Adoption News and Resources

I posted a video with 3 tips to start the year strong in 2024 given all we are work on across Microsoft 365, Copilot and employee experience areas at Microsoft. I know you will appreciate the downloadable copies of our LinkedIn Adoption Newsletter that I've created for you. These documents have all the recent resources we've posted on adoption. Microsoft.com, information from across our community and notes about AMC itself. I've also included the digital download of an Adoption News Special Supplement - It's not about the AI, it's about the Trust - On Becoming an AI Powered Organization. In this paper I discuss hypothesis and practices yielded from observing early adoption of Copilot experiences, reviewing research and listening to adoption specialist around the world. We are the compass that will keep AI adoption on track. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/48aUotA Source: Microsoft Tech Community Driving Adoption Blog

Microsoft 365 Lighthouse: 2023 Year in Review

Broadened management capabilities to cover all Microsoft 365 customers. Lighthouse is no longer just for your Microsoft 365 Business Premium customers. One of the benefits of using Lighthouse is that it offers a multi-tenant view, enabling partners to switch between customer tenants they may be managing. Lighthouse continuously scans customer tenants to ensure they remain compliant so you can be alerted when a tenant drifts from your desired state. With the integration of Secure Score, you can take action to complete a deployment plan that helps your managed tenants achieve a higher Secure Score and then jump to view Secure Score details in the Microsoft 365 Defender portal without having to re-enter credentials or re-select the customer thanks to our integration with 17 admin centers. Expanding default baselines: Building on the success of this year's launch of default and custom baselines, we're upping the game by restructuring and doubling the number of tasks in the default baseline, covering the full value of Microsoft 365 and raising the standard for tenant configurations that keeps your customers safe, secure, and productive. We are very excited about the future of Lighthouse, and we look forward to working with you in 2024 to make Lighthouse the best tool for managing and securing all your Microsoft 365 customers. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3NDC6ch Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Business Blog

Microsoft 365 innovations for small and medium business in 2023

In November, we expanded our support for service-oriented small businesses by adding Microsoft Bookings to Microsoft Teams Essentials. Another exciting addition to the Microsoft 365 app family is Microsoft Loop. These are portable pieces of content that you can add to any other Microsoft 365 app, including Microsoft Outlook, Teams, and more. The Loop app is available for all Microsoft 365 Business Standard and Microsoft 365 Business Premium customers at no additional charge and you can add it on a mobile app for iOS or Android. Find out more on the Microsoft security web page for small and medium business. Microsoft 365 Business Premium brings the Office apps, Microsoft 365 services and Teams, with a comprehensive security suite to SMBs-offering protection across identity and access with Microsoft Entra ID Plan 1, endpoint security with Defender for Business, protection across email, Teams, OneDrive with Defender for Office 365, data protection with Azure Information protection and device management with Microsoft Intune. Keep current on what's coming to Microsoft 365, by visiting the Microsoft 365 Roadmap. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3GRwlE7 Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Business Blog

Connect with your customers using video

No matter what kind of business you're in, the odds are good that video marketing can help. A promo video is a great way to share your business' story with a wide audience. Let's say you want to make an online version of a video an employee took at a recent customer event. Clipchamp's interface provides editing tools to trim, cut, crop, and adjust your video. You can even split your video into smaller clips using the GIF format for clips smaller than 15 seconds. You can use it on YouTube or Instagram, but you can also embed video players on web pages or even in a Microsoft PowerPoint deck or Microsoft Word document. Premium includes 4k export resolution, premium stock content, and advanced video analytics in Microsoft Stream. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3RtQzsr Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Business Blog

Use Excel to talk with customers

Microsoft Excel is one of the core apps in the Microsoft 365 suite and is quite familiar to many small and medium business users. Excel can do much more than create and edit spreadsheets. Customers who explore Excel's features a bit more find that they can apply it to many tasks. He's found that Microsoft Teams is key for working across three locations and Microsoft OneNote helps his team make sure that punch lists are continuously managed and up-to date, but most of all, he looks to Excel to run across his business and directly communicate about complex projects with his customers. Davidson stands out because he not only uses Excel for its core spreadsheet features, he also uses it as a communication channel with his customers. He especially values how Excel allows his work to be transparent to his customers. Since many of his customers are already familiar with Excel, using it allows Davidson and his customers to discuss the work together and quickly clarify any concerns or adjust schedules. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3GRCPTk Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Business Blog

Introducing the OneDrive app for Microsoft Teams

As part of creating a coherent experience for your items across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, we're proud to showcase a new update from Microsoft Teams. Now Microsoft Teams is giving you access to our new OneDrive experience, with all the new enhancements, directly from Teams. The new OneDrive app for Teams is now rolling out to customers worldwide and will replace the generic Files app in Teams. Just like with OneDrive Web, on Teams you can now access all your Microsoft 365 files, including Loops, dashboards, and design boards. That means you'll now have a consistent and familiar file management experience across both Teams and OneDrive Web. To learn more about the OneDrive app experience for Teams, please check out the Microsoft Teams post: Effective file management with the next generation of OneDrive app for Microsoft Teams. Paul Diamond is the product marketing manager for Microsoft OneDrive and Stream. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3TAReef Source: Microsoft Tech Community OneDrive Blog

Most widely used SharePoint Framework ISVs from the Store

We are excited to see the continuous growth on the submissions of the SharePoint Framework solutions to the app source and on the usage of the SharePoint store for extending experiences for SharePoint and Microsoft Viva. It enables the same code to be used easily across the Microsoft 365 with this widely adopted tooling which uses industry standard tech with easy and automatic SSO and hosting. Deprecation of SharePoint add-in and Azure ACS authentication models - UX powered extensibility should be transformed to us SharePoint Framework powered implementations. Add-in model was introduced back in 2012 and has not really evolved since. Additional capabilities and features for SharePoint Framework solutions in Microsoft 365 as part of the SPFx 1.18 release. Please see following resources around getting started on building extensibility for Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Viva and SharePoint using SharePoint Framework. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3GQ48xA Source: Microsoft Tech Community SharePoint Blog

Poo in Poo out

I have seen a very nice graphic which shows in one picture the necessity of data hygiene when using Copilot.

I'm sure you've come across this image in one or other presentation. Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to find a version without a cluttering background or other image elements. I have therefore created my own version and am making it now available. Have fun with it at your next presentation.

Many thanks to Matt Wade who had the initial idea for this illustration.

Record management compliance from the get-go Microsoft 365 The Intrazone podcast

On this episode, we hear from Joanne Klein who focuses on compliance in Microsoft 365. Joanne is the founder of NexNovus, a Microsoft 365 Consulting company, and a Microsoft MVP in Microsoft 365 Apps and Services. She brings energy and technical expertise to real-world, synergistic implementations of collaboration balanced with compliance. I grabbed time with Joanne onsite during 365 EduCon - Chicago - to see what she was up to and to ask her a few questions I thought everyone would benefit from hearing her answers - especially when it comes to records management and specific tooling, content lifecycle management best practices, and how to get it right from the get-go. 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 and 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/41lttst Source: Microsoft Tech Community SharePoint Blog

Announcing preview of Microsoft 365 connectivity test tool for Microsoft 365 operated by 21Vianet

We are delighted to announce the launch of the Microsoft 365 Connectivity Test Tool specifically designed for our customers using Microsoft 365 operated by 21Vianet. This tool, which has been successfully used in the global market for several years, has now been tailored to meet the specific needs of the China market, aiding in the diagnostics and enhancement of your Microsoft 365 service connectivity. The Microsoft 365 service front door is an entry point on Microsoft's global network where Office clients and services terminate their network connection. For an optimal network connection to Microsoft 365, It's recommended that your network connection is terminated into the closest Microsoft 365 front door in your city or metro. A best Microsoft 365 service front door is one that is closest to your network egress, generally in your city or metro area. Use the Microsoft 365 network performance tool to determine location of your in-use Microsoft 365 service front door and the best service front door(s). If the tool determines your in-use front door is one of the best ones, then you should expect great connectivity into Microsoft's global network. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/46HcJNj Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Blog

Manage users across all your tenants using Microsoft 365 Lighthouse

The new User metrics report helps you see key user information across all your tenants in one place. As a Managed Service Provider managing multiple customer tenants, you need to keep track of the users across all your customer tenants. It's important to know how many users are in each tenant, how many are licensed, and how many are active. The User metrics report in Lighthouse gives you a high-level overview of the user inventories across all your customer tenants in a single view. You can see the total number of users, licensed users, global admin users, guest users, inactive users, and shared mailboxes that have not been blocked in each tenant. Selecting any tenant from this report opens the Users page from its Microsoft 365 admin center, where you can view and manage all their users. The User metrics report provides unprecedented visibility to critical information into users across every tenant you manage, making it easier to see and mitigate threats associated with user accounts. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3uMkp3P Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Business Blog

What's new for enterprise customers in the Microsoft 365 App

The Microsoft 365 app is home to all your favorite productivity apps, along with new apps for creation and expression like Loop, and any third-party apps you choose. Since the launch of the Microsoft 365 app in November 2022, we've released several new features and improvements which are available for enterprise customers to try today. The Microsoft 365 app is used to quickly find content and launch essential productivity apps all from one place. Microsoft Clipchamp is available in the Microsoft 365 app for enterprise customers to help you rapidly create and edit videos without leaving your flow of work. With the addition of Microsoft Graph connector content from third party data sources, users can now discover third party content across the Microsoft 365 ecosystem with the Microsoft 365 web app via search. Unleash creativity, unlock productivity, and uplevel skills with Microsoft Copilot in the Microsoft 365 app. We encourage you to try the Microsoft 365 app today by going to https://microsoft365.com or by downloading the Microsoft 365 app on your Android, iPad or iPhone. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/47BIGYB Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Blog