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Office 365 for IT Pros Monthly Update #106: the Only Always Up-to-Date Book About Microsoft 365
The fact that SharePoint celebrated its 23rd anniversary on March 27 is a reminder that successful software stands the test of time. Recent innovations in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem like the Loop App and Copilot for Microsoft 365 have a long way to go to prove their resilience and usefulness over time. Teams seems to have been around forever, but it’s only a 7-year-old youngster that’s a mere stripling compared to the 34-year record for Exchange.
Which brings us to monthly update #106 for Office 365 for IT Pros. The updated files are available for subscribers to download from Gumroad.com. Please use the link in your receipt or your Gumroad.com account to download the latest files. Details about major changes are available in our change log while our FAQ contains more details about how to download the updates. Readers who buy a Kindle version through Amazon.com need to contact Amazon support to be allowed access to the update.
March Topics for the Office 365 for IT Pros Team
Not everything that appears in Office365itpros.com ends up in the book, but what does appear is a good pointer to what we’re interested in. During March, we covered a range of diverse topics, including:
- How to customize quarantine messages.
- Using audit data to figure out which accounts might be good candidates for Copilot licenses.
- Microsoft’s disclosure that the classic version of Outlook for Windows will be supported until at least 2029.
- The advent of restricted SharePoint search, which seems like a bad tactic to us.
- How to use PowerShell to clean out all messages from a Teams channel.
- Why archiving Teams channels is a good idea.
- Users of the Loop app will soon be able to share workspaces and pages with people outside the tenant.
- Understanding how much Microsoft 365 Backup charges to protect data.
- Converting an Entra ID external account to be an internal account.
- The High Completeness option for audit log searches.
- All about Microsoft 365 tenant identifiers, including some new Graph APIs to resolve tenant identifiers.
It’s an eclectic set of topics, but it does prove the breadth of knowledge that Microsoft 365 tenant administrators need to acquire to understand the moving parts within a tenant.
Notable Deprecations
Now that we’re in April 2024, it’s good to note that Microsoft has retired the classic Teams client. It might not disappear from sight for a while, but it will eventually slip away. People should be using the new Teams 2.1 client now.
Second, the AzureAD, AzureADPreview, and MSOL PowerShell modules are deprecated. The license assignment cmdlets in these modules don’t work because Microsoft 365 moved to a new license management system. The rest of the cmdlets will continue to work without support. Microsoft will eventually retire these modules and that will be that. It’s time to embrace the power of the Microsoft Graph and transfer code to use the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK.
Office 365 for IT Pros Update #107
We’ve already started work on monthly update #107 and plan to make it available on May 1, 2024. In late April/early May the major Microsoft 365 conference will be held in Orlando, Florida. Given the amount of attention and sponsorship Microsoft pours into this event, it’s easy to anticipate that Microsoft will make some major announcements or provide some in-depth technical information that might affect tenant planning.
We’ll be at the conference to catch up with many industry contacts from inside and outside Microsoft. If you want to attend the conference, here’s a link that will get you a $100 discount. Come by and attend Tony’s sessions. The first is “Mastering the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK” (Tuesday, 30 April at 11:30am). If you’re still struggling with migrating from the old Azure AD PowerShell modules, the SDK session is one to attend. The second is “Don’t let Copilot for Microsoft 365 be a Vanity Project” (Wednesday, 1 May at 9:45am). Should be fun!