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, the new home for the Health dashboard, and explore the benefits of Microsoft product trials and how you can use them to maximize value from Microsoft 365 by accelerating new tool evaluation. This month, the Microsoft 365 admin center went live on the new domain, and is now accessible at admin. Admins can start trials and assign trial licenses to select users via the Microsoft 365 admin center by navigating to Billing > Your products page. In either case, Microsoft 365 admins retain full control with the ability to disable self-service trials, or take over trial subscriptions through the Microsoft 365 admin center. As always, stay current with the latest updates on the Microsoft 365 admin center from the Microsoft 365 roadmap and the message center. To keep up with the latest on Copilot for Microsoft 365, consider joining our Copilot for Microsoft 365 Tech Community. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/4aRI16X Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Blog

New features Microsoft announced at Enterprise Connect 2024

By Brenna Robinson, General Manager, Microsoft SMB. At this year's Enterprise Connect conference, Microsoft showcased new products and solutions improving business communications and collaboration. We'd like to share some of the announcements we've made, including new ways to manage your phone calls in Microsoft Teams Phone with the new Queues app. Microsoft Teams Phone is a key addition for a small business already using Microsoft Teams because it's the only cloud telephone solution natively built for Teams. The Queues app will be available as part of Teams Premium in Summer 2024 and requires a Teams Phone subscription. Microsoft 365 Business Standard and Microsoft 365 Business Premium customers can enhance their Teams experience with all these new features and be ready for the new Copilot capabilities as they're released. Just add Teams Premium, Copilot for Microsoft 3651 , and Teams Phone to your subscription. To purchase, enterprise customers must have a license for Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 or Office 365 E3 or E5, and business customers must have a license for Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Business Premium, or a version of these suites that no longer includes Microsoft Teams. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3IYk8P6 Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Business Blog

OneDrive security and mobile features now available for Microsoft 365 Basic subscribers

We are excited to announce the addition of ransomware detection and recovery, an expanded Personal Vault, password protected and expiring sharing links, and offline files and folders to Microsoft 365 Basic. With additional security features from OneDrive, Microsoft 365 Basic subscribers will get additional peace of mind for their files and photos, at the same low price. How it helps: Personal Vault in OneDrive provides an extra layer of security with Two-Factor Authentication, helping to ensure that only you can access your critical files. Microsoft 365 Basic subscribers previously could only store 3 files in their Personal Vault. Offline Files and Folders, empowers Microsoft 365 Basic customers with seamless access to your files on the go, whether you're traveling, in a location with poor connectivity, or simply want to save on data. OneDrive will confirm your files are available offline. Storage Considerations: The number and size of files you can store offline are limited by your device's available storage and the Microsoft Basic 100GB storage limit. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3VECc8w Source: Microsoft Tech Community OneDrive Blog

Microsoft Loop works with Microsoft Teams and Collaborative notes

Because Collaborative Notes are Microsoft Loop components, they automatically sync across all the places you share them. Since Collaborative Notes are Loop components you can work on them across other Microsoft 365 web apps, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Whiteboard. During a meeting, any participant can use Collaborative Notes to check off or re-order agenda items and take notes and assign follow-up tasks in one central place. Because Collaborative Notes are Loop components, you can add links and other components directly in the notes. Tasks and deadlines created in Collaborative Notes or other Loop components automatically sync with Microsoft Planner and the Microsoft ToDo App. If you're a Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Microsoft 365 Business Premium customer, you can try out Collaborative Notes right now in Microsoft Teams. If you have Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Microsoft 365 Business Premium, you can also purchase Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 as an add-on; Microsoft 365 Business Basic customers will also be able to purchase Copilot. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/43CYHfP Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Business Blog

Use Clipchamp to create accessible and impactful videos

Overall video viewership on the web has increased 25% since 20191, and there are more than three billion internet users accessing video content every day, so video is a medium you don't want to overlook when delivering an impactful message to your current and growing audience. That's why we released Microsoft Clipchamp last November, so that we can help you create professional-grade videos more quickly and easily. Clipchamp has an innovative interface that is purpose-built to make video creation easier, while still delivering polished and professional results. Microsoft Clipchamp autocaptions and text to speech Autocaptions. Clipchamp immediately generates captions for your video, which you can review and edit as needed. Your team can use the new text to speech feature to add voice over tracks to videos without requiring recording equipment or expensive voice layovers in post-production. Autocaptions and text to speech are both perfect examples of the features Clipchamp provides to help businesses make videos simply. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/3PGqEO1 Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Business Blog

Enable AI and productivity in your organization

Microsoft has put a stake in the ground, a commitment to bring AI and Copilot to everyone, everywhere. We do this in a responsible way and provide you with tools and techniques to use and manage it all in ways that work best for your organization. With Copilot now in Teams, Microsoft 365 Office apps, Windows, and Viva - and coming soon to SharePoint, OneDrive - understanding governance and best practices around piloting, planning, deploying, managing, securing, and driving adoption for Copilot can be a big undertaking. We're sending over 175 Microsoft product makers to the Microsoft 365 Community Conference. With that in mind, I invite you to join me, my team and colleagues April 30th - May 2nd, 2024, at the Dolphin & Swan Hotel in Orlando, Florida. See everything Microsoft is planning for the show, review our Microsoft 365 Community Conference Event Guide - it's got everything from keynote details, general sessions, breakouts, workshops, special events, and more. You'll find content and experts spanning Copilot and AI, Teams, Viva, SharePoint, OneDrive, Power Platform, Planner, and more - a little something for everyone no matter if you're of focus is business, IT, or extensibility. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/4a7n9IO Source: Microsoft Tech Community Driving Adoption Blog

Act now: Turn on or customize Microsoft-managed Conditional Access policies

Since we announced Microsoft-managed Conditional Access policies, we've rolled out these policies to more than 500,000 tenants in report-only mode. Customers shared that Microsoft-managed policies impact the number of Conditional Access policies that organizations can create. We've addressed this by making a significant change: Microsoft-managed policies will no longer count towards the Conditional Access policy limit. Another adjustment relates to existing Conditional Access policies. As a result, we have extended the time frame before enforcing the policies for this initial set of policies. For these three policies, you will have more than 90 days to review and customize your Microsoft-managed Conditional Access policies before they are automatically enforced. Review these policies in the Conditional Access policies blade. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/4cqQL5y Source: Microsoft Tech Community Microsoft 365 Business Blog

Introducing New Capabilities for File Viewer in Microsoft 365

Today we're happy to introduce performance, collaboration and interactivity upgrades to the file viewer in Microsoft 365. The file viewer in Microsoft 365 opens by default when you access non-Office files from OneDrive, SharePoint, or Teams. File viewer supports over 300 file types and also allows for some basic image editing and file annotation. Let's take a look at what's new in file viewer. This video shows the before and after changes to the file viewer in Microsoft 365. Copilot: Use Copilot right in file viewer to get file summaries, answer questions about file content, and extract information This seamless integration of Copilot enhances your file experience and helps you get the most out of your files. The file viewer in Microsoft 365 can display and scroll through over 300 different file types. -------------------- Read more at https://bit.ly/4anWk2S Source: Microsoft Tech Community OneDrive Blog