Simply Office 365
  • Home
  • Services
    • Adoption Services
    • Custom Development
    • Training
      • QuickStart Webinars
      • Discovery Workshops
      • Training Workshops
  • Modern Workplace
  • Partners
  • About
    • About Us
    • Office 365 Insights
    • Can we help?
  • Contact
  • Home
  • Services
    • Adoption Services
    • Custom Development
    • Training
      • QuickStart Webinars
      • Discovery Workshops
      • Training Workshops
  • Modern Workplace
  • Partners
  • About
    • About Us
    • Office 365 Insights
    • Can we help?
  • Contact
info@simplyoffice365.com CAN WE HELP?  BOOK A CALL

Microsoft 365 Insights

Updates from the
Simply Office 365 lab

Office 365 Insights - Jan 2020

6/1/2020

 
Picture
Some of these features are available today but others are due to roll out soon, so they might not be immediately available in your own Office 365 environment.


Office 2013 Client Connectivity to Office 365 Services 


MC190854 

From the 13th October 2020, Microsoft have warned that users accessing Office 365 services with older versions of Office products (e.g. Office 2013 or Office 2010) may suffer performance, instability or security issues. It is therefore critical that users of Office 365 ensure they are using the latest Office Products.

This could impact clients with an Office 365 Business Essentials plan, who are using their own legacy office products or clients that are not upgrading to Windows 10. The other main Office 365 commercial products include the right to download and use the latest versions of Office so they should not be impacted.



​
Use Tags in Microsoft Teams to organise and control large groups of users

MC195755

Rolling out in Q1 2020 is the ability to tag users in a Microsoft Team – this is really applicable to Teams that have large memberships and you want to categorise or group individuals in the team so that you can target messages and conversations at them.

Using tags, team owners can organise users based on a common attribute, such as role, project, skill, training, or location. After team members have tags, the team owner or a tagged team member can create a channel post, @tagName, that notifies only the users who have that tag (in this case @tagName).

Tags are team-based; you have to a be a member of a team in order to use an associated tag. For example, you could send a message to all cashiers in a store or all developers in a software specific release stream. To manage tags, click on the Team name (not the general channel) and then select Settings. Tags should appear at the bottom of the list of settings once it has been enabled by Microsoft New Team Tag Settings




Subscribe individuals in your company to be notified about Office 365 incidents 

MC196504 

Microsoft is now rolling out the ability to subscribe up to 2 individuals to receive notifications of new incidents affecting you Office 365 service. Previously, only your admins could view incidents by signing into the Office 365 Health dashboard – often this would only occur after users started complaining that something was not working.

To subscribe to the new service, you will need to sign into the Office 365 Admin service and then navigate to the Service Health Dashboard, then:
  • Click on the "Edit Preferences" button on the main tab of your Service health dashboard.
  • Select the services for which you want notifications.
  • Specify up to two email addresses to receive the notifications – they do not need to be Office 365 admins.


​
Add totals to your modern SharePoint views

MC196871

Finally, a long-lost favourite has returned, column totals on modern SharePoint views. This allows you to specify different types of totals and calculations depending on the type of column you apply it to. For instance, you could sum the values in a number column or just count the number of rows in a view. A very simple feature that can add so much value to you SharePoint deployment.

To add totals, simply edit or create a view and scroll down to the Totals section on the left.




​New OneDrive "Request Files" feature provides a secure area for external parties to submit documents

MC194601

This feature allows you to ask another user to place files into a specific folder that you own. The folder must be in your own OneDrive for Business. To request files:

  • Select the folder you want the recipient to use and click Request Files.
  • Add a description of the files you’re requesting, click Next.
  • Type the email of the person from whom you are requesting files or copy the link and paste it into your own email.
Picture
After the recipient clicks on the invitation link, she selects her files to upload. You will be able to see all the collected files, but recipients will only be able to upload files. They won’t be able to access any contents within the selected folder and won’t be able to modify their own uploads once the upload is submitted.

This is different to just sharing a folder in your OneDrive where the recipient can see and edit all documents in that folder. This could be useful if you are requesting suppliers to upload a tender proposal and you would not want suppliers seeing other supplier proposals or be able to modify their proposal once uploaded.

More from Microsoft on creating a OneDrive file request
https://support.office.com/article/create-a-file-request-f54aa7f8-2589-4421-b351-d415fc3b83af?storagetype=stage



​
Greater control over presenter and attendee roles in Microsoft Teams meetings

MC194602

Meeting organisers will now have an option to define presenter and attendee roles for meeting participants. Presenters will have full permissions in the meeting, whereas attendees cannot share content, take control, mute or remove other participants, admit people waiting in the lobby, or start/stop recording.

Before or during the meeting, organisers can specify who is an attendee or a presenter through the meeting options panel. The available choices are as follows:


  • Everyone (default; everyone joins as a presenter and has full permissions).
  • People in my organisation (federated and anonymous users join as attendees).
  • Specific people (allows the organiser to set specific people from their organisation as presenters).
  • Only me (everybody apart from the organiser joins as an attendee).​
Picture
To access the Meeting options panel:

  • In Teams, go to Calendar, select a meeting, and then select Meeting options.
  • In a meeting invitation, select Meeting options.

The organiser and presenters will also be able to change the role of any individual participant (“Make an attendee” or “Make a presenter") during the meeting.


​
Microsoft has backtracked on the future of OneNote 2016

MC194800

In 2018 Microsoft announced that it was no longer going to support the OneNote 2016 Windows App and removed it from the Office download centre in Office 365. However, and one can only assume that this is due to industry pressure, they have backtracked and confirmed that it will now be supported. From the 10th March 2020 it will once again be included in the Office download suite.


​
Get more insights into your documents with File Hover Card extensions

MC194911

When you hover over a document in a SharePoint library or the web portal for OneDrive for Business, you see a "File Hover Card" which provides insights into the document such as when it was last modified.

Microsoft are now adding new features to show a Teams conversation or a meeting invite that references the document. The conversations displayed on the file card will only be visible to those users who took part in them. This means that you won’t see another person’s conversations that are not related to the file in question, and they won’t see yours.
Picture
In addition, the new File Hover Card feature will show you who has viewed your files. When someone views a file you own, SharePoint displays the people information and profile image of the viewer in the file hover card. Combined, you can now easily and quickly get real insights into your documents. 


​
Replace your classic SharePoint root site with a modern communication site

MC196377

Until recently, your Office 365 environment had its main SharePoint root site (which should form the natural landing page for your company intranet) stuck in old classic SharePoint mode and therefore could not benefit from all of the new great features that SharePoint modern sites offer.

Well no longer. Now you can create a new modern communication site and then ask your IT Admin to promote that as the new root site.  Your root site is https://contoso.sharepoint.com (where contoso is replaced by your domain name. If you have data in your existing root site then do not worry. The old root site in not overwritten, it is simply given a new URL.


More from Microsoft on modernising your root site
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/modern-root-site



​
Bookmark and save files for later

With this feature you will now be able to bookmark files and folders across OneDrive and SharePoint for later access.

To bookmark a document, just select it in the SharePoint library or through the OneDrive web portal and on the Ribbon click the new "Save for Later" icon. You will then see an aggregate of everything you have saved in the "Saved for later" section in the left-hand menu of your OneDrive web portal, making it easy for you to quickly get back to your important documents that you did not have time to read or those you regularly need to access.  



​
Easily add and share emails from Outlook to a Microsoft Teams channel

MC198124

New integration between Outlook and Teams makes it easy to collaborate no matter where the conversation is taking place. Teams has always allowed you to forward an email to a Teams channel so that it can be visible to all members of the channel and also to enable internal channel discussions related to the email. For example, you receive an email from a client related to a project you are working on and you need to share this email with the project team.

Previously, the only option was to forward the email to everyone "who might be interested". With Teams, you could forward the email to the correct project channel and then start a conversation with the specific project team members who need to be engaged, whilst making it visible to any other project team members to keep them informed.

Much more efficient for everyone, reduces email clutter and makes the email and surrounding conversation discoverable both during and after the project closure.

With this new enhancement rolling out in 2020, rather than forwarding the email to the channel, you can move and share the conversation from Outlook, including attachments, into a Teams chat or channel conversation simply by clicking on the ‘"Share to Teams" button in Outlook. However, this is not just a one way process, you will also be able to take a Teams conversation and share this as an Outlook email by clicking on the more options ("…") icon in a conversation.

As mentioned, these changes will start rolling out early next year, however there is nothing to stop you preparing for this improved way of working by planning your use of Teams and how you can use the current "forward an email" feature.


More from Microsoft on what's new in Microsoft Teams
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/what-s-new-in-microsoft-teams-microsoft-ignite-2019/ba-p/937025


​
Microsoft again recognised by Gartner as a Leader in Content Services Platforms

Concerned about the future of SharePoint as your companies central document store? Then, for the 3rd year in a row Gartner has identified SharePoint as the leading content management platform.

​Gartner measures and compares the leading platforms using the following characteristics:


  • Cloud scale - The ability to scale to meet the demands of the workforce. Provision of seamless connectivity to a broad ecosystem of suppliers, partners, and customers while delivering continuous innovation is essential.
  • Protection - The provision of deeply embedded, flexible, and intelligent information governance, security, and privacy controls. This is essential to operate in a world of ever-increasing threats and regulatory demands.
  • Fast time to value - The ability to deliver business value quickly, through the provision of prebuilt applications and citizen-developer-based tools, for example.
  • User-centricity - A consumerised user experience with embedded mobility and consistency across devices. A focus on the overall user experience is of paramount importance for driving adoption and realising the expected benefits of this technology.
  • Intelligence - Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, including machine learning and deep neural networks, have enabled innovations for classification, productivity, and automation scenarios. Such capabilities should be embedded in all key areas of the platform - from security to collaboration - to align with the evolving expectations of the market.

More from Microsoft on Gartner's report
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2019/12/12/microsoft-again-leader-2019-gartner-content-services-platforms-magic-quadrant-report/



Simplify access to key applications from within Office 365

MC198313

The Office 365 app launcher (the 9 dots in the top left when signed into Office 365) provides each user with access to all the applications they are licenced or authorised to use. Your users can also access the list of applications from the Office 365 home page. 
 
Currently, your users can pin their favourite applications via the Office 365 app launcher by viewing all apps and then clicking the three vertical dots to open the sub-menu against a specific application. The pinned applications always appear at the top of the Office 365 app launcher and the remaining applications will be shown for each user in the order in which they have been most frequently accessed by the user.

In addition, a feature that has existed in Office 365 for a while, allowed administrators to create company specific items on the Office 365 app launcher that could open other line of business applications or external websites. However, there was no way to control where these appeared on each individual user's Office 365 app launcher and therefore could disappear off the initial view and be "hidden" behind the "All apps" menu. This could cause confusion and training issues as each user may have a different view and not easily know where to find the key company applications.

With this change, only administrators can pin applications (maximum of 3) and this will apply to all users, who will no longer be able to override this.

So, what are the benefits?

You company now selects and pins the three key applications to everyone's Office 365 app launcher, and this will consistently show no matter if the user uses the Office 365 app launcher or the Office 365 Home page. Secondly, administrators can now make better use of creating company specific "apps" to open other line of business applications or resources.

Together, these should simplify the training of users on the use of the Office 365 app launcher and provide for a more consistent implementation.

More from Microsoft on customising the app launcher
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/admin/manage/customize-the-app-launcher?view=o365-worldwide




Outlook on the web - improved access to attachments

MC198342

This change only applies to your users who use Outlook on the web and not the desktop version. The change will allow your users to quickly and easily see all files they have sent and received as attachments.  
Picture
Once this change has been rolled out, a new paperclip icon will appear at the bottom of the left navigation column in Outlook. When users go to the Files view, they'll see all the files they have sent and received as attachments from their inbox without having to filter emails for those with attachments and then open each email to see if it contains the correct attachment.



More control over your intranet pages with modern SharePoint image resizing

MC198528

SharePoint enables great intranets to be built using out-of-the-box features and now Microsoft is introducing, from February 2020, the ability to resize an image from within the modern page.
Picture
The modern SharePoint site is comprised of web parts, the building blocks of the page. The Image web part lets an editor insert an image on a page, whether from their SharePoint site, their computer, or an external web location and with this update, page editors will also be able to resize images in the image web part.


​

Powerful addition to the comments capability in Word, Excel and PowerPoint

MC198554

The ability to add comments within the Office Product suite has come a long way from those early days. Comments are now threaded allowing greater collaboration and Microsoft then introduced the ability to "@mention" a colleague from within the comment, and this would send them an email with a link to open the document to view and respond to the comment.

With this change, when a user gets an email notification that someone has @mentioned them or who has replied to their comment, the email may now show both the comment thread and the surrounding document context, without requiring them to open the document. 
Picture
In addition, users who receive the email will be able to reply to the comment without needing to open the document. However, please note that this capability will roll out to the web version of Word, Excel and PowerPoint first and then the windows desktop versions later in the year.

More from Microsoft on using @mention in comments
https://support.office.com/article/use-mention-in-comments-to-tag-someone-for-feedback-644bf689-31a0-4977-a4fb-afe01820c1fd



​
Integrate Office 365 To-Do with Siri shortcuts

​
During the last few months of 2019, Microsoft launched a suite of new To-Do features for iPhone and iPad users. To-Do is the Office 365 all-in-one task management app that consolidates your tasks from Outlook, Planner and personal tasks you enter directly into the app.

Microsoft has now integrated To-Do into the Siri shortcut capability available on iOS.

Not familiar with Siri shortcuts? Siri shortcuts are designed to take the normal actions you use in various apps and allow you to add them to Siri. Through the Shortcuts app you can also run a variety of automations, such as "open a list when I get to a particluar location".

More from Microsoft on how Siri shortcuts can be integrated to the Office 365 To-Do app
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-to-do-blog/discover-all-our-latest-features-on-ios-siri-shortcuts-share/ba-p/1082376


Author: SO365 Insights

Top technology tips for compliance consultants

9/12/2019

 
Microsoft's Office 365 cloud has all the tools a compliance consultant needs to help you work more efficiently and productively.

​We've picked 4 of our favourites to give you a quick insight into how using Office 365 can improve your business, both internally and in collaboration with your clients.
tip number 1

Did you know Office 365 makes a great client extranet for consultants?

One of the key interactions a compliance consultancy firm has with its clients is the constant creation and reviewing of client documents and the interaction with the client to finalise and agree the documents.

Undertaking this process using email is cumbersome, prone to error and can lead to privacy and security breaches. What do I mean by this exactly?
 
  • Email is a poor tool to control multiple revisions of documents between multiple parties, each of which make their own amendments in isolation that often contradict or duplicate feedback and changes from others in the email chain.
  • How many times has there been confusion about which email is the latest version, especially where multiple consultants might be involved in the process.?
  • Email makes it all too easy to inadvertently send confidential and private documents to the wrong recipient and once sent - there is no "recall". ​
Picture
For those consultants using Office 365, you can easily turn this into a secure extranet with your clients, where both parties can upload, share documents and work on them together, without the document ever leaving the "source" environment. Office 365 will even version control and audit every change, so it is easy to track who has amended a document and when, or if you need to, you can recover an accidentally overwritten version.

Clean, simple and secure exchanging of information with your clients. If you use Office 365, you already have what you need to do this today.

tip number 2

You can use Microsoft Teams to share, discuss and reply to client emails 

One of the perennial problems a team of consultants faces is ensuring everyone has visibility of key emails and interactions between clients, especially when a consultant is on holiday and a colleague has to cover for them.

Our approach using Office 365 - we create a Microsoft Team for each client.
Picture
Not only is this a great environment to create and share documents, but each Team has its own email address that enables us to forward and reply to client emails, providing other members of the team with full visibility of the interaction. Better still, once we have forwarded the email to Teams we can internally have a quick and easy discussion without the need to send the email to everyone and then wait for their response. Even the discussion is visible to colleagues and auditable.

Microsoft Teams provides a clean, simple and secure way of storing, sharing, discussing and responding to client emails - whilst helping to keep unnecessary clutter out of everyone's inbox.

tip number 3

Maintain oversight of all client service activities

How do you keep visibility over who's working on which clients and which client service activities are running late?

Office 365 has an easy to use and configure "events" feature that enables you to create and schedule client events and activities, which can then be allocated to the appropriate consultants.
Picture
  • Email reminders and escalation workflows can then keep everyone informed of pending or overdue events.
  • The overall schedule of events can be securely accessed via the browser or synchronised to your Outlook as just another calendar.
  • Consultants can have their own views of events allocated to them, or perhaps access a view of all events for a specific client regardless of the owner.

​Using Office 365 gives you a quick, simple solution to increase visibility, management and oversight of this critical part of the service you provide to your clients.

tip number 4

Simplify the management and communication of regulatory news and information 

The amount of regulatory change information that a consultancy must manage is forever increasing. What is worse, is that the activity is often duplicated across all consultants, who each keep and maintain their own set of records.

This is not a result of some sort of hubris, but because the central storage area for such information is often unavailable or makes it impossible to find information. Add to this the need to save and store documents multiple times because they logically apply to different regulations (or different folder structures) and it is easy to see how much wasted time this duplication of work costs a consultancy.
Picture
  • SharePoint, part of Office 365, provides many tools and techniques to let you create rich document libraries full of navigable filters that let you quickly locate information.
  • These filters use metadata which not only allows documents to be tagged across multiple regulations, but also add to the searchable content, making search a much richer and rewarding experience.

Office 365 provides clean, simple and easy to use document repositories that all consultants will use and benefit from.

Author: Chris Kaye

    Picture

    Categories

    All
    Administration
    Adoption
    Chat
    Collaboration
    Compliance Consultants
    Digital Literacy
    Excel
    Extranets
    Forms
    Governance
    Lists
    Microsoft 365
    Microsoft Teams
    Modern Workplace
    Office
    Office 365
    Office Apps
    Office Products
    OneDrive
    OneNote
    Outlook
    Planner
    Productivity
    Search
    Security And Compliance
    SharePoint
    Shifts
    Stream
    Tasks
    Teams
    To Do
    To-Do
    Word


    Archives

    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019

    RSS Feed

get in touch

Contact us to learn more

Simply Office 365 is a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider providing training, consultancy and productivity solutions exclusively for Microsoft 365. We'd be happy talk if you'd like to know more about us or our services and solutions.

4500 Parkway, Solent Business Park, Whiteley, PO15 7AZ

+ 44 (0) 333 445 0365

info@simplyoffice365.com

enquiry form

Request a call back or demo

Submit
Picture
Picture
Picture
GDPR Privacy Notice
Terms & Privacy
© ​Simply Office 365 2021. All rights reserved. Simply Office 365 Ltd (11656458).​