Microsoft announced that the Loop app will be licensed for four Microsoft 365 product SKUs (two for SME, two for enterprise). Preview users that don’t have one of the chosen licenses are unaffected, at least for now. The licensing decision doesn’t affect the use of Loop components in applications like Outlook and Teams chat, but it is part of a trend to license new functionality in Microsoft 365 rather than the older Office 365 products.
At a September 21 event in NYC, Microsoft announced that the Microsoft 365 Copilot digital assistant will be generally available to enterprise customers on November 1. Quite how many customers will be willing to cough up for license upgrades and $30/month Copilot subscriptions will soon be seen. The advent of the Copilot Lab to help users come to grips with building good prompts to drive Copilot is an excellent idea, but the focus on Monarch as the sole Outlook client might become a blocking factor for some.
Recent details released about the Storm-0558 attack on sensitive U.S. agencies revealed the importance of the MailItemsAccessed event for forensic investigations. Luckily, after Microsoft was a tad embarrassed by the recent Storm-0558 attack, tenants with Office 365 E3 or Microsoft 365 E3 licenses can capture the MailItemsAccessed event for mailboxes without having to pay for Microsoft Purview Audit Premium. But you might have to do a little work to ensure that the right audit configuration is used for all mailboxes.
A recent update for the Loop app allows users to create and collaborate on code blocks. The editor is very simple and doesn’t check syntax, but it could be a way for people (within a tenant) to collaborate and sketch out potential code solutions to problems. You can create Loop components from code blocks and use those components with Teams chat and Outlook messages, if you remember to stay within your tenant.
Microsoft has moved to resolve anti-competitive problems around bundling of Teams in Office 365 and Microsoft 365 by introducing new Microsoft 365 and Office 365 EEA licenses that don’t include Teams. Existing customers aren’t affected and can continue to use Microsoft 365 and Office 365 licenses that include Teams. At the same time, Microsoft promises to make it easier for third parties to integrate apps with Teams and the Microsoft 365 apps. We’ll see how that turns out in the future.
Microsoft has decided to remove the Reuse Files feature from Word. They haven’t said why this is happening, but 8t might be linked to the launch Copilot for Microsoft 365. “AI-Lite” features like Reuse Files don’t add a huge amount of value and possibly cloud the message about AI in Microsoft 365. The truth is that we don’t know why Microsoft is removing Reuse Files from Word. Will they do the same in Outlook and PowerPoint?
Microsoft announced on August 17 that they are not proceeding with the implementation of dark mode support in the Teams Admin center. The news came as a surprise, but it’s an indication of the lack of user interface consistency across the different Microsoft 365 administrative consoles. Token handling is another example. I can live without dark mode, but being forced to sign out by the Teams admin center is a pain.
A Microsoft 365 Copilot session for partners didn’t reveal much new about the technology, but it did emphasize software, prompts, and content as core areas for implementation projects. Building good queries is difficult enough for normal searches, so how will people cope with Copilot prompts. And are the data stored in Microsoft 365 ready for Copilot? There’s lots to consider for organizations before they can embrace Microsoft’s digital office assistant.
Microsoft has announced that they are replacing the user data search tool with Purview eDiscovery standard. The change will happen on 30 August 2023 and active user data search cases will be transferred automatically to eDiscovery standard at that point. The change makes sense because the user data search tool hasn’t been enhanced much since its inception. Anyway, user data search cases were simply a special form of eDiscovery case, and now they’re all the same.
The Microsoft 365 admin center contains a new option to enable the Loop app for everyone in a tenant. The setting overrides a previous cloud policy used to control access to the Loop app. It’s the kind of change you’d expect to see as an app makes it way through preview to the point when it becomes generally available. In other Loop news, the Loop app is available as a PWA through the Microsoft Store.
A reader asked why some deleted Microsoft 365 user accounts appear to have assigned licenses. That seemed strange because licenses are freed up for reuse when accounts are deleted, so we took a look behind the scenes to find out why some deleted user accounts keep license information in their properties and some do not.
Microsoft 365 apps now boast a simplified sharing experience. In other words, Microsoft has overhauled and revamped the dialogs used to create and manage sharing links. This is the first real change in the area since 2020-21. It’s a good time to make sharing easier for people because the introduction of Microsoft 365 Copilot means that overshared files and folders will be exposed.
On July 31, Microsoft announced that Clipchamp for Work will roll out to targeted release Microsoft 365 commercial tenants in the next few weeks. Although it’s good that Microsoft 365 tenants will get a very capable video editor, the goodness of the announcement is reduced by the fact that Microsoft is not making Clipchamp for Work available for Office 365 enterprise SKUs. That seems like a great pity, but it’s all part of Microsoft’s plan to nudge customers toward Microsoft 365.
At the Inspire conference, Microsoft briefed their partners about the Microsoft 365 Backup and Microsoft 365 Archive products they plan to launch at some time in the future. Microsoft’s biggest advantage is their access to data and the speed at which they can process the information. Whether this gets people past the “all digital eggs in the Microsoft basket” issue remains to be seen.
Stream video playback in Teams chats and channels is now inline, meaning that the video plays direct without any need to call the Stream browser client. It’s a good update that makes watching Stream videos a very seamless experience. It would be nice if Microsoft can improve some other integration points where Stream and Teams touch because some of the other integration features don’t work so well. In other news, SharePoint Online is rationalizing how it stores user photos.
Microsoft’s FY23 Q4 results wrapped up another strong year for Microsoft Cloud revenues. The $111.6 billion (actual) and $121.2 billion (run rate) results continue a strong record of growth. In other numbers, Entra ID now supports over 610 million monthly active users and EMS has over 256 million. All in all, lots of use for the Microsoft Cloud.
Microsoft has announced that they will deliver Microsoft 365 Backup for Exchange, SharePoint, and OneDrive in public preview in late 2023. Microsoft has several advantages when it comes to access to data and ability to update APIs, but it also has to cope with the putting all eggs in one basket syndrome. We don’t know how Microsoft will charge for Microsoft 365 backup, but it’s likely to be on a consumption basis.
Up to now, the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK has not included a cmdlet capable of reporting the renewal dates for Microsoft 365 subscriptions. A new beta Graph subscriptions endpoint is a method to retrieve the renewal information. Even if you can’t use an off-the-shelf cmdlet, you can still get the data.
After discussion in 2022 about potential vulnerabilities for the AES128-EBC cipher used by Microsoft Information Protection (MIP), an August upgrade enables AES256-CBC protection for sensitivity labels and other MIP components. Some care is needed to make sure that Exchange Server and other on-premises solutions work properly with the new cipher, but transition for Microsoft 365 tenants should be seamless.
In this article, we discuss how to create a report of registered devices known to the Exchange mobile device management framework. Microsoft hasn’t made many changes to the way Exchange Online manages mobile devices connected to its mailboxes over the past few years and would prefer if organizations used Intune instead. But if you just want simple device management, Exchange delivers, and PowerShell reveals what devices are active.
When Microsoft released the preview of the Loop app, we figured out that Loop uses a special form of SharePoint Online to store its workspaces and pages. Now we know that Loop uses Syntex Repository Services (SharePoint Embedded), a new offering that allows apps to create storage partitions within SharePoint Online and use those repositories to store the files needed by the app. It’s still early days for both the Loop app and Syntex Repository Services (in private preview) and many operational details need to be explored, but the new offering is an interesting choice for app developers when it comes to deciding where to store their data.
Microsoft didn’t do a great job of announcing the side-by-side viewing feature for Microsoft 365 apps. It seemed like the only reason for the feature was to drive usage for the Edge browser. As it turns out, you can choose to have Microsoft 365 apps use a different browser, and the tools to do that are now available.
Microsoft 365 includes a framework to create, send, and manage organization messages to users. It’s a good idea, but the implementation is sadly limited. First, you’re restricted to messages that Microsoft wants administrators to send to boost consumption of the Office apps. Second, you can’t customize the text or the appearance of the messages. Last, the dashboard to manage organization messages is half-finished.
Microsoft Purview data lifecycle management (retention labels and policies) support Azure AD administrative units to scope the set of objects that compliance administrators can manage. Administrative units can be used with data lifecycle management, data loss prevention (DLP), and information protection (sensitivity labels). You’ll need Microsoft 365 E5 licenses (or equivalents) to manage the policies, but that shouldn’t be an issue for the kind of enterprise tenants Microsoft is targeting this functionality at.
The Word Send to Kindle option available in Word desktop and browser apps makes it easy to send documents in Kindle or PDF format to an Amazon account. Once the documents are transferred, they can be synchronized to any Kindle device owned by the account. Everything works well and the feature is welcome, even if it replicates functionality that has long been available outside Word. Including the feature in Word reduces friction for users, and that’s always a good thing.
The Microsoft 365 profile card (for OWA initially) lists the set of connected Viva Topics for a person. This only happens when the user has a Viva Topics or Viva Suite license. It’s an example of how Microsoft is building out the set of information available in user profile cards and embedding Viva Topics in as many places as possible. All good if you use Viva Topics!
Teams Wikis are rapidly approaching the point where they become unsupported. Microsoft has a migration utility to move wiki content to OneNote. This article covers how the migration works and what happens after Teams wiki content moves to OneNote.
Booming Microsoft Cloud revenues and the growth of Office 365 paid seats to 382 million are highlights of Microsoft’s FY23 Q3 results. Other interesting topics included Teams reaching 300 million monthly active users, EMS getting to nearly 250 million users and some hints about how Microsoft will charge for products like Microsoft 365 Copilot when the AI-powered software becomes available.
While working with SharePoint Online yesterday, an in-product ad for a Microsoft 365 conference popped up. This kind of in-product messaging is terribly distracting and not what you’d expect to happen in enterprise software. I have no idea why Microsoft is doing this, but if you don’t like it, please let them know.
Microsoft 365 tenants can select any of the verified domains for the tenant to send Microsoft 365 service messages instead of using the default domains. The update also allows tenants to choose a routable recipient (username) instead of the traditional “no-reply” address. Overall, this seems like a very easy change to implement that shouldn’t cause any problems.
On March 24, Microsoft announced new rules for licensing Teams Rooms Devices. Instead of being able to assign a user subscription license (like Office 365 E3), tenants must assign a Teams Rooms Pro or Teams Rooms Standard license to the room mailboxes used by devices. If they don’t, the devices won’t be able to connect after July 1, 2023. Microsoft suggests a script to find licensed room mailboxes. It’s OK, but we can make the script run much faster, which might just be important in the types of tenants that use Teams Rooms devices.
The changes in Microsoft 365 keep on coming thick and fast. Changes range from the introduction of fundamental new technology like Microsoft 365 Copilot to an update to a small product detail. In this case, the Azure AD admin center is moving to the Microsoft Entra admin center. Microsoft has its own reasons for making this change, which will ripple out across the community to affect content developers and trainers. Is that a problem? Only if you don’t respond.
SharePoint Online is embracing Azure AD more closely by forcing new tenants to use the integration between the two Microsoft 365 components. In addition, site sharing will use the Azure AD invitation mechanism instead of SharePoint’s own code. The changes make a lot of sense and shouldn’t cause much disruption for tenants. It’s a good reminder to check the relevant policies that control external access via Azure B2B Collaboration.
Microsoft continues to improve the sound quality available in Teams meetings with support for spatial audio and ultrasound howling detection (feedback echo). Spatial audio depends on the right equipment and aims to help you know who’s speaking in a meeting. Howling detection means that Teams detects when multiple people in a physical room join a meeting and suppresses audio to avoid a feedback loop.
The Azure AD sign-in frequency controls how often accounts must reauthenticate. Setting an unreasonably short value makes it more difficult for people to work because Azure AD constantly nags for credentials, including MFA challenges. I experienced the effect of such a policy last week and it wasn’t nice. Security policies need to be practical and pragmatic as well as effective.
Teams bulk policy assignment options include two features in the Teams admin center, batch jobs, Azure Automation and plain-old PowerShell. In this article, we examine the options in the Teams Admin Center to revert policy assignments back to the global (default) policy and a way to perform Teams bulk policy assignments for selected accounts. And we mention the other methods that exist which don’t involve the Teams admin center.
Microsoft uses machine learning in Outlook and Exchange Online to create the basis for what they call intelligent technology like suggested replies and text prediction. To generate the language models used to figure out how Outlook should respond to users, Microsoft needs to copy data from user mailboxes for processing. The data is removed and the results stored in user mailboxes once processing is complete. Is this an issue for Microsoft 365 tenants? It all depends on your view of how data should be processed.
Microsoft 365 pronouns for display in apps like Teams and OWA can now be enabled on a tenant-wide basis. Displaying pronouns is a topic that can cause strong feelings for some, so organizations should take their time and plan an implementation before rushing to deployment.
Microsoft is dropping lots of hints to the press about the imminent arrival of the new Teams client (V2.1), due to arrive in public preview in late March 2023. According to reports, the new Teams client will deliver better performance while using 50% less memory and making fewer demands for CPU. It all sounds great. With the new client coming into sight, it’s time to prepare Teams update policies to make sure that the right users get the new software at the right time.
The new Azure AD app property lock feature (in preview) prevents attackers updating the credentials for an Azure AD enterprise app so that they can get an access token and exploit the app’s permissions. This technique has been used in several attacks, notably the infamous SolarWinds exploit in 2021. The app property lock is not mandatory and it’s important to keep on checking the audit log to make sure that attackers don’t creep into your tenant.
