approvals, more insights from Skype for Business in MyAnalytics, and a Forrester study regarding firstline workers and how Microsoft Teams is tailored for this group.
Noteworthy item highlights include the OneDrive Message Center recap for the first half of December, the Office 365 Update video for December 2018, documentation on governance for Office 365 Groups, a Microsoft IT Showcase on modern collaboration with Microsoft Teams, and updates to the Azure AD Terms of Use functionality within conditional access.
OFFICE 365 ROADMAP
Below are the items added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week…
| Feature ID | App / Service |
Title | Description | Status |
Added |
Estimated Release |
More Info |
| 44211 | Outlook Web |
Outlook on the web - new Tasks pane | We are adding an easier way to add and manage your tasks in Outlook on the web. You will be able to access a Tasks pane right in your Mail or Calendar, and you can drag and drop emails in it to create a task, manage your tasks in it, or open it in Calendar and drag and drop a task to your Calendar to create an event. | Rolling out |
12/12/2018 |
December CY2018 |
n /a |
| 44717 | SharePoint |
Additional list types supported in list view web part | List View Web Part now supports list templates (announcement list, promoted links, contacts, and issue tracking) | Rolling out |
12/12/2018 |
December CY2018 |
n /a |
| 44718 | SharePoint |
Client-side extensions for list and library web parts | The list and library web parts will soon support client-side extensions, such as custom field rendering and custom actions. | Rolling out |
12/12/2018 |
December CY2018 |
n /a |
| 32955 | Outlook iOS |
Outlook for iOS: Add Teams Meeting option to calendar events | Add Teams Meeting details when scheduling a New Event in Outlook for iOS Calendar. | In development |
12/13/2018 |
Q2 CY2019 |
n /a |
| 32956 | Outlook Android |
Outlook for Android: Add Teams Meeting option to calendar events | Add Teams Meeting details when scheduling a New Event in Outlook for Android Calendar. | In development |
12/13/2018 |
Q2 CY2019 |
n /a |
| 44767 | Security Compliance |
Microsoft 365 Security Center & Microsoft 365 Compliance Center | Microsoft 365 Security Center (security.microsoft.com) and Compliance Center (compliance.microsoft.com) will become your centralized security and compliance workspaces, which give you coherent experience across all the Microsoft applications. The centers also provide you with unified intelligence and simplified ways to manage your security and compliance posture. | In development |
12/15/2018 |
Q2 CY2019 |
n /a |
| 44803 | Information Protection |
Azure Information Protection analytics | Gain insights into your classified, labeled and protected data across your environment, including the volume of labeled and protected documents & emails over time, distribution of files by label type and where labels were applied. | In development |
12/15/2018 |
Q2 CY2019 |
n /a |
UPCOMING EVENTS
When: Tuesday, December 18, 2018 from 10am – 11am PT | Whether you're managing a new project or starting your own business, it helps to have a team behind you to brainstorm ideas, tackle the work together, and have some fun along the way. Now you can use Microsoft Teams to do just that. Join our team LIVE every Tuesday from 10-11am PDT to learn how you can get started with the free version of Teams. In this hour, we'll walk you through the product and key features, share best practices for getting started, and answer any questions you may have. We look forward to meeting you!
Getting Started with Microsoft Teams
When: Tuesday, December 18, 2018 at 10am PT | This 60-minute session introduces you to the key activities needed to get started with Microsoft Teams today. From setting your profile, to running a meeting, users will leave this session with the foundation needed to use Teams with confidence. Check here for sessions in different time zones and other dates.
Upgrade 101: Understanding your upgrade from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams
When: Wednesday, December 18, 2018 at 1pm PT | Looking to better understand the upgrade journey from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams? Join us for this 60-minute session to get familiar with our upgrade paths (Upgrade Basic and Upgrade Pro), our resources, and a walkthrough of our upgrade success framework to help you navigate through your journey. Check here for sessions in different time zones and other dates.
Make the switch from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams: End User Guidance
When: Thursday, January 10, 2018 at 10am PT | Designed specifically for Skype for Business end users, this course offers everything you need to help make the transition to Microsoft Teams. We'll focus on the core communication capabilities you use today, chat and meetings, as well as provide an orientation to additional collaboration functionality Teams has to offer. Check here for sessions in different time zones and other dates.
Modern Workplace Transformation Healthcare & Life Sciences Virtual Conference
When: Monday, January 7, 2019 – Friday, January 11, 2019 at 9am – 10:30am PT daily | Today's Healthcare & Life Science (HLS) organizations face a myriad of challenges from security threats, inefficiencies in communications/collaboration, and increased competition. Ultimately HLS orgs are seeking to leverage technology to improve diagnostics, patient outcomes, and more. Learn how to digitally transform your HLS organization by attending our Modern Workplace Transformation (MWT) Virtual Conference the week of January 7th, 2019. See how the Microsoft Modern Workplace platform securely enables employee engagement and collaboration across locations and devices. The Microsoft team welcomes you to an opportunity to explore beyond Envision and Ignite. We've lined up some top topics from these events, along with the speakers from Microsoft Corporate, to deliver a series of rich interactive session. This event will include Microsoft's latest innovations for Intelligent Communications, Security, and Modern Collaboration solutions. We have a separate session and focus each day starting at 12 noon eastern and lasting for 90 minutes. Please review the sessions and use the provided links to meeting invites to add to your calendar.
BLOG ROUNDUP
Accelerate your Microsoft Teams adoption journey with our Teams Toolkit
We are on a mission to simplify and accelerate the adoption of Microsoft Teams and other productivity services because we know the value this can provide to your business. Telling this story in a way that is easy to understand and utilizes all our resources is an important step forward to empower all decision makers, IT Pro's and Champions around the world. We are happy to announce the launch of our Teams Toolkit. This online, mobile friendly, visual asset pulls together many of the resources you will find in depth at our Teams Adoption Hub on SuccessWithTeams.com and around the Microsoft ecosystem. Use this guide to understand business outcomes, best practices and real world use cases for Microsoft Teams and teamwork scenarios. You will also find downloadable assets to onboard your Helpdesk, understand the core scenarios for teams like meetings and collaboration and our Day in the Life training one-sheets. | Related: Getting the best audio and video experiences in Teams with devices
Learn more about what's new in Stream, Live events, & roadmap - 2018 Microsoft Ignite sessions
If you weren't able to make it to Microsoft Ignite 2018 and see the Microsoft Stream session or if you just want a recap, we are posting it here so you can watch the entire thing or jump to watch the sections of the recording that have the answers you need about Stream. Since it's a recording you get the added bonus of being able to watch it at 1.5-2x speed to save time (if you can keep up with our already fast talking)! Many of the questions you might have about Stream are covered in more detail in the following sections, just jump to the parts you are interested in. The slides for the session are also available for download via the link in the post.
PowerApps weekly release summaries are live! Tune in for new features and bug fixes!
While you have been building stunning applications on PowerApps, you've requested a way to view the latest enhancements and new features that our team is releasing each week. We are launching PowerApps Weekly Release Notes. This will give you visibility into the latest features and optimizations that we're shipping on a weekly basis. Over the past few months we've listened to your needs and are formally launching Release Notes that will provide you the following information: (1) Preview Vs Worldwide region availability, (2) Versions for each region, (3) Item classification, (4) Region specific deployments, and (5) Functional segregation of items.
Announcing SharePoint page management and approvals
We are happy to announce the release of page management and approvals, as we disclosed at Ignite 2018. SharePoint page authoring makes it simple to craft beautiful immersive experiences that integrate applications, data, text, media and more. Pages are also essential for team news, which let you share impactful updates with an automated distribution engine that reaches portals, mobile, email, Microsoft Teams and more. News pages can be highly visible, since they are automatically aggregated in hub sites, mobile apps and the SharePoint home page. Some organizations want to standardize page templates and layouts, and institute a review process to assure that all updates are approved. Now you can setup approval processes, based on Microsoft Flow, to ensure page review if required. Inside the pages library, you can use the Flow pulldown menu option to create an approval process with just a few mouse clicks. | Related: It's time for reminders in SharePoint
New! More insights from Skype for Business now in MyAnalytics
We're excited to introduce you to even more insights from Skype for Business Online. In July we announced the first set of insights about how you use Skype for Business Online. Now you'll see even more insights about how much time you spent in chats and calls with each person you work with, both inside and outside the company. As always, these insights are available only to the end user—no manager or IT admin has access to your personal and private insights. We're also saying goodbye to the "Company average" metric in the MyAnalytics personal dashboard. The "Company average" metric was meant to help you understand how you compare to others you work with. However, we've consistently heard from users that the benchmark is too broad. Roles included in the benchmark range from an operations manager in a corporate office with heavy collaboration, to a line manager in a fulfillment center with light collaboration. The metric will be removed from the personal dashboard over the course of the next month as we work towards developing more relevant benchmarks.
New research highlights massive opportunity to empower Firstline Workers with technology
As companies around the world digitally transform their business models, operations, and corporate cultures, many have rolled out cloud and mobile technologies that have also transformed the employee experience. For information workers, technology has created a more networked and open flow of information, made collaboration easier, and provided more flexibility in where, when, and how they work. But there's another large and important segment of the workforce that has been underserved by technology to date. These are the more than two billion Firstline Workers worldwide, who work in roles that make them the first point of contact between a company and its customers or products. Firstline Workers comprise the majority of the global workforce and play a critical role in the global economy. At Microsoft, we believe it should be a top priority of company leaders to empower employees in all roles to do their best work, and that a digitally enabled workforce represents a true competitive advantage. As a result, we recently commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a study on the potential impact of providing Firstline Workers with technology. The study offers strong evidence that by empowering Firstline Workers with modern tools, businesses can improve the customer and employee experience, enhance workforce productivity, and improve the bottom line. The study uncovers several areas of opportunity for companies considering how technology can transform the way their Firstline Workforce operates, including the specific types of technology that are likely to have the most impact. At Microsoft, we have always believed in people's ability to adapt and innovate. As part of our mission to empower people and organizations to achieve more, we also believe in the power of technology to amplify what humans can do. That's why we are building new capabilities in Microsoft Teams that are tailored to helping Firstline Workers manage their workday, access information to do their job more effectively, and easily share insights and communicate with others.
NOTEWORTHY
Video: Office 365 Update for December 2018
Format: Video (9 minutes) | Jim Naroski covers recent enhancements to Office 365, including Editor and Forms in PowerPoint, Word to-dos, Tasks in Outlook on the web, Power BI reporting, Office Customization Tool, and more. The video transcript, complete with links to additional information on everything covered, is available at https://aka.ms/o365update-blog.
OneDrive Message Center Update: December 1 - 15, 2018
We're rolling out the following features in December 2018 new integration with Microsoft Flow and improved support for UPN changes in the OneDrive sync client. We also have an update on the new Manage Access experience, which has been delayed until January 2019.
Plan for governance in Office 365 Groups
Updated: December 11, 2018 | Office 365 Groups has a rich set of tools to implement any governance capabilities your organization might require. This article guides IT Pros to ask the right questions to determine their requirements for governance and how to meet them based on their organizational profile.
Format: Video (79 mins) | Experts at Microsoft Core Services Engineering and Operations (CSEO) answer audience questions about our strategy for modern collaboration at Microsoft. They share candid insights and best practices on how we manage, drive adoption of, and support services for Microsoft Teams and supporting technologies.
Introducing the Exchange Online Fiddler Extension
We spend plenty of time troubleshooting Outlook when a customer has difficulties connecting to their Office 365 mailbox. We troubleshoot other connectivity issues too of course, and we continually use tools such as The Support and Recovery Assistant (SARA), Outlook ETL files (which can only be viewed by Microsoft support), and Fiddler traces to see the conversation between the Outlook client and the service – whether that's Exchange Online, some other Office 365 service, or an Authentication or Federation provider. Since we spent so much time working with Fiddler, we wanted to put together an extension which brings our knowledge of the issues we see on a daily basis directly into Fiddler to assist with troubleshooting Outlook and Exchange Online. Whether you are in contact with Microsoft support or otherwise, we're putting it out there so you can use it too!
Updates to Azure AD Terms of Use functionality within conditional access
We are excited to announce the release of two new features for Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) Terms of Use that provide more granular reports and flexibility with Terms of Use scheduling. Previously, users only had to consent to a Terms of Use once. Based on feedback from our customers, you now have the option to require each user to consent on each device. We also added support to expire consents on a regular schedule. We're also pleased to introduce new Terms of Use scenarios for B2B guests, Azure Information Protection, and Microsoft Intune. These features are now in public preview for Azure AD Premium customers. Read on for details on both our new features and these scenarios.