Office 365 Weekly Digest | October 13 – 19, 2019

Welcome to the October 13 – 19, 2019 edition of the Office 365 Weekly Digest.

There were fourteen features added to the Office 365 Roadmap last week, including several updates for Teams, and Office 365 auditing.

The one new event is a big one – Microsoft Ignite 2019! The live show details are now available, including a link to add the events to your calendar. This week’s spotlight event is the “Upgrading to Microsoft Teams from Skype for Business” webinar from Microsoft IT at 10:00am Pacific on Wednesday, October 23rd.

Blog posts in last week’s roundup include the top five tips for deploying and configuring OneDrive for Business, the October 2019 updates for Microsoft Stream, recent calendar enhancements in Outlook mobile, and the top six email security best practices.

Noteworthy item highlights include a look at compliance across the various Microsoft 365 offerings, the public preview of Azure AD “My Sign-Ins”, the general availability of Desktop Analytics, and information on Classic and Modern Hybrid Exchange migration endpoints.

OFFICE 365 ROADMAP

DescriptionFeature IDEstimated ReleaseDetails
Users can pin apps to the Teams left rail56783November CY2019Added: 16 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Teams
Teams users can now customize what apps appear on their left rail in Teams, allowing them to quickly access the apps that they use on a daily basis. This is an improvement over the current experience now that apps relevant to users are right where they need them. Users will be able to fully customize their app bar including apps that were pre-pinned for users using the app setup policy. IT admins can disable the ability to customize their app bar using an additional control we will provide in the app setup policy.
Microsoft Teams – teams auto-renewal56784November CY2019Added: 16 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Teams
Ensure collaboration moves forward with automatic renewal of teams. A team with an expiration policy will renew automatically when any member visits a channel reducing the need for team owners to manually do this periodically.
Microsoft Teams – Phone System Administration Enhancements56786November CY2019Added: 16 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Teams
As part of our ongoing process to bring additional workloads to the Microsoft Teams admin center, the following new or improved features will be available: Microsoft Calling Plan customers will be able to search, acquire, and assign phone numbers to end-users. Admins will also be able to create and assign emergency addresses for those end-users. Additionally, customers will be able to create / test / manage custom dial plans, configure Dynamic Emergency Calling, and use improved configuration for Auto Attendants and Call Queues.
Adding malware ZAP toggle to the Security and Compliance Center56742November CY2019Added: 16 October 2019
Status: Rolling out
App / Service: Office 365
We’re adding a malware ZAP toggle to the anti-malware policy in the Security and Compliance Center. This update brings the ability to enable or disable malware Zero-hour Auto Purge via the anti-malware policy UI in the Security & Compliance Center. Prior to this, malware ZAP could only be configured using the Set-MalwareFilterPolicy PowerShell cmdlet.
Outlook on the web – RSVP in message list56796October CY2019Added: 16 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Outlook – Web
Outlook will allow you to respond to a meeting invite directly from the message list with an RSVP button in the message. When you click on RSVP you can accept, decline, or tentative and additionally you will see a mini calendar where you can see if you have any conflicts.
Microsoft Teams – Silent Login56788October CY2019Added: 16 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Teams
Experience a smoother first login experience in Microsoft Teams. After a user installs Teams for the first time and logs into any Office application with a Microsoft work account, he/she will automatically be signed in to Teams.
Graph Resource Specific Consent56605Q1 CY2020Added: 16 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Teams
Your Teams app can now call Teams Graph APIs without needing admin consent. These APIs include creating, renaming, and deleting channels, reading channel messages, creating tabs, and adding/removing members from Teams.
Microsoft Teams desktop app will roll to existing installs of Office 365 ProPlus and Microsoft/Office 365 Business / Business Premium (on the semi-annual channel)56828Q2 CY2020Added: 16 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Teams
The desktop Teams client will be downloaded by default for the existing users with Office 365 ProPlus, Microsoft 365 Business, and Microsoft 365 Business Premium apps for customers on the semi-annual channel. With this change your users will no longer need to do a separate installation of Microsoft Teams in order to use Teams functionality.
High value events in audit56790Q1 CY2020Added: 17 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Office 365
High value/volume audit events to power your investigations
Processed audit insights56792Q1 CY2020Added: 17 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Office 365
Insights and correlations that signal key patterns to help identify quick answers to typical queries during investigations
Near real-time access to audit data56793Q1 CY2020Added: 17 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Office 365
High bandwidth allowances in the audit API to ease limits associated with throttling during log ingestion and enable fast access to audit events
Longer-term retention on audit logs56794Q1 CY2020Added: 17 October 2019
Status: In development
App / Service: Office 365
Log retention for up to one year to meet investigation requirements and customize retention policies per an organization’s requirements
DKIM key size increased to support 2048-bit56752October CY2019Added: 18 October 2019
Status: Rolling out
App / Service: Exchange Online
We’re updating the DKIM key size available to Office 365 customers from the current 1024-bit to support 2048-bit key size. In order to enhance the security of our customers, we’re increasing the default DKIM key size to 2048-bit keys, and all customers will benefit from this change. If you already have your default or custom domain DKIM enabled in Office 365, it will automatically be upgraded from 1024-bit to 2048-bit at your next DKIM configuration rotation date. The DKIM configuration can be managed through the Get-DkimSigningConfig cmdlet, available through an Exchange PowerShell Admin session.
Unverified sender available in Outlook clients56755October CY2019Added: 18 October 2019
Status: Rolling out
App / Service: Office 365
Unverified sender is a new Office 365 feature that helps end users identify suspicious messages in their inbox. In order to help customers identify suspicious messages in their inbox, we’ve added an indicator that demonstrates Office 365 spoof intelligence was unable to verify the sender. If you enable this feature, emails from unverified senders will receive a question mark in their people card instead of the normal sender photo or sender initials. This indicator helps customers identify that the sender may not be who it appears to be, and can help increase awareness of phishing or spam campaigns.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Non-native Teams Room Systems and Microsoft Teams Meetings

When: Monday, October 21, 2019 9:00am – 10:00am PT | This September and October Microsoft HLS will be hosting a series of 3 Microsoft Teams AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions. Each session will kick off with a brief update on any Teams news followed by a short 10/15-minute topic of consideration with Teams. The remaining 40-45 minutes will be wide open Q&A where our panel Microsoft Teams Technical Specialist will be on hand to answer your questions. Each session will begin at 12 noon eastern (9am pacific) and last for one hour. The focus of the second AMA session is on non-native Teams Room Systems and Microsoft Teams Meetings. Be sure to add the event to your calendar!

Microsoft Teams: Enabling Real-time Collaboration for Cross-functional Teams

How do you bring various stakeholders together across multiple teams to achieve your goal? Do you wish you could reduce the number of meetings or e-mails while still being able to solicit feedback, keep everyone informed, and get consensus? Join us to explore how to bring everything together in a shared workspace with Microsoft Teams. Learn how to chat, meet, share files, and work with other business applications to effectively engage others. This interactive 2-hour session will give you the opportunity to try it for yourself and test drive Microsoft Teams in a live cloud environment. A trained facilitator will guide you as you apply these tools to your own business scenarios and experience how they can work for you. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Microsoft Teams: Identify your upgrade approach

Determine the most suitable approach based on your current Skype for Business implementation and upgrade goals. By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to: (1) Understand common scenarios and upgrade approaches, (2) Visualize the user experience for each approach, and (3) Determine the optimal upgrade approach for your organization.  IT Admins are the primary audience for this session.

Getting Started with Microsoft Teams

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. The session is also available on demand at https://aka.ms/teamsgettingstartedondemand.

Make the switch from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams: End User Guidance

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. The session is also available on demand at https://aka.ms/fromskypetoteamsondemand.

Learn Tips for Taking Teams to the Next Level: Part 1 – Effective Workspaces

Designed for those who are already familiar with Microsoft Teams, our Tips & Tricks sessions offer insights and best practices. Learn how Teams can help organize your workday and make it easier to stay connected with colleagues. In Part 1 – Effective Workspaces, you will explore ways to determine the best approach for creating workspaces for projects and workgroups. After this session, you will be able to: (1) Decide if your team is best served by a team and channels or a group chat and meetings, (2) Create a workspace for your team to provide the best collaboration experience, (3) Use a personal team to simplify your productivity, and (4) Determine best practices for Teams. Access the consolidated on-demand version of Tips and Tricks here: https://aka.ms/teamstipsandtricksondemand.

Microsoft IT Showcase: IT Expert Roundtable – Upgrading to Microsoft Teams from Skype for Business

When: Wednesday, October 23, 2019 10:00am – 11:00am PT | Microsoft CSEO is meeting the needs of an evolving, increasingly modern workplace by upgrading employees from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams: the new hub for calls, chat, meetings, and file sharing in Office 365. After introducing users to Teams by configuring it to run alongside Skype for Business, we began upgrading employees to Teams-only mode. In this webinar, our experts will answer questions on how we used a phased approach emphasizing readiness and productivity to accelerate adoption and help ensure a smooth transition.

Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams

Have you spent significant time and resources to prepare for a meeting and still felt it wasn’t productive? Have you attended a meeting only to leave feeling like not much was accomplished? Join this class to learn how to make your meetings engaging, productive and effective. Microsoft Teams can help make your meetings worth showing up for. After this session, you will be able to: (1) Use Teams for your entire meeting experience, (2) Record your meeting, making it easy for those who couldn’t attend to get caught up, (3) Keep important meetings at your fingertips by pinning them for easy access, and (4) Assess which audio and video devices are best for your meeting needs. You can access the recorded version of this session on-demand at Run Effective Meetings with Microsoft Teams – On Demand.

Learn Tips for Taking Teams to the Next Level: Part 2 – Get More from Teams

Designed for those who are already familiar with Microsoft Teams, our Tips & Tricks sessions offer insights and best practices. Learn how Teams can help organize your workday and make it easier to stay connected with colleagues. In Part 2 – Get More from Teams, you will learn tips and tricks for managing and organizing work and communications in Teams. After this session, you will be able to: (1) Implement strategies to manage and organize your work, (2) Leverage formatting best practices to help get your messages noticed (and responded to), (3) Easily find files, chats and projects, and (4) Simplify your workday. Access the consolidated on-demand version of Tips and Tricks here: https://aka.ms/teamstipsandtricksondemand.

Microsoft Teams: Implement your upgrade approach

Execute your defined upgrade approach as part of your formal upgrade plan. By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to: (1) Recognize the upgrade settings in your O365 tenant admin portal, (2) Understand technical tips and considerations for a successful upgrade, and (3) Apply the appropriate settings in the Portal to execute your upgrade. The primary audience for this session is IT Admins.

Microsoft Teams: Ready your end users

Design a user readiness strategy to help your users love and adopt Teams. By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to: (1) Recognize factors that influence user acceptance and adoption, (2) Define core value messaging for Teams in your organization, and (3) Outline your awareness, training and support activities. The audience for this session is: User Readiness/Change Manager.

Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA): Microsoft Teams and End User Preparedness

When: Monday, October 28, 2019 9:00am – 10:00am PT | This September and October Microsoft HLS will be hosting a series of 3 Microsoft Teams AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions. Each session will kick off with a brief update on any Teams news followed by a short 10/15-minute topic of consideration with Teams. The remaining 40-45 minutes will be wide open Q&A where our panel Microsoft Teams Technical Specialist will be on hand to answer your questions. Each session will begin at 12 noon eastern (9am pacific) and last for one hour. The focus of the third and final AMA session is end user preparedness for Microsoft Teams. Be sure to add the event to your calendar!

Microsoft Teams: Plan your upgrade (Start here!)

Discover everything you need to facilitate a successful upgrade to Teams. By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to: (1) Understand why a formal plan is crucial for upgrade success, (2) Identify the steps to the upgrade success framework, (3) Recognize common attributes of successful customers, and (4) Create and implement their own upgrade plan. The audience for this session is All (Business Sponsors, IT Admins, User Readiness/Change Manager, Project Lead).

Microsoft Teams: Seamless Collaboration with Microsoft 365

Are you still sending an e-mail with an attachment to your teammates when you want to collaborate on a file? How fast do they respond? How do you know if they are working on the file? How do you manage version control? With Microsoft 365 tools for teamwork, you can seamlessly collaborate on files with your team members. Using Microsoft Teams, you can invite your teammates into an environment where they can effectively collaborate and engage in a persistent conversation. Join us for this session and explore how to avoid productivity sinkholes and increase productivity. This interactive 2-hour session will give you the opportunity to test drive Microsoft Teams in a live cloud environment. A trained facilitator will guide you as you apply these tools to your own business scenarios and experience how they can work for you. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Your Sensitive Information

Data needs to be protected wherever it’s stored and whenever it travels, and you need the tools to monitor policy violations and risky behavior. Join us to explore how to implement a comprehensive and integrated approach across devices, apps, cloud services, and on-premises. During this 2-hour interactive session, you will explore how to: (1) Identify, monitor and automatically protect sensitive information across Office 365, (2) Help classify and protect documents and email, and (3) Use policies to enable BYOD scenarios by protecting data at the app level. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Microsoft Ignite Live Show

When: Monday, November 4, 2019 – Thursday, November 7, 2019 | Watch the Microsoft Ignite live show on the event website: https://www.microsoft.com/ignite. Catch announcements on the latest technologies, view the most popular talks, get behind-the-scenes interviews with product engineers and see how to access to the 1,000+ technical sessions being streamed live during Microsoft Ignite. Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, kicks things off on Monday, November 4th at 9:00am ET with his Vision Keynote. There are additional live show sessions on Tuesday, November 5th and Wednesday, November 6th. Microsoft Ignite will be brought to you with all the sessions you want to see and exclusive interviews with leaders you want to hear from. Stream select sessions live and deep dive in the future of technology. Don’t forget to add the Microsoft Ignite Live Show to your calendar!

Customer Immersion Experience: Protecting Identity, Apps, Data and Devices

Identity is at the center of security: don’t compromise when it comes to your company’s valuable information. Join us to explore how to use secure authentication, govern access, get comprehensive protection and set the right identity foundation. During this 2-hour interactive session, you will explore how to: (1) Enable password protection, (2) Bring multi-factor authentication to your Windows 10 users, (3) Protect your users and data through Office 365 multi-factor authentication, and (4) Use conditional access to protect across devices, locations and apps. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

Microsoft IT Showcase: IT Expert Roundtable – Our transformation to Microsoft Teams

When: Wednesday, November 13, 2019 10:00am – 11:00am PT | A cultural change is taking place at Microsoft with the implementation of Microsoft Teams as the new hub for collaboration and communication. During this roundtable, you will learn how CSEO systematically drove the adoption of Teams across the company by implementing a change management plan that actively engaged executive sponsors as well as end users, creating training and evangelism programs, and promoting the transition to Teams through a comprehensive channel strategy—all supported by metrics-driven analytical tools.

Customer Immersion Experience: Simplifying Your Privacy and Compliance Journey

Your business needs to control how sensitive data is managed. Join us and explore how to assess your compliance risk, protect sensitive and business critical data, and respond efficiently to data discovery requests. During this 2-hour interactive session, you will explore how to: (1) Simplify assessment of compliance risk, (2) Integrate protection and governance of data, and (3) Intelligently respond to data discovery requests. Each session is limited to 12 participants, reserve your seat now.

BLOG ROUNDUP

Top 5 tips for efficiently deploying and configuring OneDrive

In the past few months we have shared multiple advantages of OneDrive enabling people to have ubiquitous access to all their files-online and offline, enhance mobile productivity and effectively share within and outside their organizations. This month, we focus on the deployment and configuration of the OneDrive Sync app at scale so you can successfully implement and leverage the benefits of the intelligent files app for Microsoft 365 – OneDrive. A set of deployment best practices that result in a great user experience and engagement – what we call the Sync “ideal state”. These are based on us working with many organizations externally as well as our own IT department here at Microsoft. The goal being a move closer to enabling a more “modern desktop” experience. This blog will help you with the top 5 tips for a successful deployment and configuration to achieve the Sync “ideal state”.

What’s new in Microsoft Stream – October 2019

The Microsoft Stream team is excited to share some new features that are rolling out now! You’ve shared feedback on ways Stream could be improved and we are listening. Some of the recent updates include: (1) Trim the beginning and end of recorded live events and videos on-demand, (2) Replace your video, and keep the same viewer link, (3) Retrieve deleted videos with the recycle bin, and (4) Office 365 Video migration enabled, which launches the Office 365 Video self-service migration for public regions.

Get things done on the go with calendar updates in Outlook mobile

Today, people are increasingly on the go, spending less time in front of big screens and finding small pockets of time to glance at their phones to stay on top of their day. Recently, we launched a number of calendar updates in Outlook for iOS and Android that will help you get things done on your small screen, giving you more flexibility to choose when to return to your big screen to get things done. These updates are designed to help you stay in touch with your commitments, get there on time, and surface information in the context of your day so that a quick glance is all you need. The recent updates include the ability to reschedule one event or all the events in a recurring meeting series, propose a new meeting time, view the location of a meeting in the notification, and more.

The new Project is rolling out!

We are pleased to announce the beginning of the rollout of Project, also known as Project for the web and formerly known as Project service. As announced at Ignite 2018, the release of Project for the web marks the next chapter for Microsoft Project. If you are an existing Project customer with either Project Online Professional or Project Online Premium subscriptions, Project for the web will be available in your Office 365 tenant, starting in October 2019. Any user with one of these subscriptions will get access to this new product. Project for the web is available through two subscriptions: Project Online Professional and Project Online Premium. Each of these subscriptions also includes Project Online and Project Online desktop client.

Top 6 email security best practices to protect against phishing attacks and business email compromise

Most cyberattacks start over email—a user is tricked into opening a malicious attachment, or into clicking a malicious link and divulging credentials, or into responding with confidential data. Attackers dupe victims by using carefully crafted emails to build a false sense of trust and/or urgency. And they use a variety of techniques to do this—spoofing trusted domains or brands, impersonating known users, using previously compromised contacts to launch campaigns and/or using compelling but malicious content in the email. In the context of an organization or business, every user is a target and, if compromised, a conduit for a potential breach that could prove very costly. Whether it’s sophisticated nation-state attacks, targeted phishing schemes, business email compromise or a ransomware attacks, such attacks are on the rise at an alarming rate and are also increasing in their sophistication. It is therefore imperative that every organization’s security strategy include a robust email security solution. So, what should IT and security teams be looking for in a solution to protect all their users, from frontline workers to the C-suite? Here are 6 tips to ensure your organization has a strong email security posture.

Announcing ServiceNow, Microsoft Teams and Planner integration with Microsoft Secure Score

It seems like just yesterday it was July and we were at Microsoft Inspire talking to partners about Microsoft Secure Score. Like years past they had a ton of ideas to share but one request was nearly universal between them. That request was the ability for security administrators to more easily assign secure score related Improvement Actions to co-workers for investigation, implementation, and remediation. This is a scenario that partners and customers alike have asked about for some time, and so we’re excited to announce the general availability of Microsoft Secure Score integration with ServiceNow, Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Planner. With it, security administrators can create ticket, tasks, and send messages directly from the Microsoft Secure Score experience. The Service Now option is the first example of the Microsoft 365 security center integrating with a 3rd party product and it makes creating tickets in ServiceNow super easy. Most of the fields will automatically be completed for you and you can edit fields, like priority and due date, before submitting the ticket. Creating tasks in Microsoft Planner and sending messages to a team in Microsoft Teams is just as easy. To post a message to a Team in Microsoft Team’s use the same type of process after selecting the Microsoft Team option from the Share menu.

NOTEWORTHY

Understanding Compliance Between Microsoft 365 Commercial, GCC, GCC-High and DoD Offerings

This article is the second of a series in the Microsoft Tech Community Public Sector Blog and touches on several key principles for compliance, including data residency versus data sovereignty. For the first article in the series, please refer to History of Microsoft Cloud Service Offerings leading to the US Sovereign Cloud for Government. We will focus on each of the US-based cloud offerings from Microsoft and compare the differences in compliance.

Azure AD: Users can now check their sign-in history for unusual activity

We’re excited to announce the public preview of Azure AD My Sign-Ins—a new feature that allows enterprise users to review their sign-in history to check for any unusual activity. As we discussed in a previous blog post, our team defends against hundreds of millions of password-based attacks every day. The My Sign-Ins page empowers users to see: (1) If anyone is trying to guess their password, (2) If an attacker successfully signed in to the account from a strange location, and (3) What apps the attacker tried to access. The rest of the blog post dives into the details on this update.

Support for Office 2010 is ending—get current with Office 365 ProPlus

The way we work has changed. When we launched Office 2010, our aim was to help customers unlock their potential with best-in-class tools they could use to be more productive. Ten years later, the very definition of productivity has changed significantly. To succeed today, businesses must help employees work collaboratively, from anywhere—and on schedules that fall outside the traditional nine-to-five framework. Meanwhile, staying ahead of ever-more-sophisticated security threats has simply outpaced the capacity of human vigilance alone. Upgrade to Office 365 ProPlus, a product built for today’s challenges and literally getting better all the time, as we continue innovating across—and investing in—the experience. Consider just a few benefits: AI and machine learning to advance creativity and innovation, real-time collaboration across apps, and Microsoft Teams as the hub for teamwork. With built-in, cloud-powered security to protect your data, Office 365 ProPlus also provides the peace of mind that comes with knowing your business will not only be productive, but safe.

Announcing the general availability of Desktop Analytics

We’re thrilled to announce the general availability of Desktop Analytics—the cloud-connected service that integrates with System Center Configuration Manager to help IT professionals take a data-driven approach to their management of Windows endpoints. Since announcing public preview in July, thousands of organizations have already benefited from the intelligence and insights generated by millions of enrolled endpoints. We’ve been hard at work delivering new features and improvements that address your feedback on the service. The purpose of Desktop Analytics is simple: To provide insight and intelligence you can use to make informed decisions about the update readiness of your Windows endpoints. By combining the data specific to your organization with aggregated insights from the millions of Windows devices connected to Microsoft’s cloud services, you can do some remarkable things…

Understanding Hybrid Migration Endpoints in Classic and Modern Hybrid

In this blog post we will discuss hybrid migration endpoints in both Classic and Modern hybrid topologies, explain what migration endpoints are and how you can find them. In Part 2 of this post (soon to follow) we will cover troubleshooting of any related issues. As you probably know, there are 2 flavors of hybrid configurations: Classic Hybrid and Modern Hybrid. Both of those hybrid topologies support hybrid remote moves based on Mailbox Replication Service (MRS) and specifically the MRSProxy extension. One of the greatest benefits of MRS-based moves is that we don’t need to recreate Outlook profiles and re-download the OST after migration, because we keep the same ExchangeGuid and mailbox signature of the mailbox when it is moved. With hybrid remote moves, we migrate all the data that is contained in the mailbox and we cannot skip any data (like dumpster or junk folder). | Related: Making your public folder migrations faster and more reliable

One thought on “Office 365 Weekly Digest | October 13 – 19, 2019”

  1. Pingback: Weekly digest: Office 365 changes - 14 to 19 October News #Office365 #136 - Nuno Árias Silva Website

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.