Exploring SharePoint Document Identifiers

It’s easy to be fearful when companies move work to the cloud. But the simple fact is that there’s more work than ever before to do to master all of Office 365. Just go looking!

New OWA Maturing in Different Ways

The new version of OWA is maturing and new features are turning up on a weekly basis. You can now schedule a Teams meeting from OWA and the prospect of joyful animations hang in the air. But only for Office 365 users as there’s no sign that the new OWA will come to Exchange on-premises servers.

Office 365 for IT Pros January 2019 Update Released

January 21 2019 updates for the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook

Updated Files Office 365 for IT Pros Now Available The Office 365 for IT Pros writing team is thrilled to release the 10th update for the 2019 edition. Dated January 21, 2019, the updated files are now online and available on Gumroad.com (for subscribers who bought the EPUB and PDF versions) and Amazon (for those …

Office 365 Network Performance (POC) Tool

Microsoft’s new Network Performance Tool is a proof of concept for Office 365 tenants to check network connections to Microsoft’s network and Office 365. The tool might help you understand more about your connection into Microsoft, but it won’t fix any last mile problems.

Using Exchange Session Identifiers in Audit Log Records

Exchange Online now captures session identifiers in its mailbox and admin audit records that are ingested in the Office 365 audit log. That’s interesting and useful, but how do you access and interpret this information on a practical level?

How to Create Global Contacts in an Office 365 Tenant

You can use a public folder to store and share global email contacts, but a better approach is to use Exchange mail contacts. These objects show up in the Exchange GAL and OAB and are available to all Outlook clients (and some third-party clients too).

How to Embed External Content in Modern SharePoint Online Pages

Embedding external content in modern SharePoint Online (SPO) pages is a really easy task using Microsoft’s out of the box Embed webpart. In the WebPart settings panel we can add the external content URL (such as a YouTube video) or by using the standard <iFrame> HTML tag: In the event we want to add a …

Office 365 Privileged Access Management: Too Flawed and Too Exchange?

Microsoft has launched Privileged Access Management (PAM) for Office 365. The name’s incorrect because PAM only works for Exchange Online right now. PAM is based on RBAC, which is good, but is the implementation too Exchange-centric?

Office 365 Tenants to Microsoft: Send Training Tips to End Users – No Thanks!

Microsoft’s grand plan to send helpful emails to Office 365 users hit a roadblock when customers said “No thanks” to the idea. Microsoft has now taken the plan back for mature reflection. Does this kind of initiative reflect a certain arrogance on the part of Microsoft?

The Vexed Question of Microsoft 365 Backups

Backup vendors say you should definitely use their products to protect your valuable Microsoft 365 data. Backup products can do a good job, but the nature of Microsoft 365 creates many challenges at a technical level. A lack of APIs is the most fundamental issue, but the connected nature of Microsoft 365 apps is another.

Network performance and connectivity evaluation with Network Testing Companion

Microsoft has released a nifty Network Testing Companion to help Office 365 admins validate that their network can support the deployment of Teams and Skype for Business Online.

Office 365 E5 Accounts Now Keep Audit Log Data for 365 Days

Microsoft has updated its retention period for Office audit records from 90 to 365 days, but only for accounts with Office 365 E5 licenses. On another front, the problem with truncated audit records for Azure Active Directory events still persists.

October 2018 Update Available for Office 365 for IT Pros eBook

The writing team is pleased to announce the availability of the seventh update for the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook. Sixteen of the 24 chapters are updated in this release, which is the most we have ever changed in a single update. Please be sure to download the new files at your earliest convenience.

How to Export Microsoft 365 Roadmap to a CSV File

The new Microsoft 365 roadmap features the ability to download items (filtered or the entire roadmap) to a CSV file. You can then open the file with Excel or pour its contents into Power BI to analyze the roadmap to your heart’s content. That seems like a good thing.

Ignite 2018 Finishes: Ignite 2019 Pre-Registration Opens

Ignite 2018 is over and the countdown to the 2019 event has begun. Ignite 2019 is back in Orlando again, but in November, so we have about 13 months to go. In that time you’ll want to catch up on what happened at Ignite 2018, which is exactly what the Office 365 for IT Pros team has started to do. Our next update is due on October 19 and we have lots to do.

Managing Microsoft Teams Through the Teams Admin Center

If you read yesterday’s article about the new team management functionality in the Teams and Skype for Business Online Admin Center, you might be interested to hear what Microsoft has to say on the topic. Head over to Ignite, in person or virtually, and you’ll find out.

New Search Experiences Coming to Office 365

In the same way Microsoft is introducing a new modern search experience in modern SharePoint Online (SPO) sites, the same strategy is being applied to search in Office 365. In this article we take a look at the modern search features you can find in Office 365. This article was published on Petri.com on September 27, 2018. …

The unified Microsoft 365 Roadmap is here

As expected, Microsoft has announced the unified Microsoft 365 Roadmap that includes all the technologies that are part of Microsoft 365: Office 365, Enterprise Mobility + Security and Windows 10. The new roadmap comes also with a new web site and a new URL (Note: the Old Office 365 Roadmap Url is still live, but …

Using Special Characters in Retention Labels and Sensitivity Labels

A little known fact is that you can use graphic symbols and characters in Office 365 labels. It might bring a splash of color to your compliance and retention efforts, especially in a world where emojis are everywhere. After all, the symbols are just character codes that computers can process and Office 365 is designed to be multilingual and cope with different character sets (like the way Teams deals with Hebrew and Arabic).

Microsoft Rolls Out Block for Calendar Forwarding

A new Exchange feature rolling out inside Office 365 allows meeting organizers to block people forwarding their meetings to all and sundry. The latest versions of OWA and Outlook 2016 click to run support the UI for the feature and blocks are built into Exchange Online and Exchange on-premises servers to stop blocked meetings sneaking through.