Microsoft 365 Admin Monthly Digest

Welcome to the Microsoft 365 IT admin blog, your monthly source of tips, insights, and best practices for managing and optimizing your Microsoft 365 environment. Microsoft developed the Adoption Score and Experience Insights dashboard to help IT departments gain insight into how their users are adopting Microsoft 365 services. Reports Reader: The Reports reader role is for people who need to view usage data and the activity reports in the Microsoft 365 admin center, get access to the Power BI adoption content pack, access sign-in reports and activity in Azure AD, or view data returned by the Microsoft Graph reporting API. Message center reader: People assigned this role can monitor message center notifications, receive weekly email digest of message center posts, share message center posts, read-only access to Azure AD services. For a full list, check out Admin roles in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Microsoft also recently rolled out the Accessibility Baselines to the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center earlier this month. Lastly, on May 25th, we held a Microsoft 365 Insider AMA to discuss the benefits of the Microsoft 365 Insider program and why you should join. While we continue to share IT admin highlights and insights in this blog series, consider also subscribing to Microsoft 365 admin center updates on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/43rFexC Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Blog

Microsoft Viva Connections solutions are now available in the Microsoft AppSource

Microsoft Viva Connections is your gateway to modern employee experience and is designed to keep everyone engaged and informed on any device through Microsoft Teams. Viva Connections is a customizable app in Microsoft Teams that gives different audiences in your organization a personalized destination to discover other Viva apps your organization is licensed for, relevant news, conversations, and the tools they need to succeed. Viva Connections is a great option for the Microsoft Teams ISV partners to expose their solutions in a new surface with millions of end users. Here's a video showcasing how you can find and acquire Viva Connections apps from the Microsoft AppSource. Viva Connections solutions are powered by the SharePoint Framework, which can be also used for extending other Microsoft 365 experiences like Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Microsoft 365 app and more. Here are some resources to get started with the Microsoft Viva Connections and building extensibility for Microsoft Viva with SharePoint Framework. If you are looking to build experiences for Microsoft 365, we strongly recommend joining our community calls and other Microsoft 365 & Power Platform Community activities covering Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Teams, Power Platform, Microsoft Viva, OneDrive, SharePoint and more. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3oETOTu Source: Microsoft Tech Community SharePoint Blog

Tech Community Live Microsoft Ask Microsoft Anything AMA for SharePoint OneDrive Lists and Stream

Four AMAs in one! Join us for a special Ask Microsoft Anything live video stream across four Microsoft content collaboration products: SharePoint, OneDrive, Lists, and Stream! Our product teams will be answering your questions about future roadmap and recent innovation - and offering insights on what to expect in the coming months. June 14th, 2023 from 10:00am - 11:30am PT Add to calendar and join live: aka. Each team will present five minutes of content to catch you up on the highlights, and to spark what questions you might ask, and then have 10-15 minutes to take your questions. Microsoft AMA banner with SharePoint, OneDrive, Lists, and Stream icons. Get the most out of your files with significant updates to the overall OneDrive user interface - a more simple and personalized experience. Your information collaboration is poised to get more intuitive, focused, and powerful. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/43q2fRy Source: Microsoft Tech Community SharePoint Blog

Frontline workers using shared Android devices can use Outlook, Edge, Viva Engage, and Power Apps

Companies often provide mobile devices to frontline workers that need to be shared between shifts. Microsoft's shared device mode allows frontline workers to easily authenticate by automatically signing users in and out of all the apps that have enabled this feature. We are announcing the general availability of Outlook, Edge, Viva Engage, and Power Apps on shared Android devices, joining the portfolio of apps including, Microsoft Teams and Managed Home Screen. Once signed into a shared Android device, frontline workers can immediately send and receive emails on Outlook to communicate with team members and their leadership team. On the right is an example of an inventory request in the Power Apps mobile app. With shared device mode support on Edge, frontline workers can now access any web-based app after signing into a shared Android device - they can easily resolve customer issues by bringing up a shipping app to check delivery status or searching internal wikis to answer technical questions. At the end of their shifts, frontline workers can sign-out easily with just one-click, removing all browser information on Edge or personal information on Viva Engage so that they can return it to the device pool for the next person to use. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3WwbVrl Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Blog

Public Preview for Network Provider Performance and Availability Reporting

We are thrilled to announce the availability of a Public Preview for network provider performance and availability reporting in the Microsoft 365 admin center. With these new reports, admins can see their users' network performance and availability based on the detected network provider. Network performance and availability relates to the network connectivity between Microsoft 365 users and Microsoft's network. The new reports show tenant-wide information but if you added office network locations, then we provide reports based on office location, as well. Network connectivity reports in the Microsoft 365 admin center. We will be sharing network performance and availability information with network providers and offering suggestions for improvements that relate to the Microsoft 365 user experience. If you are a network provider and want to learn more, see https://aka. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3MLeT7X Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Blog

Introducing Favorites in the Microsoft 365 app for Android

Favoriting a file is an easy way to ensure you can always find your favorite files faster. Whether it's a travel document, receipt, or your medical report, you can now favorite the file in the Microsoft 365 app and easily find it in the Favorites tab on the Home page. If these files are stored in your OneDrive, they will be available in your Favorites on www. Navigate to quick actions at the bottom of the file card, tap Favorite, and the file will appear in the Favorites tab. To remove a file from the Favorites tab, tap the Favorite button again to unfavorite. The file will no longer appear in the Favorites tab. Check out what features are in development or coming soon on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap, or view roadmap item, OneDrive: Favorite/Unfavorite files. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/4229VYV Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Blog

Helping Customers Fix Their Own Issues with Microsoft Defender for Office 365

We're excited to welcome one of our Microsoft 365 Supportability team members to talk more about working with Microsoft Defender for Office 365. Alex: Microsoft Defender for Office 365 boosts productivity, simplifies administration, helps prevent and remediate advanced threats, raises employee threat awareness, and keeps a secure posture. We include relevant videos from the Microsoft Defender for Office 365 playlist in self-help insights. An image of the Microsoft Defender for Office 365 playlist on the Microsoft Security YouTube channel. Microsoft 365 Defender for Office 365 documentation has information on permissions you'll need to view features or make changes, detailed instructions on how features work, relevant videos, and other learning content. An image of the start page for the Microsoft Defender for Office 365 setup guide in the Microsoft 365 admin center. If you have questions or feedback about Microsoft Defender for Office 365, engage with the community and Microsoft experts in the Microsoft Defender for Office 365 forum or visit the Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Blog in the Security, Compliance, and Identity community. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3o8A0rk Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Blog

Microsoft Search Connecting You to Knowledge and Expertise

Microsoft Search is deeply connected - natively to Microsoft 365 and via Graph Connectors to additional sources - moving beyond disparate silos, enabling discoverability of all important content. Microsoft Search finds information about people, resources, and data in one place, no matter where you search from. Microsoft Search works together with Microsoft Viva and Syntex, enhancing employee experiences and powering rich content intelligence. Below, we focus on three scenarios plus a peek at the near future - to represent the breadth of Search capabilities with Microsoft 365, each with demo videos to see it all in action and to best understand the full value of Microsoft Search. Microsoft Search allows you to bring third-party content in the mix with core Microsoft 365-based content - allowing users to get to all the content they work on in one place. Microsoft Search uses insights from Microsoft Graph to show results that are relevant to each user. Learn more about Microsoft Search, including Search admin documentation. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3BA3Sjy Source: Microsoft Tech Community SharePoint Blog

Upcoming May 2023 Microsoft 365 Champion Community Call

Join our next community call on May 23 to talk about Group Level Aggregates and Organizational Messages in Adoption Score, as well as a Community Spotlight segment. We will be starting the call at 5 minutes past the hour for both of our sessions, and it will still end at the top of the hour. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3Id0j6I Source: Microsoft Tech Community Driving Adoption Blog

"Adobe plus Microsoft The Intrazone podcast

We touch on Adobe integration with Microsoft 365, Power Platform, Teams, Edge, SharePoint and more. We, too, take a trip down PDF memory lane and some of the recent Adobe AI announcements coming out of the recent Adobe Summit 2023 AND NAB 2023. Sit back and get up to speed on how two companies are better than one. 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/3ObgV2t Source: Microsoft Tech Community SharePoint Blog

Create and customize your org charts using new capabilities in Visio for the web

Today, we're excited to announce new capabilities to help you quickly create and further customize your org charts to make them even more informative and useful. Visio Plan 1 and Visio Plan 2 subscribers can access a menu of new formatting options from the new Format Org Chart task pane. An image of an org chart in Visio for the web demonstrating how to manually open the new Format Org Chart task pane. An image of an org chart in Visio for the web highlighting the new Node Style options in the Format Org Chart task pane. An image of an org chart in Visio for the web highlighting the new Upload Photos button in the Format Org Chart task pane. An image of an org chart in Visio for the web highlighting the new Employee Fields options in the Format Org Chart task pane. An image of an org chart in Visio for the web demonstrating how to create a new child node using the plus button. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/41Bgq4Q Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Blog

Community Spotlight- Meet Sean McEvoy- Business Applications Specialist at Aleron

Welcome to the first of our series: Community Spotlight! Each month we are highlighting Community Superheroes who are giving back to the community by sharing their story in our Community Spotlight Series. Sean leveraged his business and marketing background to understand the organization's needs and rebuilt a net new CRM system from scratch-based on the team's specifications. This achievement caught the attention of the Aleron leadership team, and within eight months, Sean was then given the duties of Dynamics 365 Administrator in the IT department, and promoted to Enterprise Application Analyst. Sean is an excellent example of how an individual with a business background in marketing can succeed in the technology field. A testament to the power of self-learning and the many resources available to individuals looking to break into a new field, Sean leveraged online learning platforms, community resources, and trial and error to develop the skills he needed to transition to a new field. To further advance his skills and provide him with a recognized credential to demonstrate his expertise in the field, Sean is currently working on the Power Platform Functional Consultant Associate course and badge. Community articles and resources: Using these invaluable sources of information to break into a new field, through trial and error, Sean was able to experiment with the technology and learn from his mistakes, developing a deep understanding of how to use the Power Platform effectively. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3MniV6i Source: Microsoft Tech Community Driving Adoption Blog

Microsoft 365 Lighthouse helps you secure and improve the health of your customer tenants

Microsoft 365 Lighthouse makes it easier than ever for Managed Service Providers to deliver services to small- and medium-sized customers at scale, with multi-tenant management capabilities that help secure users, devices, apps, and data across customer tenants. With a comprehensive security baseline that ensures your customer tenants are healthy and secure, an intuitive deployment process, and rich deployment insights, Lighthouse helps MSPs spend more time proactively securing their customer tenants and less time reactively resolving security threats or breaches. The Microsoft 365 Lighthouse Security baseline provides standard tenant configurations that deploy core security policies and compliance standards that keep your tenants' users, devices, apps, and data secure. Lighthouse saves you the trouble by checking newly onboarded tenants to see how they're configured and comparing detected configurations to your deployment plan, so you'll know whether and to what degree each task is already done for each tenant before you even begin, helping you configure tenants faster than ever before - lowering your cost to serve and accelerating your journey to managing a Zero-Trust environment across all of your customers' tenants. Securing your customer tenants It's not just about helping you do the right work - it's also helping you do the work right! You can complete tasks by deploying a new configuration to the tenant right from Lighthouse or by helping you edit the existing configurations to meet the task's requirements. Animation showing how to review detected configurations in Microsoft 365 Lighthouse. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3MjNXMc Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Business Blog

"Jeff Teper is your Copilot" 🎙

Get your wings as we dig into all the announcements from May 2, 2023 - as presented at the Microsoft 365 Conference in Jeff's opening keynote. On today's episode, we drink from the news firehose with Captain Jeff Teper. We grabbed time with Jeff onsite in Vegas shortly after he and his team delivered a 90-minute whirlwind opener of a keynote - one that covered the value of community, the breadth of Copilot technology, the New Teams, big SharePoint disclosures - including Copilot in SharePoint, new OneDrive experiences, Lists goodness, and value for IT with recent admin and security innovation. 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/42uHt2T Source: Microsoft Tech Community SharePoint Blog

Coordination is the key to spontaneity with these features in Outlook on the web and Teams

Spontaneity in flexible working requires coordination. Today we are highlighting Microsoft 365 features that will bring transparency and focus on where you and your colleagues are working: work hours and location. These features will appear in Outlook on the web and Teams and bring the flexibility of enabling users to share where they are working. The work hours and location features allow you to specify more details about your work schedule and preferences, like from where you're working and whether you work different hours on different days. Set your work hours and location in Outlook and sync with Teams. When your schedule changes, as it often does in a flexible work environment, it is easy to make adjustments to your schedule in Outlook and Teams and have them sync, reducing the number of tools to communicate your presence. These new Outlook and Teams features work together to allow you to easily share where you're working within Microsoft products you're regularly using to communicate other aspects of your schedule. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3Mg5JA6 Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Blog

Empower your organization to achieve more with the Accessibility Baseline.

Our latest addition to the Microsoft 365 Apps Admin Center and Cloud Policy is the Accessibility Baseline. It is a set of accessibility policies and or recommend settings for policies to enable Accessible document creation across tour organization. If you're using Microsoft 365 Apps, you're good to go! This feature is embedded in the Cloud Policy toolset in the Microsoft 365 Apps Admin Center and will enable an IT Pro to configure policies which are centered around accessible document creation. Example: Screen shot of the Accessibility Bassline with the current policies filtered and configuring a policy for Microsoft Excel. Office.com with an Excel policy configured. As you can see once the policy is configured the end user cannot turn off Check for accessibility while editing. Screenshot of the Accessibility options in the backstage of Excel showing a policy configured. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/42vchkh Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Blog

The Future of Customer Support: Creativity in Customer Support

Ross Smith: I want to talk about creativity in customer support. There are several ways in which large language models like me can be used to support creative problem-solving in customer support. In summary, while large language models like me may not be able to originate completely new ideas, they can be leveraged to augment human creativity and support agents in generating innovative solutions to customer problems. ChatGPT: Yes, it is possible that future LLMs may be able to inject more nuanced and creative metaphors into their responses to support customer support interactions. In summary, while there are still significant challenges to overcome in enabling machines to generate truly creative and nuanced language, there is promising research and development underway that suggests that future large language models may be able to inject more sophisticated metaphors and values into their responses to support customer support interactions. Modern customer support: Customer support is increasingly becoming more technologically-driven, utilizing AI and automation to improve efficiency and deliver personalized experiences. To build a better future for the next generation, we must foster a culture of creativity and interdisciplinary thinking in all aspects of life, from customer support to the future of work. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3HyTb45 Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Blog

SharePoint in the AI Era: Introducing Copilot in SharePoint & 10 more innovations for creators

Today, we're excited to share the latest SharePoint innovations that will make it simpler for everyone to build more compelling and engaging SharePoint sites and pages. Simpler authoring - introducing Copilot in SharePoint, a new SharePoint home page, and coauthoring experiences. Combining the power of Large Language Models, your data in the Microsoft Graph, and our best practices for creating engaging web content, Copilot in SharePoint turns your words into SharePoint sites and pages. The new SharePoint start makes it simple to create SharePoint content. When combined with the new SharePoint start, these improvements make it easier than ever to connect SharePoint to more collaborative team needs. That's why we built SharePoint news, which generates over one billion impressions for SharePoint content every month. Customers rely on SharePoint to provide site and page templating, UX-layer parts and plug-ins using the SharePoint Framework, and data access via Microsoft Graph. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3Vqp2cP Source: Microsoft Tech Community SharePoint Blog

Experience the New OneDrive: Fast, Organized, and Personalized

We are excited to announce a new OneDrive experience for work and school that starts with the OneDrive home page and spans file experiences across Microsoft 365. The new features and upgraded design make it faster to get to all your personal, shared, and team files in OneDrive so you can be more productive. The new OneDrive Home experience reduces the time to find your files so you can spend more time doing. The best newsthis new home experience in now available in OneDrive for work and school, with AI file recommendations coming soon! Find and work with your files effortlessly with the new OneDrive for Web home experience. Now, you can easily favorite files in OneDrive using the familiar 'star-tap' experience found in Microsoft 365 apps. We're optimizing the unified file sharing experience OneDrive delivers across Microsoft 365. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3nuAXtA Source: Microsoft Tech Community OneDrive Blog

New era in content management and security in SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams

As the sprawl of Teams and SharePoint sites contribute to the exponential growth of your organization's digital estate, it's important to identify the top sites that require close attention. SharePoint admin views SharePoint data access governance insights and triggers site access reviews to site owners, and restricts access for an overshared site, Project Apollo. Users who are not the current members of the specified security groups will be denied access even if the site or its content was previously shared with them by breaking inheritance from the site permission. It empowers SharePoint admins to control the list of third-party applications allowed access to a given SharePoint site or OneDrive. For sites connected to Teams, the inactivity status will be determined by evaluating user actions in both Teams and the SharePoint site. SharePoint admin creates an inactive site policy in SharePoint admin center and site owner responds to the policy notification. Organization lifecycle management SharePoint cross-tenant sites content migration - Private preview. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/44oOG67 Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Blog

Microsoft Lists: Easier, Better, Faster, Stronger

Microsoft Lists is designed to unlock your team's full potential by reducing the strain and drudgery of keeping everybody organized, on the same page, and moving forward together. We're proud to announce a batch of changes coming later this year that make Lists faster and more powerful than ever before. This much-lauded feature from Lists MSA is coming to all Lists this summer! Everybody should experience the magic of sharing a list in a meeting and seeing those recipients file in and start moving around the list making updates with you. We are making it easier to collect and gather information through a new forms experience built right inside Microsoft Lists. Microsoft Lists first and foremost is about empowering normal people to create versatile and efficient databases to run their teams. For those of you using the Lists MSA preview to organize information for your personal life, your small business, or your side hustle - rest assured, the changes described in this post are coming to those lists as well. We're also proud to announce that Lists MSA support is coming to the Lists iOS app by the end of May, and Android app support is coming by the end of June. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/41VYbYN Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Blog

Microsoft launches the Teams Payments app for small businesses

Our vision for Microsoft Teams has always been to bring together communication and collaboration tools in one place, from chat and meetings to apps and files-and now payments. The new Payments app, currently in public preview in the Teams Store, allows small businesses in the United States and Canada to easily manage and collect payments from within Teams on your desktop or mobile device during a meeting. We have partnered with some of the largest players in the payments space to combine the core collaboration capabilities in Teams with powerful commerce features in the first-of-its-kind app that allows you to accept payment during business conversations. Once the Payments app is configured and you've established a connection to your GoDaddy Payments, PayPal, and Stripe account(s), you can send a payment request to your customers during a meeting in just a few clicks. An at-a-glance view of payments you have received, and those still outstanding, helps you manage payments from customers. The Payments app is available in public preview in the Teams Store for Teams Essentials and Microsoft 365 business subscribers at no charge. Learn more about how Microsoft is serving SMBs in our National Small Business Week blog: Microsoft 365 innovations across AI, payments, and collaboration tools to help small and medium businesses grow. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3ViudM5 Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Business Blog

Microsoft 365 Admin Monthly Digest

In this month's Microsoft 365 Admin Digest issue, we'll dive into Microsoft's latest AI research, a new case study about change management with Microsoft 365, Microsoft's latest AI research, show you where to find relevant trainings for your users, and share details about important changes coming to Exchange Online. Since those roles are often the first to receive notifications of upcoming changes in the Message center, their feedback through the Microsoft 365 admin center can influence future roadmap items. We've already covered some of the tools in the Microsoft 365 admin center that can support this, like Adoption Score and Experience Insights, through greater insights into productivity. The technical upskilling and Microsoft certifications in last month's Admin Digest blog post can help the latter determine the best ways to use AI for their orgs. Microsoft domain that will bring authenticated, user-facing Microsoft 365 apps and services onto a single, consistent and cohesive domain. While we continue share IT admin highlights and insights in this blog series, consider also subscribing to Microsoft 365 admin center updates from the Microsoft 365 Roadmap. We also highlight new feature releases and enhancements released each month in our What's new in the Microsoft 365 admin center article. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3LmtyET Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Blog

Microsoft SharePoint Roadmap Pitstop April 2023 The Intrazone

April 2022 brought some great new offerings: Project integration in Viva Goals, Viva Connections: Mobile SharePoint site navigation, improved Graph Connector content results, eDiscovery document version shared, Microsoft Lists: Applied filters, Microsoft Loop:.fluid >. Teamwork updates across SharePoint team sites, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams. Create SharePoint pages and news, and other content types, right from within the SharePoint app bar. From the SharePoint app bar, select the Create button and then select an option from SharePoint News post or SharePoint page, right alongside existing ability to create SharePoint sites, new Microsoft Lists or the Microsoft 365 app files - Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote), and more. Our overall solution blends Microsoft Syntex, SharePoint, Microsoft Viva, and Microsoft Teams - compelling to adopt and pleased to be recognized by Forrester. Since the release of SharePoint workflows, Microsoft has evolved workflow orchestration to not only encompass SharePoint, but all the productivity services you use with Microsoft 365 and beyond. Starting April 2nd, 2026, Microsoft will remove the ability to run, or create and execute SharePoint 2013 workflows for existing tenants. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3LebzA8 Source: Microsoft Tech Community SharePoint Blog

Set up GDAP

Through an experience designed specifically for MSPs, Lighthouse simplifies the process of setting up delegated access and empowers MSPs to set up GDAP end-to-end. Lighthouse offers GDAP templates to help MSPs save time and reapply GDAP settings as new customers are onboarded. To segment permissions across customers, we've enabled the capability to set up multiple GDAP templates. Setting up GDAP means your customers and users are set up for success. Migrate to GDAP using Lighthouse's recommendations before key milestonesMicrosoft will begin automatically migrating DAP relationships to GDAP relationships with a limited set of roles at the end of May 2023. Ahead of these dates, we recommend that MSPs use Lighthouse's GDAP setup wizard to transition their customers to GDAP and adopt our recommendations to ensure customer access isn't disrupted. For a limited time, Lighthouse makes it possible to set up GDAP relationships automatically for any customer tenant that still has DAP. After DAP is deprecated, MSPs will require customer approval for new GDAP relationships. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3HsN2WW Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Business Blog