Office 365 Weekly Digest | Week of December 4 - 10, 2016

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Welcome to the December 4 - 10, 2016 edition of the O365 Weekly Digest. Interesting updates for Office 365 ProPlus, Yammer and Microsoft MyAnalytics highlight this week's content. A Microsoft IT Showcase focused on information security and an awesome announcement for Azure Active Directory are noteworthy this week.

MESSAGE CENTER

Note: The information below may not be posted to your Office 365 tenant as not all notifications apply to all tenants.

 

Updated Feature: Improvements to Private Messaging Experience in Yammer

Posted: December 5, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Stay Informed | Action: Awareness | Beginning January 2017, we will be rolling out a number of improvements to the private messaging experience in Yammer as we combine Private Messages and Online Now (chat) into a single, simpler interface. This rollout is expected to be complete by the end of March, 2017.  Private messages will now be readily accessed from the left navigation bar on the home screen, right below the list of groups. As part of this redesign, the current Online Now (chat) experience will no longer be available, but you'll be able to quickly message your coworkers using the new experience. Please visit https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Yammer-Blog/Improvements-to-the-private-messaging-experience-in-Yammer/ba-p/33161 to learn more.

 

Office 365 Auto-expanding Archiving rollout update

Posted: December 5, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Stay Informed | Action: Awareness | We have paused the rollout of Office 365 Auto-expanding Archiving. We originally announced the rollout of Office 365 Auto-expanding Archiving, in May. This feature is designed to accommodate customers who require very, very large archiving storage. This will allow you to take advantage of a truly bottomless archive without needing to call support or perform any manual steps. To ensure the most stable environment for our customers, we have paused the rollout of this feature. When we resume this rollout, we will communicate again via Message Center. We anticipate that the deployment resuming in the first quarter of 2017. For additional information, please visit https://blogs.office.com/2015/06/03/announcing-auto-expanding-highly-scalable-archives-for-office-365-email.

 

New Feature: All newly created Yammer groups will connect to Office 365 Groups

Posted: December 6, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Prevent or Fix Issues | Action: Awareness | Beginning January 2017, when a new Yammer group is created, a corresponding Office 365 group will be created in Azure Active Directory, and Office 365 Group resources will be provisioned. This rollout is expected to be completed by the end of March 2017. Going forward, you will be able to manage Office 365 connected Yammer groups in Azure Active Directory, similar to other Office 365 groups. Also, each new group created in Yammer will get an associated SharePoint site, SharePoint document library, OneNote notebook, and a Planner plan. Note that this will only affect customers who have enforced Office 365 identity for Yammer users, and who are in the 'One Office 365 tenant associated with one Yammer network' (1 tenant:1 network) configuration. More details are available at https://support.office.com/article/Yammer-groups-are-now-Office-365-Groups-d8c239dc-a48b-47ab-b85e-6b4b8191a869.

 

Updated Feature: Monthly feature updates for Office 2016 for Office 365

Posted: December 7, 2016 | Urgency: Normal | Category: Stay Informed | Action: Awareness | The latest feature updates for Office 2016 for Office 365 are now available. This month’s update includes new feature updates, as well as other security and bug fixes. The December updates include (but not limited to): (1) Insert and edit scalable vector graphics (SVG), (2) Use icons from a standard library of scalable vector graphics (SVG) files, (3) Accessibility improvements, (4) Real-time typing when co-authoring, (5) Improved reading with Learning Tools and (6) Save a file to a recently used folder. If you have users configured for Current Channel release updates, you may want to get up to speed on the new features this month. Other than that, you do not need to do anything to prepare for this change. To see a complete list of all the updates to Office in December, please visit https://technet.microsoft.com/office/mt465751.

 

Reminder: SharePoint Online Public Websites are going away

Posted: December 9, 2016 | Urgency: High | Category: Plan for Change | Action: Required by March 31, 2016 at 5:59 PM UTC | As we originally communicated in March 2015, new Office 365 subscription plans no longer include the SharePoint Online public website feature. We notified Office 365 customers who currently use this feature could continue using this feature for a minimum of two years. Beginning March 2017, existing SharePoint Online organizations may no longer have access to the public website feature. You are receiving this message because our reporting indicates your organization has the SharePoint Online public website feature available. Beginning March 2017, your customers may no longer have access to your public website. In January 2017, we will have a process in place allowing you to postpone the removal of your SharePoint Online public website. We will communicate again in January, via Message Center, with more details. Alternative public website solutions from industry leaders are now available, and you should begin investigating these alternatives to integrate your public presence within the Office 365 environment. Additional information is available at https://aka.ms/spopublicwebsite_mc.

 

UPCOMING EVENTS Azure Active Directory Webinars for December

When: Multiple sessions currently scheduled through December 14, 2016 | Are you looking to deploy Azure Active Directory quickly and easily? We are offering free webinar briefings on key Azure Active Directory deployment topics! Sessions include: Getting Ready for Azure AD, Streamlining Password Management, Securing Your Identities with Multi-Factor Authentication, Managing Enterprise Applications and Accessing Your Organization’s Internal Apps. Each 1-hour or 75-minute webinar is designed to support IT Pros in quickly rolling out Azure Active Directory features to their organization. All webinars are free of cost and will include an anonymous Q&A session with our Engineering Team. So come with your questions!  Capacity is limited. Sign up for one or all of the sessions today!

 

Office Small Business Academy: New Year Inspiration - Taking the Leap into Entrepreneurship

When: Tuesday, December 13, 2016 @ 9:00am PT | Are you finally ready to be your own boss?  Take the leap into entrepreneurship with advice and business-minded motivation from our team of experts. In this episode, get strategies and expert advice for starting your new business in the new year. Plus, learn how to bring your presentations to life in a fraction of the time with PowerPoint Designer and Zoom—the newest additions to PowerPoint. | Episode Preview | Registration (direct link)

 

FastTrack Webinars: Learn how to do more, together

When: Multiple sessions currently scheduled through December 14, 2016 | Ask questions, learn shortcuts and find out how Office 365 can make you and your team more productive. Each webinar is a live, instructor-led session offered at multiple dates and times. Facilitated discussion follows each session, with opportunities to ask questions and discuss specific scenarios to you. Direct registration links for each webinar are provided below.

 

BLOG ROUNDUP Learn more about the insights in Microsoft MyAnalytics

On this week's episode of Microsoft Mechanics, we take a tour of the latest updates to Microsoft MyAnalytics. Catherine Pidgeon shares how to use MyAnalytics to improve work impact and success. From understanding where her time goes, to identifying areas of opportunity and gaining insight into collaboration with her most important groups, Catherine provides a comprehensive tour of current and roadmap features. We are also announcing the availability of external contacts within your MyAnalytics experience. Now you will be able to stay up to date on how you interact with important contacts outside of your organization. Whether they are customers, partners or external staff—sometimes those you work with across organizations are the most important to your success. Now you can quickly add important external contacts to your MyAnalytics dashboard to stay updated with collaboration insights like total collaboration time, time in meetings, read percent and response time.

 

Microsoft IT Showcase: Changing our approach to information security at Microsoft

With collaboration on the rise, Microsoft IT is rethinking information security. Social collaboration, ubiquitous connectivity, and new ways of collecting data and storing content encourage innovation and content sharing—but they also pose potential security risks for organizations. We help protect content through technologies like Microsoft Office Delve, Azure Information Protection, and Microsoft Teams—securing content wherever it exists, and in ways that go beyond traditional IT security.

 

Microsoft Flow: Introducing Guided Learning and more new services

In this week's post, we're introducing Guided Learning - start your learning journey through Flow with a sequenced collection of courses, and understand the extensive and powerful capabilities of Flow. The guided learning is divided into four sections – (1) Getting started, (2) Building flows, (3) Managing flows and (4) Environments and Data Loss Prevention. Also, two new premium services - Freshdesk and GoToMeeting - are now integrated with Flow.

 

Visio is coming to the web and iOS

Visio has been a trusted tool in diagramming for more than a decade. And we know its visual communication in the form of diagrams will become more powerful when anyone in the company can consume—regardless of their location or device. We’re excited to announce Visio Viewer for iPad and Visio Online Preview, enabling users to share or access diagrams from nearly anywhere, gain operational insights and explore real-world diagrams easily. As one of the most widely adopted process mapping tools, Visio helps thousands of organizations blueprint the business processes that drive their desired transformation. Using Visio Online Preview and Visio Viewer for iPad, you can securely store your diagrams in OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online and easily share them with anyone as a link—allowing your colleagues to view and interact with diagrams effortlessly across devices.

 

NOTEWORTHY Video: Office 365 Update for December 2016

Format: Video (11 minutes) | Jim Naroski covers recent enhancements to Office 365, including Microsoft Teams, scalable graphics in Office, new usage reports, eDiscovery updates and more.

 

Introducing Azure AD Pass-Through Authentication and Seamless Single Sign-on

This news might well be our biggest news of the year. Azure AD Pass-Through Authentication and Seamless Single Sign-on are now both in public preview! When we talk to organizations about how they want to integrate their identity infrastructure to the cloud, we often hear the same set of requirements: “I’ve got to have single sign-on for my users, passwords need to stay on-premises, and I can’t have any un-authenticated end points on the Internet. And make sure it is super easy”. We heard your feedback, and now the wait is over. We're excited to announce we have added a set of new capabilities in Azure AD to meet all those requirements: Pass-Through Authentication and Seamless Single Sign-on to Azure AD Connect! These new capabilities allow customers to securely and simply integrate their on-premises identity infrastructure with Azure AD.

 

Skype for Business: Meeting Invite Updates (Windows client) - Formatting Dial-In String & Link to Join

Based on feedback we’ve heard from our customers, we’ve made a few updates to Meeting Invites that are generated by the Skype for Business desktop client. In this blog post, we’ll focus on two new additions – the formatting of the dial-in string, and a link to join using the web app. Let’s take a look! In the meeting invite, the “Join by phone” section now creates hyperlinks for the dial-in numbers that includes a pause (the comma) followed by the Conference ID. This is especially useful when a user wants to join the conference using a mobile phone that doesn’t have the Skype for Business mobile app installed. In addition to the formatting for Join by phone, we’ve added a hyperlink that allows joining directly using the Skype Web App. In this instance, the user would be able to participate in the meeting using the web application, even if they have the Skype for Business client installed locally. This is useful if the user is having difficulty joining the meeting using the full client.