Office 365 Weekly Digest | September 30 – October 6, 2018
Welcome to the September 30 – October 6, 2018 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.
Eleven features were added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, so not quite the influx I expected following Ignite 2018. Nearly half of those are SharePoint-related, with the remaining across other services such as Teams, Forms, and Project. There were also 4 features cancelled - all for StaffHub due to the recent retirement announcement and moving its capabilities to Microsoft Teams.
Be sure to catch Teams Tuesday this week, as well as the first week of the October Azure Active Directory webinars.
Much of the content from last week was focused on recapping announcements from Ignite 2018, including the new Microsoft 365 Admin Center, SharePoint and OneDrive security, compliance and administration enhancements, conditional access in Outlook on the web for Exchange Online, and additional updates for Microsoft Forms.
Items of note from last week include the OneDrive Message Center recap for the second half of September, HITRUST CSF Certification for Office 365, Ignite 2018 security highlights, and a "Best of" list of Microsoft Mechanics Live videos from Ignite 2018.
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 |
| 34169 | Project |
New service plan for Project | Per our announcement during Ignite, we will roll out a new service plan that will include the following services as they become available: Project P3, Flow for Project and CDS for Project. | In development |
10/02/2018 |
November CY2018 |
n / a |
| 33987 | Project |
Project Online Desktop Client for GCC High / DoD | Project Online Desktop Client will now be available for GCC High / DoD customers to use along with their Project Online subscription. | In development |
10/02/2018 |
October CY2018 |
n / a |
| 30548 | SharePoint Teams |
SharePoint and Microsoft Teams: new Files experience | Manage files in Microsoft Teams with the full power of SharePoint. With the new Files experience, you will be able to add and manage custom columns, sort and filter files with custom views, trigger workflows, and sync files to your PC or Mac. Available this summer. | In development |
10/05/2018 |
November CY2018 |
New innovations in SharePoint & Microsoft 365 deliver power and simplicity for content collaboration |
| 33001 | Forms |
Forms GA for GCC, GCC High and DoD | Forms is currently available for EDU and Commercial. Now, it is going to the rest of government customers. | In development |
10/05/2018 |
November CY2018 |
n / a |
| 34252 | Security Compliance |
Office 365 Data Loss Prevention UI to create custom sensitive information types | Office 365 DLP will support the ability to create custom sensitive information types within the Security & Compliance Center UI. Previously this could only be configured via a XML file. | In development |
10/05/2018 |
October CY2018 |
n / a |
| 34267 | Flow SharePoint |
Flow for SharePoint reminders | Use Flow to automatically monitor date-tagged documents or items in SharePoint and receive a reminder alert 'x' days in advance of each item's date. | Rolling out |
10/05/2018 |
October CY2018 |
n / a |
| 34246 | Teams |
Office 365 Data Loss Prevention supports ability to block messages in Microsoft Teams chat | Office 365 Data Loss Prevention will be able to block Microsoft Teams chat messages after detecting the presence of sensitive information | In development |
10/05/2018 |
Q1 CY2019 |
n / a |
| 34247 | OneDrive SharePoint |
Office 365 Data Loss Prevention treats files as sensitive by default until fully scanned | Office 365 Data Loss Prevention will be able to treat files in SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business as sensitive (by default) and therefore block external access until the file has been fully scanned for sensitive information. | In development |
10/05/2018 |
Q1 CY2019 |
n / a |
| 34250 | SharePoint |
SharePoint sites: central asset library | Provide easy access to your organization's approved images that can be leveraged by everyone. When a person needs an approved image, or one that was purchased for licensed use throughout the intranet, they can click on "Your organization" and navigate files and folders of assets that are centrally managed for use in title regions and the Image webpart. | In development |
10/05/2018 |
Q2 CY2019 |
Build your modern intranet with SharePoint in Office 365 |
| 34251 | SharePoint |
SharePoint sites: audience targeting in site navigation | Increase the value and engagement of your site navigation by filtering the items within the navigation menu based on people and groups. This applied to communication sites and hub sites in Office 365. | In development |
10/05/2018 |
Q2 CY2019 |
Build your modern intranet with SharePoint in Office 365 |
| 30617 | Outlook web |
Outlook on the web - conditional access | Office 365 admins can now set policies that block users from downloading files from Outlook on the web to non-compliant devices. | Rolling out |
10/05/2018 |
Q3 CY2018 |
n / a |
| 20713 | StaffHub |
Communicate across platforms with Teams Interop | Effective October 1, 2019, Microsoft StaffHub will be retired. We're bringing StaffHub capabilities into Microsoft Teams. New capabilities and features for firstline workers will roll out to Microsoft Teams over time. | Cancelled |
10/05/2018 |
n / a |
Microsoft StaffHub to be retired |
| 21060 | StaffHub |
StaffHub: Yammer Integration | Effective October 1, 2019, Microsoft StaffHub will be retired. We're bringing StaffHub capabilities into Microsoft Teams. New capabilities and features for firstline workers will roll out to Microsoft Teams over time. | Cancelled |
10/05/2018 |
n / a |
Microsoft StaffHub to be retired |
| 21061 | StaffHub |
StaffHub: Distributed Content Based on Role and Shift | Effective October 1, 2019, Microsoft StaffHub will be retired. We're bringing StaffHub capabilities into Microsoft Teams. New capabilities and features for firstline workers will roll out to Microsoft Teams over time. | Cancelled |
10/05/2018 |
n / a |
Microsoft StaffHub to be retired |
| 23940 | StaffHub |
StaffHub: IT Admin Portal Reporting and Capabilities | Effective October 1, 2019, Microsoft StaffHub will be retired. We're bringing StaffHub capabilities into Microsoft Teams. New capabilities and features for firstline workers will roll out to Microsoft Teams over time. | Cancelled |
10/05/2018 |
n / a |
Microsoft StaffHub to be retired |
UPCOMING EVENTS
When: Tuesdays, August 21, 2018 – October 30, 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!
Choosing the Right Authentication Method for Azure AD
When: Tuesday, October 9, 2018 at 10am ET | In this webinar we will talk about the various authentication methods available in Azure AD – Cloud / Password Hash Sync / Pass-through Authentication / AD FS. We will outline why choosing the right authentication method for your business is critical as you begin your journey to the cloud. We will explain how these authentication methods work. And we will compare & contrast them with regards to deployment costs, end user experience, advanced capabilities, and business continuity.
Choosing the Right Authentication Method for Azure AD
When: Tuesday, October 9, 2018 at 2pm ET | In this webinar we will talk about the various authentication methods available in Azure AD – Cloud / Password Hash Sync / Pass-through Authentication / AD FS. We will outline why choosing the right authentication method for your business is critical as you begin your journey to the cloud. We will explain how these authentication methods work. And we will compare & contrast them with regards to deployment costs, end user experience, advanced capabilities, and business continuity.
When: Wednesday, October 10, 2018 at 10am ET | Come learn about how easy it is for your organization to service your customers by using Microsoft Azure AD B2C – leverage the B2C platform to manage all aspects of authentication, freeing you to focus on the best application experience for your customers. Leverage Social Accounts (such as Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and more), Local Accounts (or any identity provider using open standard protocols (OpenID Connect or SAML), to provide a customized, branded experience for your consumers. We will show both basic and advanced customizations, as well as review integration with other systems and how reports can be generated to measure the success of your applications.
When: Wednesday, October 10, 2018 at 2pm ET | Come learn about how easy it is for your organization to service your customers by using Microsoft Azure AD B2C – leverage the B2C platform to manage all aspects of authentication, freeing you to focus on the best application experience for your customers. Leverage Social Accounts (such as Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and more), Local Accounts (or any identity provider using open standard protocols (OpenID Connect or SAML), to provide a customized, branded experience for your consumers. We will show both basic and advanced customizations, as well as review integration with other systems and how reports can be generated to measure the success of your applications.
Azure AD: Secure Your Identities with Azure Multi-Factor Authentication
When: Thursday, October 11, 2018 at 10am ET | Learn about how Azure AD can help you secure sensitive identities or applications under different types of conditions. You'll leave understanding the different scenarios involved and the impact on end users.
Azure AD: Secure Your Identities with Azure Multi-Factor Authentication
When: Thursday, October 11, 2018 at 2pm ET | Learn about how Azure AD can help you secure sensitive identities or applications under different types of conditions. You'll leave understanding the different scenarios involved and the impact on end users.
Productivity Hacks to Save Time & Simplify Workflows
When: Wednesday, October 24, 2018 at 12pm ET and 3pm ET | This 2-hour 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
Simplify IT management with new features in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center
Microsoft 365 is built around the way end users work, helping them to be productive and secure seamlessly across Windows 10, Office 365, and Enterprise Mobility + Security. Our goal is to deliver a similarly cohesive management experience that leverages a common toolset and common skillset across your Microsoft 365 services. Earlier this year, we announced the general availability for the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, your common entry point for managing applications, services, data, devices, and users across your Microsoft 365 subscription. Recently at Ignite, we showed off new features in public preview that further deliver on the promise to enable admins to work more efficiently and deliver the best possible end user experience. The public preview for new features in the Admin Center is rolling out to targeted release admins now and will soon be available to all admins. If you want to dive right in and check out the new features, we've built the preview directly into your Admin Center. To learn more and activate the preview, check out the preview support documentation. This article will highlight a few of those new features, and we'll keep the support documentation updated as new ones become available. | Related: Microsoft Mechanics: Best of Microsoft Ignite - Admin Updates in Microsoft 365 to save you time
For the last four years, we've been on a mission to transform Office and use artificial intelligence (AI) to make everyday tasks easier. In June, we revealed a fresh, new design for our Office apps. And at Microsoft Ignite 2018, we announced new AI-powered features in PowerPoint and Excel. Now, we're making it even easier to showcase your ideas, stay organized, and create surveys and polls with the following updates: (1) AI-powered inking and 3D updates in Word and PowerPoint, (2) Two new updates in Outlook.com make staying on top of tasks easier and interacting with your favorite brands simpler, (3) To help you keep track of tasks using whatever mode is most comfortable to you, we're adding the ability to update your tasks using ink. With your digital pen and a touch-enabled Windows device, simply add a task to your list using ink, and then strike out when complete, and (4) the Forms Public Preview is available to our consumer customers as well.
What's new in security, compliance & administration for SharePoint & OneDrive from Microsoft Ignite
Innovation in the cloud drives tremendous business value, and it delivers new capabilities to the IT professionals who work tirelessly to support, configure, administer, and secure their organizations' content and services. Office 365 empowers you to support sophisticated requirements for security and compliance, to manage day-to-day operations, and to maximize the value of Office 365 to people in your organization. We've built Office 365 with global scale, exceptional reliability, and support for compliance across industries and geographies on top of intelligent security that keeps your service and content protected and private, we give you granular and dynamic controls so that you can manage access and distribution of your organization's sensitive information. We've equipped you with detailed activity and usage reports. At Microsoft Ignite 2018 we announced many of the new capabilities that are available now and coming soon to Office 365 and while our list of news is too big for a single blog, here you'll find a summary of these announcements.
Conditional Access in Outlook on the web for Exchange Online
We live in a world where employees want to use a wide range of devices; this includes corporate owned assets, as well as their personal devices, and public or shared devices. While we want everyone to be empowered to work productively, we need to ensure we protect corporate data. The freedom to work fluidly, independent of location, has become an expectation as has the freedom to access email and documents from anywhere on any device—and that experience is expected to be seamless. However, data loss is non-negotiable, and overexposure to information can have lasting legal and compliance implications. Exchange Online and Outlook on the web have been investing to ensure we are able to respond to evolving security challenges. We start this journey by introducing Conditional access policies for Outlook on the web. Conditional access provides the control and protection businesses need to keep their corporate data secure, while giving their people an experience that allows them to do their best work from any device. Policies announced at Ignite 2018 will restrict the ability for users to download attachments from email to a local machine when the devices are not compliant. With the power of the Office Web Apps, users can continue to view and edit these files safely, without leaking data to a personal machine. If you instead want to block attachments fully (when on a non-compliant device) we also support that!
New Automated Threat Detection, Investigation, and Response Capabilities for Office 365
Microsoft's cybersecurity focus is founded on delivering security operations that work for you, enterprise-class technology, and driving partnerships for a heterogenous world. These themes feature heavily in new advanced automation capabilities for threat detection, investigation, and response for Office 365 E5 announced at Microsoft Ignite. The features help strengthen our customers SecOps teams and are powered by the Microsoft Intelligent Security Graph which provides unparalleled visibility into the threat landscape (analyzing 6.5 trillion daily signals from email alone), integration across Microsoft's security services, and powerful intelligence from our sophisticated machine learning (ML) algorithms and team of 3500 in-house security professionals.
Microsoft Forms: Branding Enhancements
One of the top requests we get from Enterprise customers and the Forms UserVoice community is to include company branding with surveys. We now offer more customization support in survey logo, theme, background, and thank you page. With branding improvements, you can now include your logo in its entirety without having to adhere to specific set dimensions. Once you've added your company logo, you can also customize the theme of your survey with a company color. You can also add a high resolution background image to make your survey pop. Finally, craft a personal thank you message for your customers. | Related: NPS® question is available in Microsoft Forms
NOTEWORTHY
Office 365 Earns HITRUST CSF Certification
We are pleased to announce that Office 365 has earned HITRUST Certification from the Health Information Trust (HITRUST) Alliance, the widely adopted security and risk management framework in the U.S. healthcare industry. This also includes the NIST Cybersecurity Framework certification. The HITRUST Common Security Framework (CSF) helps health organizations address these concerns through a comprehensive, flexible framework of both prescriptive and scalable security controls. As a HIPAA business associate, our Office 365 platform and services meet the industry expectation of continued regulatory compliance and risk management, and we enable our health customers to meet their requirements while also managing the cost of compliance.
OneDrive Message Center Updates September 15th to September 30th
Coming off a great Ignite week, here are the latest updates to the OneDrive service this month! This month we're releasing Mac Files On-Demand, Dark Mode for OneDrive on Mac, Files On-Demand and Storage Sense, and link open receipts for sharing links. Continue reading for more details!
At Ignite 2018, we brought a deep lineup of new security innovations that I have summarized, and each includes recommendations for some of the top sessions: (1) Identity and access management, (2) Information protection, (3) Threat protection, (4) Security management, and (5) Unified endpoint management. | Related: Collaborate Securely
Microsoft Ignite 2018 Event Recap – PowerApps & Microsoft Flow sessions
We had a great lineup of sessions at Microsoft Ignite 2018. The entire session content is now available on-demand. Here is a quick reference of the sessions relevant to PowerApps, Microsoft Flow & Common Data Service for Apps as part of the Microsoft Power platform. | Related: PowerApps Discoverability in the Enterprise – Part 3
Microsoft Mechanics Live! Best of Ignite 2018
Microsoft Mechanics was back, live all week at Microsoft Ignite 2018 and, on a mission, to bring you the best tech highlights in bite-sized, demo-rich 15-minute shows. See the technology in action, from the engineering visionaries behind the tech...
- Teamwork updates with Microsoft 365 featuring Microsoft Teams
- OneDrive updates to help your shift to a modern desktop
- SharePoint and OneDrive Updates
- Microsoft Stream – live events, mobile app and admin updates
- Security and compliance updates across Microsoft 365 – a demo tour
- Windows 10 & Office 365 ProPlus Desktop Deployment
- Azure AD Conditional Access and Enabling Zero Trust
- Password-less Auth using Azure AD
- Desktop Analytics for Windows 10 and Office 365 ProPlus