Office 365 Weekly Digest | December 31, 2017 – January 6, 2018

Welcome to the December 31, 2017 – January 6, 2018 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

New year, and a new start experience for Office 365 web applications is in development according to the single entry added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week.

New year, and lots of opportunities for upcoming events including options for all of the customer immersion experiences, as well as the monthly Azure Active Directory webinars.

Microsoft Teams dominated the blog posts from last week, including one from Microsoft Core Services Engineering (CSE), formerly Microsoft IT, that focuses on Teams adoption within Microsoft. There's also information on recent Office 365 security and compliance updates, along with the Flow of the Week.

Details on configuring fallback for Office 365 ProPlus updates in Configuration Manager, a look at the team behind OneDrive Files On-Demand, and a series of videos focused on firstline workers close out the noteworthy items from last week. 

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Also, just a couple of notes to wrap up 2017:

(1) You may have noticed that a weekly digest was not posted for December 24 - 30, 2017. There were no issues. Traditionally, not much content is published during the last week of the year and 2017 was no exception. I simply took the opportunity to spend some extra time with my family over the holidays. This will likely become a "tradition" of its own, as it was a much needed break from the blog.  I will certainly communicate this in advance going forward...

(2) 2017 was the best year yet for Office 365 Weekly - THANKs to YOU!  One example is that page views increased five times over 2016, so let's keep that trend going!   The number of people to thank are too numerous to list here, but suffice it to say...I sincerely appreciate the support, whether you follow the blog via RSS, subscribe via email or visit regularly for new content. Also, additional thanks to all who have tweeted/retweeted Office 365 Weekly content, linked to it on their own blog, referenced it in presentations, etc.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

Below are the items added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week:

UPCOMING EVENTS

Azure Active Directory Webinars for January

When: Multiple sessions currently scheduled from January 9 - 18, 2018 | A new webinar, An Introduction to Azure AD B2C, will be available in January 2018. Other sessions include Getting Ready for Azure AD, Securing Your Identities with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), Azure AD Identity Protection and Privileged Access Management, 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.

Visualizing, Analyzing & Sharing Your Data Without Having to be a BI Expert

When: Tuesday, January 9, 2018 and Tuesday, January 16, 2018 at 12pm ET | This 2-hour hands-on experience will give you the opportunity to test drive the latest business analytics tools. A trained facilitator will guide you as you apply these tools to your own business scenarios and see how they can work throughout your organization. During this interactive session, you will explore how to: (1) Locate and organize large amounts of data from multiple sources, (2) Visualize complex data and identify trends quickly without having to be a BI expert, (3) Find and collaborate with company experts on the fly, even if they work in another part of the country, and (4) Gather colleague's opinions easily and eliminate communication and process bottlenecks. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Productivity Hacks to Save Time & Simplify Workflows

When: Wednesday, January 10, 2018, Wednesday, January 17, 2018 and Wednesday, January 24, 2018 at 1pm 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.

Hands-on with security in a cloud-first, mobile-first world

When: Thursday, January 11, 2018 at 12pm and 3pm ET | This 2-hour hands-on session will give you the opportunity to try Microsoft technology that secures your digital transformation with a comprehensive platform, unique intelligence, and partnerships. 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) Detect and protect against external threats by monitoring, reporting and analyzing activity to react promptly to provide organization security, (2) Protect your information and reduce the risk of data loss, (3) Provide peace of mind with controls and visibility for industry-verified conformity with global standards in compliance, (4) Protect your users and their accounts, and (5) Support your organization with enhanced privacy and compliance to meet the General Data Protection Regulation. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Connecting, Organizing & Collaborating with Your Team

When: Tuesday, January 23, 2018 and Tuesday, January 30, 2018 at 12pm ET | During this session, you will have the opportunity to experience Windows 10, Office 365 and Microsoft's newest collaboration tool: Microsoft Teams. 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 explore how to use Microsoft Teams and Office 365 to: (1) Create a hub for team work that works together with your other Office 365 apps, (2) Build customized options for each team, (3) Keep everyone on your team engaged, (4) Coauthor and share content quickly, and (5) Gain skills that will save you time and simplify your workflow immediately. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Transforming your business to meet the changing market and needs of your customers

When: Thursday, February 1, 2018 at 12pm 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) Use digital intelligence to build personalized experiences across all customer touchpoints, (2) Improve customer service through a single, unified experience that delivers end-to-end service across every channel, (3) Increase customer satisfaction with intelligent scheduling, native mobile support, and remote asset monitoring to help you get the job done right the first time, and (4) Run your project-based business more productively by bringing people, processes, and automation technology together through a unified experience. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

BLOG ROUNDUP

New in Office 365 security & compliance – January update

We have several new updates to help you achieve your compliance goals, including complying with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Additional updates include the ability to analyze non-Office 365 data in Office 365 Advanced eDiscovery, along with several enhancements to Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection and Advanced Data Governance. Read on to learn more!

Getting Microsoft Teams adoption right inside Microsoft

Microsoft employees got Microsoft Teams a year ago, part of a companywide effort to adopt a more collaborative culture. When Microsoft employees use Microsoft Teams, their collaboration doubles. "We need tools that help manage the increased flow of information, making insights more discoverable and allowing employees to connect and collaborate regardless of location. Microsoft Teams helps us do that," says Sarah Lunday, a business program manager at Microsoft Core Services Engineering (CSE). Employees have been evaluating Teams and Skype for Business side by side. "We foresee that they will gradually start to use Teams as their primary communication app," says Pouneh Kaufman, a principal program manager in Microsoft CSE. "We expect uptake to grow through awareness and training campaigns. Working on Microsoft Teams is about much more than getting employees to try a new company product, it's about getting them to embrace a fundamentally different way of working, says Karuana Gatimu, a principal program manager for Teams.

Microsoft Teams: Making meetings matter

Holding your meetings in Microsoft Teams is a paradigm shift for users as it presents three ways to have a meeting (channel, private, ad-hoc). Understanding when to use which method and how to use it is extremely important to ensuring your meeting attendees have a good experience. This blog post discusses how to make the three meeting types work for teams, and how you can enrich your meetings to make them more valuable. | Related: Microsoft Teams – Overview and Demonstration (Video) | Why do I receive invites to channel meetings in Microsoft Teams? (mystery solved)

Flow of the Week: Build a Flow using only Non-Microsoft Connectors

This week we are bringing you a Flow of the Week in Video Form! This Flow focuses on using services that are not a part of Microsoft's offerings. It was created as a response to a challenge received on Twitter because Flow is an awesome tool no matter if you have an Office or Dynamics Subscription... or not! Anyways, check it out and let us know what you think!

NOTEWORTHY

Insider Fast: Outlook for Mac now supports creation of Office 365 Groups!

The Outlook & Groups team is hard at work to continuously bring new Office 365 group capabilities to Outlook for Mac. You can now create a group, starting with the 16.9 (171226) release! Groups in Outlook for Mac is only available to Office 365 subscribers. Note that this feature respects the company policies set by administrators. If you cannot find the create group command, then this capability might not be enabled for you. Please talk to your IT department for assistance.

Configuring fallback for Office 365 ProPlus updates in Configuration Manager

Starting with version 1706 of System Center Configuration Manager a new option is available allowing administrators to enable clients to fall back to the Microsoft Office CDN when deploying Office 365 ProPlus updates to client machines. With this option enabled, clients will first check their available distribution points for the specified update. If the update cannot be found the client will then get the specified update directly from the Microsoft Office CDN. This can be helpful for situations where machines may not have a dedicated or reliable connection to the corporate network and other situations where it is not necessary to manage the update content for a particular update on premises.

Firstline Worker: Your most valuable employees

Firstline workers represent the companies they work for, and essentially represent that company's brand. They sit on the "firstline" and are the first employees to interact with those company's customers – and they play an important part in the customer experience lifecycle. It's vital these employees are empowered to do their best work, and are connected with the rest of the company so they receive the same information, share best practices and can thrive in the digital age. In this blog post, there are three video recordings discussing the Microsoft Firstline Worker vision, a demonstration of Firstline Worker, and an overview of the Firstline Worker application StaffHub.

Your files, your way- The team behind OneDrive Files On-Demand

Format: Video (5 minutes) | The building of OneDrive Files On-Demand has required a deep collaboration between the Windows and OneDrive engineering teams. From the start, the goal of engineering has been to make Files On-Demand an intuitive, secure and easy to use feature for our users. Join us and get a peek behind the code with members of the engineering teams that brought this highly anticipated feature to the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.