Microsoft 365 admin digest

How we're supplying feature release status for each new and updated feature announcement in the Message center in the Microsoft 365 admin center to help you track feature availability, specifically for your organization. If you're an admin overseeing a larger company looking to deploy Microsoft 365, we recently updated the search tools, recommendations, and layouts for the Advanced deployment guides & assistance page in the Microsoft 365 admin center and at setup. If you're in the Global Admin or Global Reader role, you'll see Experience insights on the top right of the Microsoft 365 admin center. An image demonstrating how to view Experience insights in the Microsoft 365 admin center. We recently completed the migration of our Office 365 community to the Microsoft 365 community on Tech Community. We're particularly excited to have the Microsoft 365 admin center discussion space to create focus for admin discussions. While we continue sharing highlights and insights that benefit IT admins through this blog series, consider subscribing to updates on specific items in the Microsoft 365 Roadmap, and look out for communications published in the Message center in the Microsoft 365 admin center. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3xYVKXX Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Blog

Upcoming February 2023 Microsoft 365 Champion Community Call

Join us for our next community call on February 28, where we will be discussing the new Adoption Score. Our monthly community calls are every 4th Tuesday of the month and will shift to 8:10 AM and 5:10 PM PT, to follow best practices. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3IOEjzN Source: Microsoft Tech Community Driving Adoption Blog

Simplifying change management of Microsoft 365

The Microsoft 365 Roadmap, offers great visibility into upcoming changes to Microsoft 365 apps and services right at the time they are announced. Going forward, we are committed to offering you a set of capabilities to further simplify change management while adopting Microsoft 365 services. Initially, the release status* will be available for a limited number of Microsoft Teams, Outlook on the web and Microsoft 365 admin center feature announcements. Targeted Release now available for GCC, GCC High, and DoD. Targeted release is another way Microsoft helps customers establish effective change management practices. These customers will be able to opt-in to Targeted Release and get early access for OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, Outlook for the Web, Microsoft 365 admin center features and some Exchange features, with information about other apps and services also available in future. To opt-in to Targeted Release, follow these steps in the Microsoft 365 admin center: Go to Settings -> Org Settings -> Organization profile -> Release preferences. Previously, the opt-in for Targeted Release provided early access to high quality releases for OneDrive for Business, SharePoint, Office for the web, Microsoft 365 admin center features, and some Exchange features. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3lS9UqZ Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Blog

Announcing the release of SharePoint Workflow Manager for SharePoint Server

SharePoint 2013 Workflows are a key scenario for SharePoint Server customers as they power many critical business processes and can operate in purely on-premises deployments. Today, Microsoft is pleased to announce the release of SharePoint Workflow Manager, a new workflow engine to power the SharePoint 2013 Workflows platform for SharePoint Server and replace Service Bus and Microsoft Workflow Manager. We recommend that all SharePoint Server customers using SharePoint 2013 Workflows upgrade to SharePoint Workflow Manager as soon as they're able to. Microsoft will focus all future investments and maintenance on SharePoint Workflow Manager rather than Microsoft Workflow Manager, including providing support beyond the year 2026. Microsoft will continue to provide technical support for existing deployments of Service Bus and Microsoft Workflow Manager until the version of SharePoint Server they're being used with reaches end of support, or until July 14, 2026, whichever comes first. Customers who need new SharePoint 2013 workflow engine installations can only install SharePoint Workflow Manager. We look forward to sharing more examples soon with the upcoming release of SharePoint Server Subscription Edition Version 23H1, the next feature update for SharePoint Server Subscription Edition. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3KfOoa4 Source: Microsoft Tech Community SharePoint Blog

Use Playlists to create collections of video or audio files in Microsoft 365

Today, we're introducing Playlists - a new and simple way to curate and share video or audio collections within Microsoft 365. With playlists in Microsoft 365, you add content using the new 'Playlist' template in Microsoft Lists. A published Playlist makes it easy to view and share a collection of audio and video files. Users can add any video and audio files to a playlist that they have edit access to. People with access to the playlist and to the files in the playlist can view the videos in order or skip back and forth between items in the playlist. Playlists can be used to create an organized collection of podcasts, training videos, product demo videos, Teams meeting recordings, or other audio/video content. We, too, expect to enable notification functionality to alert you when any new video is added to playlists that you are subscribed to. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3jTxkMh Source: Microsoft Tech Community SharePoint Blog

Building beautiful sites with purpose: Part 2

As you are building out your site one of the ways that you can add visual interest to your site is through your choice of images. TIP: All images should have alternate or decorative text applied to them to make your images and sites fully accessible. There are a few core differences between a communication and team site that will require us to make different choices to make our sites look beautiful. For the homepage of the communication site, we started out with a full-width section that utilized an image web part to display a high impact garden image with our prominent headline for our homepage included on the image. Team sites do not allow full-width sections and web parts. As you looked in detail at both of the sites created, you might have noticed that some of these had some extra pieces in them that made the site stand out a bit more and are not available directly out of the box. There are so many options for ways that you can customize your sites with images and designs, let your imagination run wild and create something beautiful. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3IloDnh Source: Microsoft Tech Community SharePoint Blog

The future of customer support: How technology is changing the game: A discussion with ChatGPT

In this blog post, we will explore some of the ways technology is changing the way customer support is provided and what the future of customer support may look like. Social media has become an essential tool for customer support as it enables customers to reach out to companies in real-time, and companies can respond quickly, providing an excellent customer experience. One of the key benefits of virtual customer support agents is that they can be available 24/7, providing support to customers at any time. Virtual customer support agents can be programmed to provide assistance in multiple languages, making it easier for companies to support customers from around the world. Virtual customer support agents can also provide support in virtual environments, such as virtual stores, which can help customers navigate products and services more easily. Overall, the future of customer support looks very promising, with technology advancements set to change the way customer support is provided. As we continue to see new technologies emerge, the customer support landscape will continue to evolve, and it will be exciting to see how companies will leverage these technologies to provide better customer support. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3Xu42RR Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Blog

Introducing OneDrive customer office hours

The OneDrive product and engineering team now offers monthly customer office hours for commercial and education customers as well as partners. IT Admins can join this one-hour Teams meeting to ask us questions, share feedback, and learn more about the features we're releasing soon and our roadmap. In office hours you are welcome to ask how to questions, raise issues and report bugs. Office hours is not an official support tool. To open support tickets, go to see Get support for Microsoft 365. Support for educators and education customers is available at https://aka. A note on privacy: OneDrive customer office hours is conducted via Microsoft Teams and all meeting participants including Microsoft employees will be able to see each other's name and work email address while in the office hours meeting and in the meeting chat. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3RVWs1t Source: Microsoft Tech Community OneDrive Blog

AI, roadmap, community, and more at the Microsoft 365 Conference

There has never been more exciting time to be in tech and the Microsoft 365 Conference in Las Vegas on May 2-4th is the best place to learn about the latest collaboration tools and AI capabilities that are transforming the workplace and can help you grow your impact and career. Sharing the latest Microsoft 365 product roadmap - including the artificial intelligence revolution. This Microsoft 365 Conference will have it all - content for end users, developers IT across Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Office, Viva, Syntex, Loop, and more including integration with Power Platform and Azure. You'll be able to hear from, ask questions of, and give feedback directly to Microsoft product leaders - including me! We also have an amazing partner ecosystem innovating to deliver solutions for your needs built on the Microsoft Cloud platform. Learning with the Microsoft 365 Community - the best community in tech. This is where the Microsoft 365 Conference comes in - bringing together a diverse community to learn from each other on how to apply the technologies to unlock the potential of every person and organization. I have been to many community events in my career - from SharePoint Conferences to Ignite, from Build to Microsoft 365 events around the world. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3YryygH Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Blog

Microsoft Viva Engage has the answers on The Intrazone podcast

On today's episode, we chat with Michael Holste and Steve Nguyen who focus on Microsoft Viva Engage and all the goodness it brings - with many exciting announcements disclosed today. You're going to hear about things geared toward leadership communications, ways to host and run internal AMAs, and the general notion of getting answers to your questions when using Microsoft Viva, what you'll hear referred to as Answers in Viva. Plus, you'll hear a little future news on Yammer branding it's a packed episode that will warm the community part of your heart. Microsoft Docs - The home for Microsoft documentation for end users, developers, and IT professionals. Be sure to visit our show page to hear all episodes, access the show notes, and get bonus content. Stay connected to the SharePoint community blog where we'll share more information per episode, guest insights, and take any questions or suggestions from our listeners and SharePoint users. The Intrazone, a show about the Microsoft 365 intelligent intranet. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3E6pshk Source: Microsoft Tech Community SharePoint Blog

Building beautiful sites with purpose: Part 1

For many people getting started with your pages and sites is the hard part. In this blog we will utilize the Bonnie's Community Garden volunteer site as our basis to take a deep dive into how you can build out a beautiful site using the tools available to you in today's Modern SharePoint Online sites. In this blog we will build out both a Communication site and a Team site to highlight 2 different ways that you can build a beautiful site using modern SharePoint and to learn more tips and tricks for making these sites in your organization. As you decide between Communication site and Team site the best news is that you can build beautiful sites with either. Communication sites can become a home site for your organization and are often utilized for Viva Connections. These sites might call for a one-off site theme for a special purpose or event. Our Designing sites with beautiful headers blog gives you more details about what you should do in your site header. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/40uOtMy Source: Microsoft Tech Community SharePoint Blog

Templates, site templates, lists templates The Intrazone a Microsoft podcast

It's a templates world, from start to finish - if you want to finish on time. In this episode, we first chat with Cathy Dew, senior product manager on the SharePoint team, about the value and design of SharePoint templates, Microsoft 365 templates, Lists templates, and more. We then connect with two of our partners from Pointwork in Copenhagen, Denmark: Peter Larsen, their CTO, and Lars Kristensen, a Principal consultant; we drill down into the real-world use and adoption of templates + governance and hear how they help streamline your business in production. Thanks for listening! If you like what you hear, we'd love for you to Subscribe, Rate and Review on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to visit our show page to hear all episodes, access the show notes, and get bonus content. Stay connected to the SharePoint community blog where we'll share more information per episode, guest insights, and take any questions or suggestions from our listeners and SharePoint users. The Intrazone, a show about the Microsoft 365 intelligent intranet. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3HImWyF Source: Microsoft Tech Community SharePoint Blog

Create a Microsoft List list across Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 app SharePoint app bar SharePoint itself Microsoft Teams Microsoft Lists app for iOS and Android. Let's create a list right here - a 'blog list' of all the places within Microsoft 365 where you can create a list, or where one gets created for you. Click the + New list button at the top for the Microsoft Lists app in Microsoft 365. Once on Microsoft365.com, click the + Create button in the upper left side of the screen AND home and personal that takes you directly into the Lists app to create a list, right into the common create list experience. Once you have configured the tab and have a list with list items, you can start a conversation about individual list items, view your list in the Teams mobile app, or access the list from the Lists app in Microsoft 365. Beyond viewing and editing existing lists and list items, you can create new lists while sipping coffee - create an Issue tracker list, or when in the passenger's seat headed to a work event - create a blank list to capture all your new people contacts. From here it's the same as if you're using Lists app in Microsoft 365: give your list a name, description, icon, color, and then choose where you wish to create the list - in your personal space or in a team workspace. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3l64et0 Source: Microsoft Tech Community SharePoint Blog

Share Your Feedback: Community Insights Survey

There are many Community Managers inside Microsoft who would love to hear your feedback about the way we support our communities. Now is your chance to share your ideas and priorities with us by taking just a few minutes to fill out our Community Insights Survey. This survey is anonymous and open to all community members regardless of how long you've been participating or your area of expertise. After we have compiled your insights, we will be sharing them back with the community during of our monthly General Sessions for our Microsoft Global Community Initiative. You'll hear about these results, what is happening with events and speaker support and so much more coming from our amazing Board of external community professionals. Please share our survey link with other community members so they can be included. We can't wait to see what you will share with us and how we can make the Microsoft Community experience even more amazing! -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3XWaK4k Source: Microsoft Tech Community Driving Adoption Blog